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The present article analyses the possibilities of producing the common in school by the children. Schools have favoured the development of individualities centred on aims of self-realization and individual competitive performance. Beyond these identifications that secure personal interests and survival, the conviviality with the others in school poses demands that allow for children's mobilization in the construction of collective senses, actions, territories and social spaces. In the present work, the issue of the break-time constitutes the dispositif whereby children institute, however ephemerally and punctually, singular points of view on their particular gerational position in school. We discuss the results of an empirical research carried out in a municipal school in Rio de Janeiro and argue for the "public voice of children" in their process of collectively engaging to recreate the school context. We conclude considering the relevance of bridging the distance between the fields of politics and childhood as it seems necessary to give an answer to the question about what childhood has to do with democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at discussing issues of gender and sexuality present in discourses of Elementary School teachers about the personal relationships experienced by girls from a public school in a ghetto with classmates of more advanced classes during recess. The survey was conducted through focus group methodology with the participation of twelve teachers. The teachers, through their discourses (produced by a network of institutions and cultural artifacts), constitute truth regimes that operate in the governmentality of students' behavior. From the analyses, it is possible to highlight that the teachers' discourses aim at regulating the students' modes of being, acting and living together. To do so, these discourses show a vocabulary that distinguishes the expected behavior of girls and boys, hoping that the former experience their femininity in a heteronormative standard. Therefore, it is concluded that the heteronormative discourses in the school context should be discussed, so that schools can contribute to overcoming inequalities, introducing in the curriculum and in everyday practice the questioning of all and any forms of gender discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes, from space and time in a school playground, how are established power relations among children; in other words, how the children interactions were put into operation by the children themselves - in a general way - and problematize recess as a time regarded as free, and that therefore the children's actions would be intensified. The data were collected from the practice of "bricolage", where was made crucial the dialogue among some tools, such as class reports, photographic records, conversations, interviews and observations. During the observations it was noticed out that both the recess time and the children interactions are crossed by the disciplinary order, so the actions of children are not exempt of infant intentionality and power. They are placed working from the operation of some disciplinary instruments such the sanction, supervision and examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of an ethnographic research project that analyzed the playing culture in the context of break time in the early years of elementary school. The investigation was developed with nineteen children (ten boys and nine girls) in a municipal public school located in the city of Pelotas city, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The main instruments used in the research were participant observation, photographs and interviews. The text focuses on the meanings of fighting, elaborates on how the girls and boys fought during break time and analyzes the different ways in which they tell about their experiences with fighting. The break time reveals children's perceptions of what happens when they are playing or fighting, their feelings and fantasies, the relationships that they establish with their fellow pupils and their desire of changes in this context. It is possible to think that the meanings of fighting and playing during break time could help us to construct references to reflect on gender relations, the school's spatial and temporal setting, school curriculum, plays, fights, partnerships, imaginary and children's learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]