The Resumption of Qualitative Research and the Constitution of an Interdisciplinary Field: Oral History

Grasping the relationship between oral history and education in Brazil requires observing the changes in theoretical and methodological orientations that have occurred in some disciplinary fields, mainly in the social sciences (sociology and anthropology), history, psychology, and education. In many ways, these changes have intersected and contributed to the incorporation of what in Brazil has come to be called oral history (and its procedures in the field of education) since the 1990s.

The introduction of oral history in Brazil inspired a kind of scholarly reflection that brought together scientists from various areas. The parallel nature of the disciplines allowed for a shared discussion of questions. In general, paradigmatic changes occurred that implied that the production of knowledge was moving away from the so-called positivist model and starting to question the determinisms in research projects that were based more on the logic of the proof than the process of questioning and discovery that research often entails.

In the social sciences, debates intensified in discussions over the merits of qualitative and quantitative research. Studies were based on closed models premised on previously formulated hypotheses about social problems based on available knowledge. From there, the entire research process was predetermined in successive stages, aiming to verify the previously defined hypotheses and the generalizability of the results. This became common in the 1960s and 1970s, when such work began to face questions regarding its processes and findings based on research manuals (Santos, 1991). In the late 1970s, Michel Thiollent was a particularly important critical voice in his book Crítica metodológica, investigação social e enquete operária (Thiollent, 1980).

Martins (1991), reflecting on why qualitative methods prosper in certain moments of the history of sociology while quantitative methods flourish in others, observes that this history was always marked by the need to clearly define an object and the means by which to apply the principles of scientific method to this field.

In Brazilian sociology, although less emphasized in some periods, the qualitative approach has always been important, as demonstrated by the studies carried out since the creation of the social sciences as a discipline at the University of São Paulo (USP), especially those developed by Florestan Fernandes, Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, and Roger Bastide. In 1946, Bastide proposed “poetry as a sociological method” (Bastide, 1977). Other authors, like Mills (1965), stimulated the “sociological imagination.”

For Martins (1991), the resumption of the qualitative methodology resulted, on the one hand, from the predominance of theoretical currents directed to the problematic of subjects and the interpretation they make of their social situation and, on the other, from the crisis of Marxism and economic determinism and the attempt to see the individual not as an object but as a subject of contingency and history. Given its theoretical-methodological trajectory, sociology can incorporate oral accounts and the biographical approach more prominently and less controversially than other disciplines, such as psychology and history, in which oral sources emerged as a new challenge. Beginning in the 1970s, qualitative research took up the discussion of life histories and the subjects’ narratives as a method of data collection.

Because the social sciences have always been careful to record observed reality, with detailed descriptions in the analyses of sociologists and anthropologists (Geertz, 1989; Lewis, 1970; Oliveira, 1986; Ozouf, 1967), narrative construction and analysis have always been part of the craft of the social scientist, although with less emphasis at given moments. The return to biographical and oral accounts was marked by new questions within a broader discussion over the production of scientific knowledge, in the sciences in general and in the field of sociology in particular, as several authors have noted. Chirico (1992) draws attention to the fact that this return occurred simultaneously with the “return of the subject,” or the “insistence of the subject.” Taking up the theoretical-methodological reflections of Ferrarotti (1983) and Bertaux (1980), fundamental to all who participated in this movement, the author ably explains this direction:

Therefore, the renewed way in which biographical accounts once again interest many researchers, expresses many of the questions that arise in the general field of contemporary research and reflection. Insisting that the relationship of knowledge that distinguishes the social sciences is a subject-to-subject relationship, the emphasis on the dialogical character of the production of knowledge or the practice of self-reflection in research and specialized writing are some ways of responding to the crisis of objectivist models of globalizing theories that dominated until the 1970s. They are also offered among those who work with life stories.

(Chirico, 1992, pp. 12–13)

At the same time, in the field of history, scholars associated with the so-called New History movement set about revising historical production with the aim of incorporating new sources—oral sources in particular—for more “comprehensive” historiographic accounts (Burke, 1992). Roger Chartier, in an interview with Pierre Bourdieu in 1988, synthesized the changes that were happening in the social sciences, including history:

It is clear that, from the point of view of history—after the imposing domination of social history, which aimed to construct the objective hierarchies of a society, based on fiscal and accounting data, organized into global categorizations—we are inclined, now, to elaborate approaches that try to consider the subjects’ roles. Hence the return of biography, the return of intentionality, or the use of notions such as “community,” since it has become so important among historians to no longer think in terms of socio-professional categories or social classes.

(Bourdieu & Chartier, 2011, p. 45)

A new debate began regarding oral sources, the biographical approach, and oral history, as can be seen from the studies and publications of the International Oral History Conference, which began in 1976, resulting in the creation of the International Oral History Association in 1996 and also the Brazilian Association of Oral History, founded in 1994 (Ferreira, 1998).

In the 1980s, several studies in Brazil were already incorporating life histories, testimonies, and oral reports as a methodological approach. Thus, for example, in September 1983, a panel discussion was held at USP with the theme: “Life Histories: Methodological Problems of Investigation and Analysis.” The Center for Rural and Urban Studies established an exchange with the University of Rome La Sapienza to exchange experiences with the group led by Franco Ferrarotti, with two researchers, Maria Imacolata Macioti and Roberto Cipriani, arriving in Brazil to teach courses on life stories. Two Brazilian scholars, Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz and Zeila de Brito Fabri Demartini, went to Italy as part of the exchange. The book Experimentos com Histórias de Vida: Brasil-Itália (Simson, 1988) became a reference for researchers using life histories and testimonies and for incorporating the experience of the Italian group of Franco Ferrarotti and the Brazilian group at the University of São Paulo. Queiroz’s 1988 article “Relatos orais: Do indizível ao dizível” also became a sociological reference on this question. This book already included a study about the life histories of teachers during the First Republic (1889–1930) in São Paulo (Demartini, 1988). Another publication by Queiroz (1983) also became fundamental: Variações sobre a técnica do gravador no registro da informação viva.

At that moment, Ferraroti and Bertaux fueled intense methodological debates. While adopting differing theoretical-methodological perspectives on working with life histories, both authors allowed the discussion over methodology to broaden and explicitly enumerated the options available in developing research projects. Ferraroti’s 1983 reflections in the book Histoire et histoires de vie: la méthode biographique dans les Sciences Sociales (1983) and Bertaux (1980) in his article, among other pieces, “L’approche biographique: Sa validité methodologique, ses potentialités,” published in Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, have become obligatory references. Ferraroti summarized these positions in an interview with Guy Jobert (1984):

This is a question that I discussed with D. Bertaux regarding standardization. For me, what is most important is the question of the relationship between fragment and totality. The fragment already contains the totality. In the depth of the most individualized experience, there is the concentration, the restructuring or the stenography of an entire culture, an entire social life. How to bring out the chaotic, seemingly chaotic individual, the social order, not only the internalized order but the ordering structure that makes the individual, even the most marginal, likely to be understood in the totality of meaning. There is no preconceived totality without fragments, but in every fragment there is nostalgia for totality. At the moment, I cannot answer your question completely.

(Ferrarotti, 1984, p. 30)

Just as changes in sociology and history drew both disciplines together in discussing research using the biographical approach and oral reports, research on educational issues was becoming more prominent in the field of education itself.

Education has always been considered one of the classic topics of sociology (Martins, 2010), and the institutionalization of sociology as a field of scientific knowledge about the social was carried out in a context marked by the publication of the Manifesto of the Pioneers of the New School in 1932, which dealt with education as a national problem (Martins & Weber, 2010, p. 131). Until the mid-1960s, research in education was primarily carried out in the field of social science, interested in aspects related to economic and social development and the changes needed to modernize the country (Gouveia, 1985). Some important studies produced during this period in the field of education include works by Fernando de Azevedo, Luiz Pereira, Marialice Foracchi, and Florestan Fernandes, among others. There was also a concern with the educator’s scientific training, for which studies might be used as well.

Educational issues would continue to be studied in the following decades (Paixão & Zago, 2007), and since 1982 they have been present in the Education and Society working group of the National Association of Graduate Studies in Social Sciences (Educação e Sociedade da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Sociais). Some authors, in later periods, problematized the relationship between sociology and education, but Weber (2008) seems correct in reiterating the authors’ observation about the mobilization of generations of scholars in the field of social sciences and the theoretical contributions of this field to research in education:

The association between quantitative research and qualitative research has been increasingly frequent, and the macro-micro interrelation in the treatment of problems selected for study has been promising as well, contributing to the consideration of new objects and the opening of new research areas. (p. 12)

Discussions over qualitative research allowed for an approximation with the field of education, which itself had already developed experiences of pedagogical practices based on listening and participation of the subjects. This became the methodology par excellence for the education of young people and adults; the Paulo Freire method of literacy became widely known (Freire, 1972). In these experiments, dialogicity, also demanded by Ferraroti, was the base of the process.

Meetings on qualitative research methodologies already involved researchers in the fields of sociology, history, and education in joint discussions. Several graduate programs in education included discussions from the social sciences, history, and social psychology.

Thus studies on school practice using the qualitative approach intensified greatly in Brazil, drawing on ethnographic research, case studies, and action research. Several research centers and graduate programs embraced ethnography for the study of everyday school practice, which also incorporated theoretical discussions happening in sociology and anthropology. Some theorists of this subject taught courses in Brazil, including José Machado Pais, Justa Ezpeleta, and Elsie Rockwell. In her book Etnografia da Prática Escolar, Marli André (1995) synthesized a history of ethnography in education and cited the theoretical influences, recalling some important events for qualitative research in the field of education (André, 1995, p. 36).

Reflections on the theme of memory and the autobiographical method have been aggressively incorporated into production on education since the beginning of the 1990s, based on the creation of the Teaching, Memory, and Gender Studies Group (Grupo de Estudos Docência, Memória e Gênero [GEDOMGE]) at the College of Education at USP. Researchers in this group had consistently engaged with autobiographical narratives since the early 1990s (Bueno, Catani, Sousa, & Souza, 1993; Bueno, 2002). In a study carried out on life histories and autobiographical studies as methodologies of scientific investigation in the area of education, Bueno, Chamlian, Sousa, and Catani (2006) observe that, in the 1990s, there was a dizzying increase of studies using these methodologies. They indicate the main influences in this process:

The publication in Portugal in 1992 of Vida de professors [Teachers’ life] and Profissão professor [Profession teacher], two selections organized by António Nóvoa (1995a, 1995b), had enormous repercussion in Brazil. These selections had the participation of authors from several countries - Ivor Goodson and Peter Woods from England; Miriam Ben-Pretz from Israel; José Gimeno Sacristán and José Manuel Esteve from Spain; Daniel Hameline from Switzerland; Michäel Huberman from Canada; among others—who later became references to many works in Brazil. Before that, in 1988, Nóvoa had organized with Mathias Finger another work, O método autobiográfico e a formação [The autobiographical method and the formation] (1988), which had already attracted much interest within the Portuguese-speaking universe, and had also reached Brazilian researchers.

(Bueno et al., 2006, pp. 391–392)

Research projects developed under the GEDOMGE were largely inspired by the work of Gaston Pineau, Pierre Dominicé, and Marie-Christine Josso at the University of Geneva. This group used the autobiographical method at USP in two ways: as a training device and as a research tool (Bueno, 2002; Bueno et al., 2006). In a 2005 article, Catani, Souza, Vicentini, and Silva (2005) discussed the importance of autobiographical memories and narratives of teaching professionals as a source for writing the history of education and in the process of training teachers.

Questioning the staid forms of research in these various fields (social sciences, history, education) raised common themes that interested many researchers. With the participation of Brazilian researchers in international events dealing with the biographical approach and oral sources and with the discussion coming from the field of history regarding the importance of oral sources for historical knowledge, researchers interested in this debate drew closer together, culminating in the creation of the Brazilian Oral History Association in 1994 (Ferreira, 1998).

The fact is that such an approach allowed for the introduction and development of oral history in Brazil as an interdisciplinary field in which questions flowed from one discipline to another, with sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and educators participating in the same events. The approach to educational issues has been present since the first incursions of oral history precisely because of this exchange.

Oral History in Brazil: A Research Methodology

Historians have pointed to shifts in the discipline (Meihy, 1996; Montenegro, 1997), linked to what they call “a true boom in oral history in Brazil” (Ferreira, 1998, p. 22). Ferreira discussed a few of these changes: the revaluation of qualitative analysis, reasserting the importance of individual experiences, the new impetus around cultural history, a revival of the study of politics, and the acceptance of studying contemporary topics. Thus, new discussions on the relations between past and present, memory and its relations with history, as well as the recognition that actors build their own identity were added to the previous way of writing history, which valued studies of long-term processes, taking the structuralist paradigm as a guiding influence, attributing fundamental importance to the sources and techniques of quantification. According to Ferreira (1998):

These new perspectives evidently expanded the horizons of oral history: traditional criticisms were neutralized, as subjectivity, distortions of testimony, and lack of truthfulness imputed to them could be seen in a new way, not as a disqualification but as a source of meaning for the researcher. (p. 22)

The discussion over oral history in Brazil was not entirely without controversy, since, as a proposal that was internationally linked to the field of history, it encountered some resistance from sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and others who had embraced that methodology in previous years and did not want to be excluded from this new area that appeared to be the purview of historians. From its earliest days, oral history was a “battlefield,” with intense debate breaking out even over the name of the new association scholars wanted to establish around it: “oral history”? What about the other scholars? Why not “biographical research”? It was decided, after several rounds of deliberation, to create the Brazilian Oral History Association to follow the trend already recognized internationally, whose meetings many Brazilian researchers participated in for several years.

As qualitative research was regaining popularity, some prominent authors in Brazil helped new forms of knowledge production gain greater space in history, social sciences, and education. Highlights of this trend include the presence of Ferrarotti’s team; Daniel Berteaux, who taught courses at the Center for the Research and Documentation of Contemporary Brazilian History (Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil, CPDOC—RJ); and lectures by several scholars on the biographical approach in São Paulo. José Machado Pais taught courses at the University of São Paulo and at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) on the sociology of daily life. Paul Thompson, one of the pioneers of oral history, was a strong presence in the period, giving seminars and promoting various meetings. His book The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Thompson, 1988) was translated into Portuguese and became very well known. Mercedes Vilanova (1998) taught courses and her “History Without Adjectives,” discussing the issue of illiteracy, was featured prominently in education courses. Alessandro Portelli (1997), Luiza Passerini (1992), and Michel Pollak (1992) also came to Brazil. Many oral history topics that had a strong influence in the educational field were discussed at events and congresses held in the 1980s and 1990s, with several experts on hand, influencing many developing research projects.

The field of history was clearly concerned with the notion of truth and the establishment of more definitive rules for obtaining, transcribing, and archiving oral sources (Alberti, 1989; Nora, 1984; Pinsky, 2010). In the social sciences and education, on the other hand, concerns centered on the pertinence of choices related to the research problem at hand.

The older and more common use of oral reports in sociology allowed that discipline to delve more deeply into the different ways of capturing and understanding people’s speech. Reflections on the issues of subjectivity and the complexity of interviewee–interviewer relations for many years made it possible not only to discuss the specificity and importance of this material but to consider life stories as the sociological approach par excellence. These reflections have always circulated among the fields involved in the institutionalization of oral history in Brazil. Some books published in Brazil on oral history in the 1980s and 1990s placed the contributions of historians, sociologists, and several scientists side by side. In 1996, for example, Usos e abusos da História Oral (Amado & Ferreira, 1996) was published, with the participation of scholars who influenced oral history in Brazil, displaying the interdisciplinarity of the field. The articles dealt with both general and specific issues, with widely varying theoretical approaches. The volume includes chapters by Etienne François, Jorge Eduardo Aceves Lozano, Jean-Jacques Becker, Danièle Voldman, Philippe Joutard, Alistair Thomson, Michael Frisch, Paula Hamilton, Henry Rousso, Val di Chiena, Alessandro Portelli, Jean-François Sirinelli, Italo Calvino, Julie Cruikshank, Giovanni Levi, Pierre Bourdieu, Gabriele Rosenthal, René Rémond, Luisa Passerini, Roger Chartier, François Bédarida, Chantal de Tourtier-Bonazzi, Danièle Voldman, and Ronald J. Grele.

In the book—first released in 1996, shortly after the creation of the Brazilian Association of Oral History (1994) and its first two national meetings (in 1994 in Rio de Janeiro and in 1996 in Campinas), in addition to the first south–southeast regional meeting in 1995—the authors discussed the status of oral history as a technique, as a discipline, or as a methodology. In the text that almost embraces the role of guiding the direction of oral history among Brazilian researchers, the authors assume oral history as methodology, some much more comprehensively than just as a specific technique.

In our opinion, oral history, like all methodologies, establishes and orders a working procedure—such as the various types of interviews and the implications of each of them for the research, the various possibilities for transcribing testimony, their advantages and disadvantages, the different ways the historian relates to his interviewees and the influences of it on his work—as a bridge between theory and practice. This is the field of oral history—which, in our view, does not allow classification only as practice. But in the theoretical area, oral history can only elicit, never solve, questions; ask questions, but never offer answers.

(Amado & Ferreira, 1996, p. xvi)

The authors agreed with and presented the ideas of Mikka (1988), who had listed perspectives and themes recognized by many as specific to oral history at the time and which served as a reference. They related eight aspects that were incorporated as guidelines in sociology, history, and education, summarized as follows:

Oral history remains most commonly characterized as a methodology, with incorporations according to each area of knowledge according to specific problems and theories. There are also different ways of working with narratives, as can be seen in instructional publications like “História Oral: a experiência do CPDOC” (Alberti, 1989); “História Oral, Sociologia e Pesquisa: a abordagem do CERU” (Lang, Campos, & Demartini, 2010); and “Manual de História Oral” (Meihy, 2005).

Oral history has gradually been recognized as an important research methodology. In short, oral history can be understood as a methodological approach in which the researcher is involved with the object of study, seeking to understand it from the oral reports of the subjects along with the use of other written, iconographic materials, and so on; through it, researchers try to apprehend the different views/representations of the subjects about the same moments, contexts, and processes (Lang, Campos, & Demartini, 1998).

Oral History and Education

The creation of the Laboratory of Oral and Audio-Visual History (Laboratório de História Oral e Audio-visual) at the UNICAMP Memory Center (no Centro de Memória da Unicamp) by Professor José Roberto Lapa in 1987 was an important development in the relationship between oral history and education. From the beginning, this laboratory embraced a pluralistic perspective, incorporating a professor from the College of Education, Olga Rodrigues de Moraes von Simson, who had worked with oral history at the Center for Rural and Urban Studies. The UNICAMP Memory Center has invested in joint projects with the college of education, addressing issues of memory, historical and cultural heritage, and diversified educational experiences.

In 1997, three years after the creation of the Brazilian Association of Oral History, social scientist and educator Olga von Simson edited the book Os desafios contemporâneos da História Oral (Simson, 1997). In it, she drew attention to the multidisciplinary character of oral history methodology, bringing to the debate professionals trained in different fields of knowledge. She emphasized the challenge facing researchers of incorporating new technologies, of collecting and analyzing data in multidisciplinary ways, and what the author identified as the most pressing and exciting challenge, that of responding with justice and competence to the needs and demands of social groups. The latter, facing intense processes of social exclusion, seek out research institutions and researchers to work together to reconstitute the memory of their social trajectories and their ability to confront current problems. The book also included articles presented by the Oral History and Education working group. The authors covered in this book have also become a reference for research in the field of education. For example, Franco Ferrarotti’s reflections on the necessary changes in the “style” of research ended up marking the practice of research and professional performance in the educational field. More than guidelines or rules to follow, it represented a dialogic relationship in the research process:

The biographical approach puts in crisis, in a very serious and I hope definitive way, the naive and specular conception of knowledge. One cannot know without being upset, without transforming oneself. . . . This means that in the biographical approach there is dialectical interaction that transforms both the researcher and his object. You cannot, for example, educate people without educating yourself. There is a reciprocal reflection, a fundamental link of interaction that has been neglected so far.

(Ferrarotti, 1983, p. 28)

The growing proximity between researchers working in different fields of knowledge allowed oral history in Brazil to incorporate various topics. Driven mainly by discussions over memory, by the possibility of incorporating the subjects of education into the research, and by the stimulus given to the construction of oral sources by the researchers themselves, there were significant changes to research in education.

Researchers started presenting villages as spaces of education visited by outsiders. Education was no longer studied only from the angle of state policies and pedagogical proposals that were generally official or prescriptive, instead being approached on the basis of representations, opinions, versions, and memories of the subjects themselves, obtained to a great extent by the researchers themselves. Furthermore, by addressing the diversity of subjects in the social reality, the very scope of educational research expanded to incorporate forms of non-school education and alternative spaces for the dissemination of training processes.

Fundamental changes have taken place with regard to education, including:

The presence of sociologists, historians, and anthropologists as teachers in undergraduate and graduate courses, leading discussions of the methodology of oral history, was fundamental in driving these shifts. Study groups were created, researchers linked to these courses, and older research centers began to develop projects with a focus on educational issues. One of these was developed in the 1980s by experienced researchers and undergraduate students using a life history methodology to understand the constitution of the educational field in Campinas at the intersection with the demands of a highly stratified society. The research resulted in the 1999 book Memórias da Educação: Campinas (1850–1960), with articles from all participating researchers.

For these reasons, studies on education were present at all National Oral History meetings and were discussed in more specific study groups on education, as well as at round tables. Articles were also published in journals like Cadernos CERU, Resgate do CMU, Revista do CPDOC/FGV, and Revista do NEHO, as well as in journals directly related to the field of education, such as Cadernos de Pesquisa, Revista da Faculdade de Educação da USP, and Educação e Sociedade da Faculdade de Educação da UNICAMP.

Discussions over memories, subjectivity, truth, the researcher’s participation in the construction of the source, and the intentionality of the sources constructed in the research led to the acceptance of certain precautions during the process, with a clear and rigorous explanation of the procedures and methods of obtaining the oral reports and analyzing the information collected. The complementarity of diverse sources has also been incorporated into studies in the field of education to explain the problems investigated in the present and in the past, based on a wider and deeper vision.

The themes and problems dealt with in the field of education have expanded extraordinarily with the discussions and possibilities opened by qualitative research, especially oral history. The analysis of institutions, subjects involved in educational processes, pedagogical practices, and public policies, approached from different perspectives (socioeconomic origin, social class, gender, age, generations, ethno-cultural origin, public and private, etc.), produced new sources that previously did not exist in the field of education.

It is possible to map some of the dimensions that have been detailed and that have contributed to the discussion of education, educators, institutions, pedagogical practices, and educational policies (public and private) in the present and in the past.

With regard to the subjects of education, the scope and possibilities of the discussions led to deeper studies in education, especially those focused on the historical-sociological dimension, attending to the demands of different groups in the various educational areas (including pedagogical proposals) and the performance of educators. This production was carried out all over the country, in undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as research centers. The oral history methodology and the discussions that it triggered resulted in research in which the diverse subjects of education were incorporated. Thus, studies that considered the memories of old people about their educational experiences were considered privileged sources for understanding forms of education not officially registered in more remote periods in regions far from urban centers (such as attendance at schools maintained by lay educators) but also in larger cities. Surveys recorded that children of the so-called elites generally did not attend the few existing public schools and many of them were home-educated by tutors hired for that purpose. Poor children were taught by people willing to teach them at their own expense (Freitas, 2006; Monarca, 2001). Education in closed institutions, such as orphanages and homes for the treatment of children and young people with leprosy, were also the object of reflection (Kosminsky, 1999; Negrão, 2004).

Investigations into student attendance beyond public schools was expanded as well: private institutions that were generally not included in histories of education and considered in relation to educational policies were also investigated (Simson, Park, & Fernandes, 2001). At the same time, families have also become the focus of analyses in the field of education, to verify their demands, their relationship to their children’s education, and the projects, studies, and life for their children, among other aspects.

Ethno-cultural differences between children and young people have also become frequent objects of study, both from a diachronic and current perspective. Interdisciplinarity was fundamental in determining this perspective (Gusmão, Simson, & Demartini, 1993; Kishimoto & Demartini, 2012).

The memories of the subjects themselves were central to these projects and were enriched by the written and visual documents that were generally made available to researchers, allowing a deeper knowledge of the issues experienced by the different groups (Demartini, 2010).

As a result of these studies, scholars obtained a broader understanding of the constituent institutions of the educational field in all its complexity. Much research has addressed public institutions of varying types and levels, as well as other private educational institutions maintained by religious orders, ethno-cultural groups, business associations, or private educators.

New scenarios uncovered based on the memories, reports, and documents of the subjects interviewed added new perspectives to existing educational statistics that numerically mapped the field, experiences that were not included in official documentation, or, when they did appear—in the case of orphanages, asylums, or private schools—they were at most mentioned in passing.

Incorporating the subjects into educational research presented a challenge otherwise obscured by more “standardized” studies of students: that of diversity. The possibilities of collecting narratives with the different groups present in schools, and those excluded from them, necessarily forced a discussion about school cultures, which became evident through the subjects’ experiences. Qualitative research and the methodology of oral history stimulated the incorporation of the “others” present in all educational spaces, inside and outside the schools.

With the incorporation of the oral narratives of students of different origins, speaking of different times and spaces, some themes began to be treated more closely. One was “childhood”; different findings on the divergent experiences of children in relation to education led to discussions about children’s cultures and how to learn more about them. With regard to more distant periods, the stories brought to light issues mostly neglected not only in the field of education but also in sociology and history; that is, it allowed scholars to consider the experiences of children otherwise not included in academic reflections. These insights include forms of learning developed by children (without the adults knowing them), as well as the “hidden” childhood of small workers in rural, industrial, commercial, and service activities that compromised their education but that hardly appeared in the statistical data. Data on the work and schooling of young immigrants, for example, were generally not tracked either by the immigrant control sectors in the country or by the school authorities. The presence of the subjects with their life stories allowed researchers to question the frequent representation in schools that “students are all the same.”

Such an approach has been key in the present day in making school more accessible to children and young people arriving from other nations and attending Brazilian schools: listening to them and their families, trying to get to know them, is one of the pedagogical means of dealing with learning difficulties and even prejudices against such students (Mazza & Norões, 2016; Rodrigues, 2017). Education researchers were challenged to observe children’s experiences by incorporating children not only as an object of research but as important actors in the research process itself (Kosminsky, 1999; Martins & Prado, 2011; Montenegro, 1998).

Numerous studies also focused on educators’ training, trajectory, and professional performance, in school institutions or other educational spaces, noting also the diversity present in the educational field. Issues of origin and gender were also addressed, permeating training and behavior in the teaching profession; based on the reports, a wide range of pedagogical practices created and developed by the educators themselves, often in the absence of government guidelines or policies of the dictatorial governments, was revealed. There were also previously unsuspected relations between national educators and groups persecuted by the Brazilian state, such as immigrants, that allowed children and young people to have access to the knowledge of “Brazilian” culture and its other cultures, based on the support received. At the same time, changes were also observed in the actions of educators, who, based on the relations established with subjects belonging to other ethnic-cultural groups, were understanding and incorporating the culture of “others.”

The methodology of oral history in the field of education required exercises in creativity and confronting challenges to pedagogical practices corresponding to the demands of the subjects involved. Thus, for example, there was the transfer of methodological reflections, which were initially more focused on previous situations, for understanding the present.

Oral history contributed a great deal to the field of education through discussions over the importance of preserving the documents produced in this field in the various public and private institutions by the subjects involved (educators, teachers, administrators, public officials), and oral narrative archives began to be the object of attention. With regard to educators, studies have generally allowed us to analyze dimensions that had not yet been explored on the basis of their observations as subjects of the production of knowledge. Among others, one can highlight some areas that have become the focus of research:

They stimulated, therefore, the registration of the teaching practice itself and the archiving of documents aimed at reflection on the process. It became clear that reflections on the formation of educators and their pedagogical practices exceeded the “walls” of the universities, reaching schools and other levels of education that began to be interested in their own histories and experiences.

Oral History and Education Today: Various Paths

When reflecting on the production of oral history 20 years after its creation, Gomes (2014) noted that educational studies did not figure much into the publication of História Oral, the official magazine of the Brazilian Association of Oral History, and that they were much better represented at the presentations at the biannual congresses, leading her to question this discrepenacy (Gomes, 2014). Other scholars have also noted the same situation (Pereira Neto, Machado, & Montenegro, 2007).

One hypothesis is that various dimensions that might be considered part of the process of education are not being included in the field of education, such as the socialization processes for different ages and social groups; in political movements; and in cultural institutions, museums, and memory preservation institutions. For this reason, there may be a diversification of the forms and spaces of dissemination of studies and reflections carried out in books and magazines, often as exhibits for wider audiences, as a way of delivering the results of the research back to the subjects involved.

An example of the presence of oral history in the field of school education can be seen in the newly launched 11-volume Direitos Humanos, Gênero e Diversidade na Escola. The series brings together the individual and collective production of autobiographical writings and projects of educators from the suburbs of São Paulo and the metropolitan regions on several themes: diversity, gender, sexuality, and ethno-racial rereadings, among others. (Kamensky & Meihy, 2016).

In addition, oral history, considered as a research methodology that has been used in several areas, can make its findings available through numerous other channels beyond the association’s own journal. The much higher number of presentations at congresses involving the school and non-school education, at the present and in historical perspective, show that the methodology has spread throughout the field of education.

Confirming the importance and relationships of oral history and the educational field for decades, the XIII National Oral History meeting, held at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in May 2016, had as its theme “Oral History, Educational Practices and Interdisciplinarities”; three major conferences addressed key themes: “Back to the Future: The Political Power of Oral History Education,” by Kristina R. Lerwellyn; “Oral History and Sensitive Themes in the Classroom,” by Verena Alberti; and “Oral History and the Challenges of Education and Interdisciplinarity,” by Carla Simone Rodeghero. The topic was also considered in four other round tables focusing on schools, new languages in multimedia communication, educational practices and non-formal education, and oral history and educational practices in curricular development. There were dozens of research presentations from about 600 participants from all thematic backgrounds, directly or indirectly addressing the proposed theme regarding school and non-school education. More than 10% of the presenters were primary and secondary school teachers, expanding the space for dialogue with professionals who work inside the academy. This may have been one of the greatest contributions of oral history to the field of education.

The XIV National Oral History meeting in 2018 also included several researchers in the field of education, highlighting the production on non-formal education, which generally involves broader efforts to recover memories and to encourage subjects to reflect and participate. This contributes to the process of training historians and educators in undergraduate courses to work in new activities, not just school (Fernandes & Lima, 2016; Simson et al., 2001). At the same time, studies led to another move within the field of education: the reflection by the educators themselves about their memories, pedagogical practice, and work experience, due to conversations taking place regarding teacher education (Souza, 2008). Researchers from the discussions on biographical approaches devoted to the educational issues were grouped together and proposing a more focused discussion on these issues, especially in training, leading in 2004 to another specific field of reflection through the International Congress of (Auto)biographical Research (Congressos Internacionais de Pesquisa (Auto)biográfica [CIPA]) held every two years.

As for the creation of a specific forum for debate and the socialization of research advances, since its first edition in 2004, CIPA has been characterized as an academic-scientific initiative that created in Brazil an international forum on studies and research focused on (auto)biographical and biographical narratives as a source and method of qualitative research and as a training device.

(Passeggi & Monteiro, 2016, p. 17)

Mignot and Souza (2015) agree that since its first edition, this scientific event has played the role of systematizing “research experiences that discuss dimensions related to life histories, memory, narratives and (auto)biographies as training practices and research,” providing a mapping of the productions of the field of research, “possible points of entry, types of reports, ways teachers, students, researchers and others tell their stories and how the stories make it possible to learn about these experiences” (p. 35). All the editions of CIPA “counted on the significant participation of researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, teachers from different backgrounds that integrate national and international research networks (Bragança & Abrahão, 2016).

In short, the movement to consider oral history as a methodology that allowed the expansion of perspectives for research in the field of education has had a strong influence on the process of training historians and educators. To paraphrase Ferrarotti (1983), who was honored with an exhibition at the VI CIPA in 2014, the research methodology based on the narratives of the subjects entails the transformation of the researcher him- or herself, and, it can be said, the transformation of the training processes in the universities. According to Gomes (2014, pp. 164–165), it is possible to say that in 21st-century Brazil, the methodology of oral history reached its maturity.

It is not possible to delineate how oral history will interface with the field of education in the coming years, but it is possible to affirm that its institutionalization in Brazil left indelible marks on educating teachers and shaping education research.

Questions for Future Research

Challenges for researchers adopting the oral history methodology include collecting diverse documentation, oral narratives, and written and visual documents produced by the subjects of education of different ages and at different levels of education.

Educational research could focus on non-school education processes and the possibilities they can bring to learning in the field of school education, exploring the potential and skills presented by learners. It is up to research in education to reconstitute the memory of the institutions of the different public and private institutions, as well as the memory of the movements undertaken by different social groups to expand educational horizons.

It is also researchers’ responsibility to focus on other cultures, considering the presence in the Brazilian population of groups with very different ethnic-cultural backgrounds. How should we face the challenges of literacy and teach speakers of other languages in Brazilian schools?

Researchers must analyze, with educators, their pedagogical practices, taking into account the socio-ethnic cultural diversity present in the schools.

Research should also incorporate the experiences of the educational processes of children and young people in their contexts of origin and after their arrival in Brazil in order to learn how they experience educational institutions in different ways, in their inclusion or exclusion, as well as strategies that they adopt so that they can enjoy the legal right to education, which has historically been denied to many.

Finally, it is up to the researchers to address the issue of interviews with people who do not speak Portuguese and how to overcome the culturally specific problems attributed to words and situations.