O lúdico como elemento educacional: jogos cognitivos no novo ensino médio

Abstract

There is no consensus on what “quality” in education means. The term has been widely used to justify the development of policies that aim to align the public interest with market needs. This study deals with the neoliberal advance on Brazilian education, especially on Physical Education, and its effects on people's lives, on a symbolic and evaluative level, it addresses the role that cognitive games have assumed in this context, based on continuing education programs and a large part of literature, as a tool for self-improvement, or pedagogical support, and presents the “ludus” as an educational element and possible potency for reinterpreting the world. In that sense, the research emerges with the main objective of analyzing the educacional elements present in a proposal for Physical Education in the “Novo Ensino Médio”, which includes the “ludus” aprouch through the theme of cognitive games. For that, based on agreements signed between the researcher and school management, we established an action-research, in a cognitive games environment, at E.E.B. Cel. Lara Ribas, in the city of Chapecó, Santa Catarina, over 12 meetings, which took place between May and August, 2023, initially with 37 participants, students in the first year of “Novo Ensino Médio”, and using participant observation as a data collection instrument. Through the participant observation, we sought to better understand how and what type of meaning the subjects attribute to the events and interactions that occur in their lives, especially those inherent to the “ludus” experience. The information obtained formed a reflective diary, with notes serving as the basis for discussions and results. The data collected at this stage were categorized according to their content, forming sections that were highlighted, organized and analyzed using the content analysis technique. The results indicate that several characteristics inherent to the “ludus” sphere are present in a cognitive gaming environment, namely: voluntariness, escape from real life, tension, rule discussion, gratuitousness detached from any interest other than the game itself, transgression in the sense of rethinking actions, invention of new ways to play, strengthening of bonds between people, space-time relation, etc. We understand that such conditions can constitute keys to (re)reading reality, as they stimulate imagination, creativity, and sensitivity, capacities that allow us to symbolize. In our view, the learnings resulting from this approach constitute exercises of freedom, sensitivity, and apprehension of life as an event.