Abstract
Child’s play is an important activity for child development since it improves cognition, emotional, and physical aspects. Games can also be explored as an educational resource. Starting from the understanding that playfulness is a subjective process, this work has investigated the relationship to the knowledge stablished during games, aiming to understand it in its epistemic, social, and identitary dimensions. A group of 16 5th grade students were interviewed from a script based on the instrument “balance of knowledge,” as proposed by Bernard Charlot. The questions were adapted to enable the apprehension of what children say they learn on the games they play, emphasizing those which are played in classrooms. The results of the content analysis performed have showed that, despite the conflicts on how both playful and educative functions are stablished when child’s play is used as a pedagogic resource, the subjects can identify benefits on the process of learning with it. The need to consider the child’s social condition in the school environment to reach success when using these activities as pedagogical practices is also pointed out.
Keywords:
Relationship to knowledge; Playfulness; Child’s play; School