Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Memories of life experiences in a teacher training institution during the revolution

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 49; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230.2012.750375

1477-674X

António Gomes Ferreira, Luís Mota,

Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy

AbstractWe evoke here events that took place in an ordinary school, the Teacher Training College in Coimbra (Portugal), during the on-going revolutionary process (processo revolucionário em curso; PREC), in an attempt to understand people's actions within the collective becoming of a certain time and place, and to grasp how memory works as a narrative of the recollection of events connected with the course of the individual and the society. We equate the issue of memory – as the essential dimension, when collecting information, of the construction of individual and collective identity, embodied by the relevant social frameworks – with the feeling, relevance and interpretation of such memory at the time of its recovery. We listened to the memories revived during the interviews and to the narratives reconstructed, either through our intervention fostering the active search for memories, or actively listening and participating in their stories, focusing on their personal experiences as teachers or students of that institution, and scrutinising the personal processes of reconstruction, the expression of a claimed and overt memory, which feeds, rhetorically, on an experienced ideology. Memory is particularly invoked here, because it takes us on a journey to the past, while exploring the recollections of people who experienced unique events which cannot be captured nor reproduced in any other way. Memory is particularly invoked here because it takes us on a journey to the past, while exploring the recollections of people who experienced unique events which cannot be captured or reproduced in any other way.Keywords: Memoryhistoryideologyteacher training collegePREC Notes1Mémoire et identité (Paris, PUF, 1998); Joël Candau, Les processus de la mémoire partagée, Pour no. 181 (2004): 118-123; idem, Anthropologie de la mémoire (Paris: Armand Colin, 2005); Joël Candau, "Bases antropológicas e expressões mundanas da busca patrimonial: memória, tradição, identidade," Revista Memória em Rede, http://www.ufpel.edu.br/ich/memoriaemrede/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/revista-n1.pdf (acessed May 25, 2011).2Paul Ricoeur, La Mémoire, L'Histoire, L'Oubli (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000).3António Costa Pinto, "Enfrentando o legado autoritário na transição para a democracia." In Revolução e Democracia – 2. O País em Revolução. Direção de José Maria Brandão de Brito (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2001), 359–84.4Boaventura Sousa Santos, O Estado e a Sociedade em Portugal (1974-1988) (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1998).5Ricardo Petrella, Portugal – os próximos 20 anos. Reflexões sobre o futuro de Portugal (e da Europa) (Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1990).6Teresa Ambrósio, "O sistema educativo: ruptura, desestabilização e desafios europeus." In Portugal Contemporâneo. Volume III. Direção de António Reis (Lisboa: Alfa/Selecções Reader's Digest, 1996), 665–74.7Stephen R. Stoer, "O Estado e as Políticas Educativas: Uma proposta de mandato renovado para a Escola Democrática," Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, no. 41 (1994): 3–33.8Stephen R. Stoer, Alan D. Stoleroff, and José Alberto Correia, "O Novo Vocacionalismo na Política Educativa em Portugal e a Reconstrução da Lógica da Acumulação," Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, no. 29 (1990): 11–53.9António Gomes Ferreira and Luís Mota, "A formação de professores do ensino primário durante a crise revolucionária (1974-1976)" (paper presented at II Colóquio Internacional 1909–2009: Crise e Criatividade através da Imprensa, Coimbra, Portugal, October 7–9, 2009).10Rogério Fernandes, Educação: Uma Frente de Luta (Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1977).11"Educar em Portugal. Mesa Redonda," Raiz & Utopia. Críticas e alternativas para uma civilização diferente, no. 9/10 (1979): 55–133.12F. Cabral Pinto, Escolas do Magistério, reforma e contra-reforma (Lisboa: Edições O Professor, 1977), 7.13"Law no. 348/75, of 12 September," Diário do Governo, II Série, no. 211 (1975).14Ibid.15F. Cabral Pinto, "A formação dos professores nas Escolas do Magistério," O Professor, no.11/12 (1976): 14–15.16Ibid.17Manuel Matos, "Escolas do Magistério Primário – uma experiência apunhalada I," O Professor, no. 5 (1978): 39–44.18"Decree-law no. 47 587," Diário do Governo, I Série, N.° 59, (March 10, 1967).19Ibid.20Ibid.21Manuel Matos, "Escolas do Magistério Primário," 42.22See Plano de Estudos das Escolas do Magistério; Magistério Primário e Magistério Infantil (The Studies Plan of the Teacher Training Colleges), signed by the Minister of Education and Culture, José Emídio da Silva, on May 31 [or March, illegible] 1975.23Pinto, Escolas do Magistério, 26–31 and 50–1.24Plano de Estudos das Escolas do Magistério; Magistério Primário e Magistério Infantil (The Studies Plan of the Teacher Training Colleges), signed by the Minister of Education and Culture, José Emídio da Silva, on May 31 [or March, illegible]. In Programas (1°/2° Anos) 1975-1976.25In this study, the proposals of the extended case-study method (Michael Burawoy et al., Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991)) are eclectically combined with that of grounded theory (Anselm Strauss, and Juliette Corbin, "Grounded Theory Methodology. An Overview," in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin, and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994), 273–85), and the interview is used as the data generating (and not collecting) technique, seeking to obtain a relevant and fluent dialogue, while conducting a complex social construction (Peter Collins, "Negotiating Selves: Reflections on Unstructured Interviweing," Sociological Research Online 3, no. 3 (1998), http://www.socreonlie.org.uk/socresonline/3/3/2.html (acessed May 26, 2005)).26Candau, "Processus de la mémoire partagée," 118–23.27Michael Billig et al., Ideological Dilemmas. A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking (London: SAGE Publications, 1989).28Andrea Fontana and James H. Frey, "Interviewing. The Art of Science," in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1994), 361–76.29Natasha Mauthner and Andrea Doucet, "Reflections on a Voice-centred Relational Method," in Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research. Public Knowledge and Private Lives, ed. Rosalind Edwards and Jane Ribbens (London: SAGE Publications, 1998) 119–45.30Ricoeur, Mémoire, L'Histoire, 112–63.31Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997).32Ricoeur, Mémoire, L'Histoire, 112–63.33Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994).34Fernando Catroga, Memória, História e Historiografia (Coimbra: Quarteto, 2001).35Gérard Namer, Mémoire et Société (Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1987).36Fernando Catroga, Memória, História, 15–35.37Namer, Mémoire et Société.38Michael Pollak, "Memória, Esquecimento, Silêncio," Estudos Históricos 2, no. 3 (1989), http://www.cpdoc.fgv.br/revista/arq/43.pdf (accessed March 13, 2011).39Pollak, "Memória, Esquecimento."40José Manuel Mendes, Do ressentimento ao reconhecimento. Vozes, identidades e processos políticos nos Açores (1974-1996) (Porto: Edições Afrontamento/Centro de Estudos Sociais, 2003).4142Fernando Catroga, Memória, História, 39–51.43Candau, "Processus de la mémoire partagée", 118–23.44Pollak, "Memória, Esquecimento."45In primary schools.46The Director of the Teacher Training College of Coimbra from 1977 to 1989. Elected by the school faculty, he replaced Fernando Cabral Pinto, who had been appointed by the Ministry of Education in September 1974.47The Teacher Training College of Coimbra (Escola do Magistério Primário de Coimbra) was extinguished in 1989 and gave way to the College of Education (Escola Superior de Educação), which opened in 1986.48Schools where trainee teachers trained, at the end of their studies, to become primary school teachers.