Early childhood education in the rhetorical agenda of Brazilian governments (2014–2024): silences and discursive disputes in the policy cycle of early childhood

Abstract

To understand aspects of early childhood education in the Brazilian governmental agenda, this article has as its general objective to analyze how Early Childhood Education was constructed, mentioned, and/or silenced in the rhetorical agenda of Brazilian federal governments between 2014 and 2024. Furthermore, it seeks to examine how inauguration speeches, presidential messages to the National Congress, and government plans confer visibility or invisibility on early childhood within the policy cycle, marked by discursive disputes and governmental priorities. The research adopts a qualitative, documentary, and interpretative approach and is grounded in the policy cycle model (Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992), content analysis (Bardin, 2011), and an articulated critical-reflexive discourse analysis. The corpus comprises ten years of official documents from four administrations (Dilma Rousseff, Michel Temer, Jair Bolsonaro, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), systematizing references to the terms “early childhood education,” “daycare,” and “preschool.” The results indicate a low degree of centrality of Early Childhood Education in presidential rhetoric; only the Dilma administration mentioned the area in its inaugural address. Messages to Congress display fluctuations shaped by political and economic circumstances, while government plans reveal a limited presence of the topic, particularly after 2016. These findings highlight discursive silences that weaken the consolidation of Early Childhood Education as a priority of the State.