Contributions to teacher training: the game as a right in a pandemic context - the right to play in post-pandemic school

Abstract

The present work aims to explore, understand, show and characterize some of the experiences that childhood went through in the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020; in order to reveal how the target children lived the processes of confinement and forced social isolation at different moments and in different contexts in Argentina. The study is part of the broader project "Childhood in pandemic: how childhood lives the processes of confinement and forced social isolation, in different contexts of Argentina: Their voices, games, communication and education in confinement”. The authors, in such a dramatic and exceptional context of a global health emergency, applied virtual surveys to children from 3 to 13 years of age. They were especially interested in getting to learn through the voices of the girls and boys between 3 and 6 years of age, what they played and with whom, how they linked with educational institutions, what activities were proposed to them, what type of communication they managed to establish with teachers, in different situations; so as to build a new knowledge that enables us to recognize voices, games, forms of communication, interrelationships and modes of education in confinement as experienced by children. And, at the same time, this research allows to acknowledge the need to guarantee play as a right even in a pandemic context; so as to focus later on, on the right to play in post-pandemic times. Within the framework of a methodologically exploratory and descriptive research design, the central object reported has been to characterize and explore the game of childhood (3 to 6 years of age) in a process of confinement and forced social isolation, in the cities of Luján, Morón and Mercedes, from the province of Buenos Aires: how were their voices, games, communication and education in confinement. For this, the instrument used was a survey that made it possible to take into account, in addition to the planned objectives, the following aspects: knowledge of the children about the pandemic, perception of its duration, the place and playmates and the elements gambling in the pandemic period.