Children at crossroads: the construction of a concept between children’s voices and the Common National Curriculum Framework

This study, based on a doctoral dissertation, examines the meanings attributed to the word “child”, framing childhood as a crossroads of symbolic disputes. The crossroads concept is used as a theoretical and methodological perspective that understands knowledge as a space of transit and meaning production. Methodologically, the study uses qualitative research with a document and discursive nature, analyzing children’s testimonies alongside studies in the sociology of childhood and an examination of the Early Childhood Education chapter in the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (Common National Curriculum Framework). The results indicate tensions between advocating for children as subjects of rights and the normative rationales in curricular discourse. It concludes that children create crossings and reinvent meanings even amidst standardization processes, affirming childhood as a living, plural, and situated experience.