The text discusses some of the findings of a doctorate research in Education conducted in the municipality of Três Rios, Rio de Janeiro, with a class from a municipal public school. The research focused on the children's transition from early childhood education to fundamental education, and on the impact of the school culture upon child culture in the transformation of these social agents from children into pupils. The theoretical-methodological groundings were constructed in dialogue with the concepts created mainly by Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Foucault, Certeau and Sacristán. The concepts operated here at three levels: on one side we had Bakhtin's concept of language, the main category of analysis of the field data, and Vygotsky furnishing the elements for a dialectical reflection around child, and school, cultures seen as texts. At a different level, we included Foucault and Certeau in the analyses of the power strategies and resistance tactics identified in the practices observed, and of their impacts on the agents' processes of subjectivation. Lastly, the sociology of childhood and the concept of school culture contributed to clarify some of the elements of the fieldwork, placing them into context. The investigation of the transitions and ruptures from early childhood education to fundamental education drew from the works of Moss, Corsaro, and Molinari.
Children; Pupils; Transitions from early childhood education to fundamental education