Investigações com Crianças e Adolescentes em Acolhimento Institucional: Pressupostos Teóricos Interdisciplinares e Metodologias Participativas

Abstract

This thesis conducted an investigation with children and adolescents in institutional sheltering using a theoretical framework, interdisciplinary and participatory methodology, highlighting techniques that access orality and creativity. Four independent studies were carried out, where all have a straight connection, which brings theoretical and methodological aspects related to empirical research carried out with children and adolescents in a shelter service. The first study is presented as an essay on interdisciplinarity as the possibility of articulation between different types of knowledge around a theme, in this case, the developing child and childhood as a social category, based on the dialogue with the disciplines of Sociology of Childhood and Developmental Psychology. The second study analyzes publications on the use of participatory methodology in investigations with children and adolescents in different contexts, but especially in institutional sheltering. The third empirical study describes the use of participatory methodologies that access the orality of children and adolescents who are living in host institutions. The fourth study reported the process of co-construction of a participatory methodology that, in its procedure, used a tool called 'Livro da Minha Vida' appealing to creativity to obtain data and produce participants' perceptions about their life trajectories – before, during and after institutional sheltering. Sixteen children and adolescents who, at the time of the research, were sheltered in two residential institutions in the state of Pará, in the cities of Belém and Barcarena, participated in the study. The results show that, in studies with children, it is important to recognize the phenomena from a perspective of totality and with an interdisciplinary view of the elements that constitute it, avoiding fragmented views that make it difficult to read a reality based on socio-historical determinations. This proposition allows for an approximation between the Sociology of Childhood (SC) and Developmental Psychology (DP) from the perspective of the articulation between the knowledge produced about childhood and the child. The empirical research material and its discussion in theoretical terms in the thesis suggest that studies that use participatory methodologies based on a framework of SC and DP, enables the role of children in research, which means recognizing them as creators and belonging to a culture and protagonists in the decision-making process. Through the use of participatory techniques that access orality (discussion group with visual stimulation of the use of puppets and dialogic and participatory interviews) was possible to present the children's points of view, as well as feelings and ways of seeing the external world and their own development context, which is also built by them, the shelter services. It is concluded that these techniques, when supported by an interdisciplinary dialogue and a participatory methodology, prove to be useful even for technical interventions with children and adolescents who live in host institutions, capturing their voices and opinions, being respected in their diversity. Therefore, more studies in this direction need to be carried out to support the development and application of participatory methodologies that enable the engagement of children and adolescents in research and contribute to guaranteeing their right to participate.