The themes of evolution and progress in the discourses of the educational psychology and the history of education

Abstract

The article consists of an analysis of a set of textbooks of educational psychology and history of education aimed at teacher education, whose objective is to identify the approximations and distances between these disciplines with respect to the presence of the themes of evolution and progress. It focuses on manuals published in Brazil between 1934 and 1972 and is inspired by Foucault's writings on discourse analysis. In the textbooks of these disciplines, it was observed the recurrence of the association between the child development and the social progress, often described in the light of recapitulation theory. This theory was not, however, the object of consensus, but it was a focus of controversy, representing one aspect of the debate between representatives of the New School movement and Catholic educators during the period considered.