History learning based on the construction of narratives about the past

Abstract

This research analyses the constitution of the historical thought of young students ages 12-14 from elementary schools in Brazil and Portugal, concerning facts articulated with the national histories of both countries. The events chosen for this research are focused on elements related to substantive content and meta-history in the teaching of the history of Brazil and the history of Portugal. We analyze, in this article, the way Brazilian and Portuguese students have answered to the challenge of thinking the history of Brazil without the Portuguese presence. Our work is based on the idea that, to build historical learning, it is important that students are capable to understand historical diversities from the human past reconstituted by historiography. This implies the capacity to produce knowledge understanding that the knowledge about the past is accomplished through historical evidence. Among the results we have found, it is the traditional way to teach History that still prevails, mainly in Brazilian schools: the lack of use of temporal markers by Brazilian students. Regarding the analysis of the narratives, we could notice, in most of the young students, an understanding of the past as something static, but we have also found narratives establishing relations between the present, past, and future, considering the possibility of changing the course of facts.