Currículo e ensino de História: entre o prescrito e o vivido: Vitória da Conquista-BA, Brasil (1993-2000)

Abstract

This research has the objective of studying the curriculum and teaching of history at the secondary school level in the city of Vitória da Conquista, Bahia, Brazil, during the years 1993-2000. Its general objective is to analyze the curriculi of history teaching as it is prescribed and as it is actually carried out in secondary school education in the state public school system of this city. The specific objectives are: (1) identify and discuss the official prescribed curriculi (on the national level as well as the state level), and the didactic books suggested by SEC-BA for the teaching of history at the secondary school level, during the period being studied; (2) analyze the relationships between knowledge, education, and practise in the teaching of history at the secondary school level; (3) analyze the relationships between the officially prescribed curriculum and that actually used by the teachers, with an eye toward comprehending the tensions, proximities and distances between the two curricular dimensions. The research used a qualitative methodology and the following written sources: LDB 9.394/96, the official Federal (DCNEM and PCNEM) and state curriculi (suggested content), didactic books suggested for use by the state, class diaries, decrees and acts. Oral sources were used to complement the written sources. The thematic oral history inspired the carrying out of interviews with the staff who taught the discipline at this level of teaching, during the period under study. This paper is organized into three sections. The first section contains an analysis of how curricular discussions occurred in the state of Bahia during the period under study. In the second section, the pedagogical practices of history teachers were looked at via analyses of class diaries and interviews. In the third section, the intention was to comprehend, in dialogue between the narratives of the teachers and the literature in the areas of curriculum and teaching of history, how the teaching occurred in the classroom, how the didactic process was developed, what were the concepts of the curriculum of the teachers and what influence the official curriculum had over the actuality: arguments, conciliations, and distancing. It was determined that the official curriculum was elaborated distant from school reality, scheduled linearly, and was ethnocentric and evolutionistic. It was also determined that there were significant changes implemented, beginning with the entrance of the history teachers into teaching at the secondary school level. It was concluded that the relationships between the prescribed curriculum and the one actually used were mediated by forms of power, approximations, distances and epistemological, political and pedagogical tensions.