During the last twenty years, national and international research carried out mainly under the framework of the new social studies of childhood have offered new opportunities to understand the Early Childhood Education (ECE) institutions. The present study is a research project funded by the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), which aims to verify which municipalities in the state of Sao Paulo are adopting "booklets", developed and commercialized by private publishing companies and why do they use this material. The research was organized in two stages: the first one has sent questionnaires to every city to verify which ones adopted the booklets, and the second one proposed semi-structured interviews with authorities responsible for ECE in these municipalities. The analysis aims to put these different findings in the context of sociological theories of childhood and to understand some ECE public policies.
early childhood education; public policies; booklets; sociology of childhood
