ANTI-RACIST PRACTICES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: A UNIVERSITY EXTENSION EXPERIENCE REPORT

Abstract

This chapter examines storytelling with puppet boxes as an anti-racist education strategy in Early Childhood Education. It is an experience report, with a qualitative approach and a descriptive-analytical character, developed in an extension course of a teacher education program at a public university. The aim is to analyze how the articulation between studies on ethnic-racial relations and an extension action in a public Early Childhood Education institution contributes to the implementation of racial equality policies and to teacher education. The methodology combined a formative path on social movements, human rights, the State, anti-racist educational legislation and literary mediation with the collective planning of interventions in classes of children aged two to five, in which groups of students produced puppet boxes and activities based on children's books that value Black characters and African references. The analysis indicates that the intentional selection of books, the materialization of the narratives in playful resources and the activities centered on the body, skin tones and hair created pedagogical conditions to address belonging and diversity with young children. For the people in teacher education, the process fostered the relationship between theory and practice and the understanding of book selection as a political decision. It is concluded that university extension, when articulated with the study of racial equality policies, is a fertile space for anti-racist teacher education, provided that it is taken on as a continuous action shared with Early Childhood Education institutions.