Diverse childhoods: the role of play in development and inclusion in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This text aims to discuss the diversity present in institutions of Early Childhood Education. This diversity is characteristic of society and, therefore, figures in childhood school. When we think of diversity, we are not restricted to disabilities, syndromes or the autism, but also to ethnic-racial, religious, regional, gender, economic, non-hegemonic bodies, habits and customs, of all the aspects that are beyond a standardization that only exists in the imagination. The question to ask is whether we perceive it or make it invisible. Have we identified the plurality of childhoods and children or do we still have the expectation that they are all same? I start the discussion from the concept of child development in the light of the Historical-Cultural Theory, for which all children are capable of learning and developing, although they follow different paths, to address the role of play in the child development of all children, regardless of their development condition, therefore, in making visible the diversity present in Early Childhood Education institutions.