Histories of Education: Celebrating 40 Years of the Working Group 02 and Celebrating Generations of Researchers in the Historiography of Education in Brazil

Abstract

This article addresses the 40th anniversary of Working Group 02 of ANPEd and reflects on the theoretical and methodological issues of writing the history of education, a recurring theme since its creation. To this end, the text is organized into three parts: analysis of the academic context of the organization of the field of research in the history of education; the participation of Working Group 02 in the advances of the historiography of education; possibilities of other historiographies from a decolonial approach and critiques of the Eurocentrism characteristic of the area. The bibliographic research was carried out in journals in the field, in the ANPEd Bulletins and in the Program Notebooks of the Working Group, both on the website and in the PROEDES-UFRJ collection.

Keywords:
ANPEd; pesquisa histórica; decolonialidade

Resumo

O artigo aborda a comemoração dos 40 anos do GT 02 da ANPEd e realiza reflexões sobre as questões teóricas e metodológicas da escrita da história da educação, um tema recorrente desde o início de sua organização. Para tal discussão, o texto se organiza em três partes: análise do contexto acadêmico de organização do campo de pesquisa da história da educação; a participação do GT 02 nos avanços da historiografia da educação; possibilidades de outras historiografias a partir da abordagem decolonial e de críticas ao eurocentrismo característico do campo. A pesquisa de fontes foi realizada em periódicos da área, nos Boletins da ANPEd e nos Cadernos de Programação do GT, tanto no site quanto no acervo do PROEDES-UFRJ.

Palavras-chave:
ANPEd; pesquisa histórica; decolonialidade

Resumen

Este artículo aborda el 40.º aniversario del Grupo de Trabajo 02 de la ANPEd y reflexiona sobre las cuestiones teóricas y metodológicas de la escritura de la historia de la educación, un tema recurrente desde su creación. Para ello, el texto se organiza en tres partes: análisis del contexto académico de la organización del campo de investigación en historia de la educación; la participación del Grupo de Trabajo 02 en los avances de la historiografía de la educación; las posibilidades de otras historiografías desde un enfoque decolonial y críticas al eurocentrismo característico del campo. La investigación se realizó en revistas especializadas, en los Boletines de la ANPEd y en los Cuadernos de Programa del Grupo de Trabajo, tanto en el sitio web como en la colección PROEDES-UFRJ.

Palabras clave:
ANPEd; pesquisa histórica; decolonialidade

Introduction

The celebration of the 40 years of the WG History of Education is a moment to commemorate all the generations of researchers in the construction of Brazilian historiography of education, among students (undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral) and professors. In this intercrossing of generations, we are celebrating the organization of research groups, research networks, and debates about archives and the preservation of educational memories.

Notwithstanding, celebrating 40 years of research in the history of education is mainly to record our profound indignation at the long historical persistence of social, racial, and school inequalities, the precariousness of education, and teachers’ working conditions. However, as the trajectory of the themes debated during the ANPEd meetings reminds us, we are together in the commitment to defend democracy and the right to quality education, permanently and strongly.

The WG 02 was created in 1984/85, the context was the end of the military regime and the struggle for the redemocratization in the country; together to its trajectory, we followed the Constitution debates (1988) and the creation of LDB (1996) but also the advancement of neoliberal ideology; we participated in the mobilization for the implementation of the subjects history of Indigenous culture, African-Brazilian, and African in the school curricula (2003-2008) and the quota law (2012). We fought on the streets against the impeachment of president Dilma (2016) and against the arbitrary imprisonment of president Lula (2018); we witnessed the advancement of the “party less school” proposal”¹ and the implementation of civic-military schools (2019)² by opportunist politicians and fascist, the same coup plotters who threatened the democratic state in January 8, 2023.

How do we approach these 40 years full of (hi)stories and the many other histories of education produced? It is important to highlight that we already have an accumulation of production balances in the WG since 1985, as well as in the History of Education. However, in this text, I do not intend to focus on the production of quantitative data. My aim is to reflect on the theoretical and methodological question of writing the history of education, a recurrent theme in several meetings. This analytical study is also focused on the national meeting; therefore, it does not encompass regional events that have taken place since 2013.

I am concerned by the perception that the use of European and United States historiographical parameters, in the long run, seems to have comfortably established itself in the WG’s scientific production. Thus, I ask: are these parameters enough to problematize the educational processes in regions of modern colonization? IN regions marked by the slavery of original and African peoples?

To do so, I structured the text into three parts: first, I analyze the academic context of organization in the research field of history of education; in a second moment, the participation at WG 02 in the advancements of historiography, and, in the third part, the possibilities of other historiographies from a decolonial approach. I highlight that the research in the sources for this text was conducted in the journals of the area, in the Boletins da ANPEd and the Cadernos de Programação do GT, in the website (digitalized documents) and the archive of PROEDES-UFRJ³.

Overlaying of teaching histories and histories of education research

The celebration of the 40 years of the WG History of Education is not done in isolation, but a celebration that overlaps with the (hi)stories of places in which education is the center of discussions. That is, it passes by the history of the foundation of education schools (1960s), the history of graduate programs in education (1966); and the history of ANPEd (created in 1978), as well as other initiatives to socialize studies and researches in education. For instance, in the same context, during the I Seminário de Educação Brasileira (1978), at Unicamp, the Centro de Estudos Educação e Sociedade (CEDES) was created in 1979, in the city of Campinas⁴. CEDES together with ANPEd, and ANDE (Associação Nacional de Educação- National Association of Education), from 1980, organized the Conferências Brasileiras de Educação (CBE- Brazilian Conferences of Education)⁵ , between 1980 and 1991.

The The schools of education, as autonomous units, were created with the extinction of the pedagogy sections or the education departments in the schools of philosophy since the 1960s. It is interesting to note that, in this context, there was a significant discussion about the course's identity, the minors offered, and the questioning of pedagogy as a knowledge field, a theme also discussed at WG 02.

In the same context, a graduate course stricto sensu was created by the publication, in December 03, 1965, of the technical opinion n. 977 of the Conselho Federal de Educação, and, in 1966, the first course of the Master’s in Education at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro was created. From then on, many others were created. When it was founded, the so-called Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Educação, on March 16, 1978, Brazil had 20 master’s courses and three doctoral ones (Vitorino, 2022).

ANPEd on the proposal by CAPES⁶, by Claudio de Moura e Castro, in 1976, aiming to institutionalize a self-regulating system of graduate policy (Carvalho, 2001). Since the start, the proposal generated many controversies by some of the graduate school coordinators, which did not agree with the creation of an association connected to governmental policies, though they recognized the importance of course integration.

This proposal was inspired by the organization of Associação Nacional de Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia and served as a base for the first discussions. However, ANPEd was only effectively completed in 1978, based on dialogues with FGV/ IESAE⁷, when its political identity chose to establish connections with society rather than with the government.

Between 1978 and 1981, we observe an important advancement in the teachers involved. ANPEd became the Associação Nacional de Pós- Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação, and in 1981 rectified its new statute, confirming its autonomy from the governmental machine, its political-social vocation, and its commitment to the Brazilian society. In the words of Professor Vicente Madeira from UFPB, “[...] ANPEd will be what we do of it. We do not wait for others to do it for us” (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação [ANPEd], 1981, p. 2).

In this context, during the IV Reunião held in Belo Horizonte (March 1981), the discussion about the implementation of institutional exchanges and the organization of work groups started. At first, the aim of the work groups would be to promote debates and meetings of members who researched common themes and related ones. According to the records at Boletim (ANPEd, 1981, p. 4):

We expect that the Work Groups will become important academic forums to discuss and exchange opinions about:

a) results of studies conducted;

b) relevant problems that need to be approached in future research works;

c) methodological experiences;

d) exchange of bibliographical information;

e) exchange of studies and works conducted⁸.

Nonetheless, the WG's initial experiences raised many questions. In a publication in the Boletim from Jan./Mar. 1986, the editorial indicated the following questions for debate:

What is the place of the Work Group at ANPEd? What role should it fulfill?

Which spaces should it occupy within and outside ANPEd?

Should we divide it by teaching or thematic area?

Which practices support continuous action?

What postures would allow advancement? How to advance? (ANPEd, 1986a, p. 1).

In the same Bulletin, in a section entitled “Around the table”, there is a report of a (recorded and transcribed) conversation held in April 1986, in Belo Horizonte. With a rich content, the debate confirms many divergencies between professors; on the one hand, a criticism towards the work groups organized around a teaching structure⁹, on the other, the advocacy that ANPEd would need to guarantee its space, much beyond the graduate program, but go over the Brazilian educational reality and be a space to discuss ideas¹⁰.

It was in this context that, in 1984, the WG History of Education was created and officialized in 1985. It is curious to highlight that the WG appears in the Boletim from January 1985 (vol. 7, n. 1), without the name of the coordinator and no indication that it would be “under formation”; the Boletim also does not present the record of a previous discussion about its creation, nor do the bulletins from 1984 (ANPEd, 1985a).

However, the Boletim from July 1985, already gave news of the first report of Group activities, in the 8th meeting held at PUC-SP (May 1985) with the following protest from the then-coordinator, Professor Ester Buffa: “First, we would like to present the protest of the Group for the lack of publication in the Boletim da ANPEd about the organization of the Work Group History of Education, occurred at the 7th Meeting in Brasília. This fact hindered the organization of a Communication Session in this 8th Meeting” (ANPEd, 1985b, p. 10). The first WG activity was a panel entitled "History of Education or Education through History?” presented by Professor Eliane Lopes, with Professors Miguel Arroyo and Ester Buffa as debaters.

The texts on the panel were published at Educação em Revista, from FaE-UFMG, in July of the same year. The debate text is signed by Professor Ester and other professors, not previously mentioned, who are Professors Evaldo Vieira, Paolo Nosella, and Valdemar Sguissardi (Buffa et al., 1985).

The debaters highlight, in the question posed, the importance of thinking about the “[...] historical production of education” (Buffa et al., 1985, p. 48) and not education through history. From then on, we can perceive a clear intention to reinforce the historiographical discussion, which was the WG's main focus.

Nonetheless, the concern to question the fields of history and/or education seems to me connected to the history of the subject itself. That is, this first theme presented at the WG corresponds to the dilemmas in the trajectory of the subject History of Education in teacher education courses, in the organization of pedagogy courses, and in schools of education.

That is to say, is it connected to the problem of professional identity and even the structuring of curriculum contents - were they from the field of social sciences? Or applied sciences? Specifically, I would like to stress the Eurocentric perspective present in the formation of the field of the history of education.

The subject of the history of education originated in Europe, in teacher education courses. Thus, since then, the conceptions of history and of education that arrived in the Americas can be located in space and time with very precise precision - Europe/West. Conceptions that take Europe as the irradiation center of knowledge and civilization model.

For instance, according to the reference author of historical studies, the French Jacques Le Goff (1984, p. 185), history, “[...] as almost all our thinking, was created by the Greeks”. In the Eurocentric tradition, history was born with the Greeks to distinguish the civilized from the barbarians, that is, still according to the author, “[...] The concept of history is tied to civilization” (Le Goff, 1984, p. 188).

The conception of education/pedagogy was taken from the school perspective and in a conservative sense. An important figure in the field is the sociologist Émile Durkheim. In the book The Evolution of Educational Thought [1938] (1995), which reproduces a course about the history of secondary education in France, taught by him in the early 20th century, the author develops an understanding of pedagogy as a thought applied to the “things of education” (Durkheim, 1995, p. 12) and discusses the utilitarian dimensions of teaching. His writing on history is linear, focused on school history, and also fixates on the origins of educational themes in the classical age.

However, we should highlight that, for centuries, history and education were also understood in other senses. Senses that were excluded and made invisible during the European civilizing/colonizing process, since the early 16th century. In the case of the Indigenous people, in general, the meaning of history evoked other notions of time, as those under investigation by ethno-history (Cavalcante, 2011) and the understanding of education has as an important characteristic the lack of conceptual dichotomies, such as education and society; theory and practice; body and mind; faith and reason; culture and nature; primitive and civilized, etc. In turn, the sense of unicity in human formation is also present in African philosophy, for instance, in the ubuntu ethics (Ramose, 2002).

That said, three questions present themselves:

• a) What are the consequences of Eurocentric heritage in the structuring of the subject History of Education for teacher education and the organization of the research field in countries with colonial and racist origins?

• b) On the other hand, what are the consequences of denying/excluding the other meanings of history and education?

• c) When we continue the long tradition of dialoguing, almost exclusively, with European and North American authors, with a Eurocentric focus, to guide or even authorize our studies, are we also agreeing with the coloniality of the historical knowledge of education? How did this process take place in the last 40 years?

The WG History of Education and education historiography

Within the methodological concerns of the history of education, (hi)stories of other associations also overlay the history of WG 02. The creation of ISCHE (International Standing Conference for the History of Education), in 1978, thus before the WG; the event of CIHELA (Ibero-American Congress of History of Education), since 1992; the organization of the Associação Sul-Rio-Grandense de Pesquisadores em História da Educação (ASPHE- Rio Grande do Sul Association of Researchers in History of Education), 1995; and the foundation of Sociedade Brasileira de História da Educação (SBHE- Brazilian Society of History of Education), in 1999, and the beginning of the Brazilian congresses of history of education (since 2000), as well as the emergence of countless research groups, local and national, as the case of the research group HISTEBR,¹¹ founded in 1986, at UNICAMP (Hayashi; Ferreira Junior, 2010). Another important initiative was the emergence of Programa de Estudos e Documentação Educação e Sociedade (PROEDES- Program of Studies and Documentation- Education and Society), between 1987 and 1990 (Programa de Estudos e Documentação Educação e Sociedade [PROEDES], n.d.).

During this journey, there is a growing concern about defining the identity of both the research field in the history of education and the historian of education, whether it moves more towards the field of history or the field of education. In my understanding, just as the subject of History of Education, the research field is also tied to our Eurocentric philosophical tradition, structured by conceptual dichotomies and knowledge fragmentation, and by difficulties in understanding human beings as a social/individual whole. Thus, the writing of history is also organized in a fragmented way.

In the records of the WG's second meeting (Boletim, Jan./Mar., 1986), the coordinator, Ester Buffa, reinforces the WG's role as a space to “study the methodological questions” (p. 18), that is, the debates about historical research. In the report of the following meeting, written by the new coordinator, Professor Jose Silvério Baia Horta, there was an important focus on documental sources, based on the contact with Marco Venício Toledo Ribeiro, from the Programa Nacional de Preservação da Documentação Histórica [National Preservation Program of Historical Documentation] of Fundação Nacional Pró-Memória [National Foundation for Memory] and the discussion of the work he presented, “Diagnosis donates school archives in Rio de Janeiro: main problems and some perspectives for the history of education” (ANPEd, 1986b, p. 16).

In October 1986, Professors Clarice Nunes (PUC-RJ), Eliane Lopes (UFMG), and Jose Silvério Baia Horta (FGV) fowarded to INEP, then Instituto Nacional de Pedagogia¹² [National Institute of Pedagogy], the research proposal “Repertório documental (Uma contribuição à História da Educação Brasileira)” [Documental repertoire (A contribution to the Brazilian History of Education], privileging the city of Rio de Janeiro, with the time frame of 1930. In the authors’ justification, the city choice was based on the set of archives and libraries. It foresaw an inventory of sources and the presentation of a report after 12 months (Nunes et al., 1986).

On March 15, 1989, Clarice Nunes (1989) forwarded to the ANPEd secretary the text “Guia Preliminar de Fontes para a História da Educação Brasileira: reconstituição de uma experiência” [Preliminary Sources Guide for the Brazilian History of Education: reconstructing an experience]. In it, the author justifies the difficulties of composing a documentary repertoire and explains the option for the Sources Guide, with information on several safe-keeping institutions of archives and schools, as well as the creation of a glossary. The report is very rich in theoretical and methodological discussions and reflections on the formation of researchers in the history of education, based on a group of students who helped the professor with the research.

According to the documents consulted, an activity that marked a change in direction for WG 02 was an exchange period at the School of Education of USP, between July 03 and 05, 1991 (GT02.1.20.pdf). These periods were intended to deepen discussions at the WG and were foreseen since the 1980s. During that period at USP, studies in different themes were presented, for instance, childhood (Tisuko Kishimoto); history teaching and didactic book (Circe Bittencourt); literacy(Antônio Augusto Gomes / CEALE-FaE-UFMG); gender (Eliane Lopes and Guacira Louro); Brazilian school culture (Marta Carvalho), the last three research themes developed in exchanges Brazil-France and Brazil-Portugal. Besides those, there were records of many other objects, such as the history of physical education, the history of military education, and photography as a research source, etc. There was also a debate about the importance of dialogues among history, anthropology, and linguistics.

It all indicates that since this event, the practice of international exchange, notably with France and Portugal, has started to consolidate. The interest in organizing a documentation center has also increased, as evidenced by one “(…) that favored the discussion of the perspectives of the history of education from cultural history” (GT02.1.20.pdf). Moreover, new research objects emerged, with the category gender standing out. It is in this context that the release, in 1995, of the edition in Portuguese of the well-known French trilogy, organized and published in 1974, by Le Goff and Pierre Nora, “Historiografia: novos problemas, novas abordagens e novos objetos” impacted Brazil (Le Goff & Nora, 1995).

When transferring the WG coordination to Professor Guacira Lopes, Nunes (ANPEd, 1991, p. 4) made a report published at Boletim n.1-2 from January-December 1991, highlighting the WG commitment with four basic points in the knowledge production in the history of education: “[...] new objects, new approaches, discussions of the historiography produced and sources for the history of education” (p. 4).

This context was marked by emblematic publications from people who frequented the WG about the historiography of education. For example, in March 1991, the journal Em aberto, by INEP, had the theme “Contributions of Human Sciences for Education: History”. Among the texts, I highlight Miriam Warde's (1991) “Contributions of the History of Education.”

Supported by philosophers and historians, the author stresses the tendency of debates in that context, when reinforcing the need to “ (...) dissolve the frontiers that separate History of Education from History” (Warde, 1991, p. 7), but, on the other hand, the author reinforces the idea that “(...) the History of Education is not a thematic specialization of History but a science of education or an auxiliar science of education” (Warde, 1991, p. 8).

The journal Teoria & Educação, number 6, de 1992, also presented a dossier on History of Education. I highlight in the journal the publication of two texts by the Scotsman David Hamilton¹³, which greatly reverberated in Brazil. Though his studies were centered on the European reality, he introduced in the country the themes of historiographic research on schooling, teaching methods, classroom, and curriculum. The article by Clarice Nunes, “History of Brazilian Education: new approaches to old objects” also stands out. In this article, the author explores possibilities of telling the history of school beyond legislation and raises questions related to themes of urbanism, school heterogeneity, and social differences delineated by biopsychological sciences (Nunes, 1992).

In the same year of 1992, during the 15^th meeting of ANPEd, the WG had a special session “Historiographical perspectives and sources in the History of Education” with Professors Clarice Nunes and Marta Carvalho (USP), whose text “Historiography of Education and Sources” was published in Cadernos Anped, n.5, September 1993 (Nunes; Carvalho, 1993). The program presents works emphasizing new sources as research objects: press, literature, legal documents, photographs, and oral sources (ANPEd, 1992).

The text from Nunes and Carvalho (1993, p. 8) became a classic and, from the start, the authors affirmed history of education as a specialization of History. After a brief survey of the publications on the topic, the authors presented the two themes that would be developed in the article: the discussion about the “enlargement of the concepts of sources in the history of education” and the reflections around the “new cultural history”

According to the authors, in this context, the impact of the new cultural history approach on the historiography of Brazilian education was evident. Undoubtedly, since then, we can see the abandonment of broad themes and the option for punctual analyses; the focus on the materiality of objects and printed materials; the emphasis on the history of school practices; the vast use of the representation concept (Chartier, 1990) as a cultural practice, and also the concepts of cultural models and appropriation. Added to this are two concepts widely disseminated in historical research on Brazilian education, those of tactic and strategy, as employed by Certeau (1994). In the text, the authors also discuss going to the archives, the production of documentary sources, and the creation of historiographical mapping (Nunes & Carvalho, 1993).

It is very curious to notice how in a country of colonialist and racist tradition, which in the 1990s still had not implemented mass schooling and had almost 20% of illiterate population, with deep socioracial inequalities, there was a significant adherence to the themes about experience in the history of European education, or rather, about the history of European school.

In a collection published by HISTEDBR in 1998, including texts from authors who participated in the WG, organized by Professors Saviani, Lombardi, and Sanfelice (1998), the central theme is also the theoretical-methodological debate. In this collection, some authors criticize the new cultural history, or, question what was called historical relativism (Warde, 1998), as well as criticisms to Foucault’s influence, “[...] welcomed as the herald in the defense of human subjectivity” (Saviani, 1998). According to Saviani (1998, p. 14), since the beginning, HISTEDBR focused on “[...] seeking a global understanding of education in its development. Thus, contraposing the tendency that started to invade the field of national historiography” (p. 14). The main criticisms of the group referred to the research tendencies characterized by fragmentation/atomization of reality and the depoliticization of historical knowledge, though not disregarding the importance of new research objects, the dialogue with other sciences, and, mainly, the new perspectives on documents.

In this same critical dimension, discussing the new theoretical guidelines in the research field in History of Education, Professor Mariza Bittar (2006) wrote the article “The state-of-the-art in Brazilian History of Education after 1985: a field under dispute” using ANPEd bulletins as sources. The author contextualizes the 1980s and the debates about the changes of paradigm, after the end of the dictatorship in Brazil and the events in Europe (the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the USSR). According to Bittar, universalist approaches were called into question, and even history itself, referring to Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man, from 1992, which greatly reverberated at the time, opening way for ephemeral and fragmented views of the world. The author also contextualized the academic changes in Brazil, highlighting, for example, the predominance of references to Marx and Gramsci in the educational production in graduate programs. Bittar corroborates authors who affirm the acritical incorporation of “new French tendencies about our historiography” (p.8), disregarding the peculiarities of Brazilian reality.

This divergence was already explicitly present since the start. For instance, in a report of the 13^th annual meeting in 1990, Professor Clarice Nunes records this debate in the following terms: “An example of what we are saying is the interlocution established between a historical materialist conception and another, which calls itself, the ‘history of mentalities’ or ‘anthropological history’. Despite the production from other conceptions, this interlocution set the tone for the works presented at the Meeting” (ANPEd, 1990, p. 46).¹⁵

Entering the 2000s, new balances about the field production emerged, two of them connected to WG production, both as commissioned works¹⁶. The article “A place of production and the production of a place: history and historiography of Brazilian education in the 1980s and 1990s” from Denice Catani and Faria Filho (2002) aimed to systematize the works presented in the WG between 1985 and 2001. Curiously, 17 years later, the proposal from Eliane Lopes, made at the WG inauguration, is retaken, as an epigraph about “reading History from an educational point of view”, though this perspective is not explored by the authors.

The article describes the WG meetings, the works presented, theoretical references, time period, and research themes, such as women’s history of education, the history of reading and printed materials, the history of school institutions, etc. Though they were not the authors’ analytical objects, the theoretical contributions and themes confirm the Eurocentric, or better, Francophile tendency.

Another is Ester Buffa’s article, “The 30 years of the WG History of Education: its contribution to constituting a field”, published in Revista Brasileira de História da Educação in 2016. The text aims to make a balance and critical analysis of the WG production between 1985 and 2013. In this article, the author resumes the WG's creation in 1984 within the scope of ANPEd history, based on reports by previous colleagues published in the bulletins. Buffa (2016) calls attention to a peculiar fact: at that time, communication among colleagues was done through letters, sometimes handwritten, which I could see in my research at the PROEDES archive, where some of them are filed (together with records demanding funding for mail expenses).

In the text, Buffa reflects on the problems related to professional identity and field definition, because, as we have seen, these questions are extremely relevant in the context of the WG organization. The author also points out the conflicts between different historiographical approaches, more specifically between historical materialism and the new cultural history. It is important to note the author’s concern to historically contextualize the WG's trajectory and to problematize the limited politicization in internal discussions. Considering the previous balance, from Catani and Faria Filho (2002), the author completes the records of the years 2005 and 2013, raising themes, special sessions, and commissioned works, in a polyphony of objects (Veiga, 2004), as well as the continuation of the predominance of the cultural history approach.

Even if not directly connected to the WG, there is the publication of the book “History of Education, interpretative matrices and internationalization” organized by Jose Gonçalves Gondra, Maria Cristina Gomes Machado, and Regina Helena Silva Simões (2017), a part of the collection Horizontes da Pesquisa em História da Educação no Brasil [Horizons of Research in the History of Education in Brazil], sponsored by SBHE. I highlight in the book the text from Professor Marta Carvalho (2017) “History of Education, interpretative matrices and internationalization: pointing out some questions”, which was even presented in the X Luso-Brazilian Congress of History of Education in 2014.

Although the internationalization theme had been central to debates about the evaluation of graduate programs, it was not new in the context of WG 02¹⁷. Since its first years, the WG had professors who participated in exchange programs abroad, mainly in France at the INRP (Institut national de recherche pédagogique), CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), and EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales), and with well-known teachers, for instance, Jean Hébrard, Pierre Gaspard, Alain Corbin, and Roger Chartier. In the report about the Exchange Period held in USP, in 1991, there are records of these contacts and even the possible participation in the Emanuelle Project, in a research database (Acervo estágio de intercâmbio, 1991).

In this text, Marta Carvalho (2017) cites the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE), founded in 1978, and its importance in the internationalization of the research in the history of education, mainly since the 1990s¹⁸. Among others, the author comments on the article from Gabriela Ossenbach and Maria del Mar del Pozo, published in the journal Paedadogica Historica from 2011, about the emergence of a new paradigm, the transnational history, and examples of other theoretical matrices, such as post-colonial, transnationalization, circulation, appropriation, cultural reception and transfer, globalization, cultural hybridization, crossed history, connected history. In this article, the authors emphasize the importance of the transnational history approach for the history of education, which became common in the following years. It is curious to observe, once more, that these are models from Europe, in a context in which, in Latin America, decolonial studies advanced as a criticism of European post-colonial studies¹⁹.

According to Carvalho (2017, p. 39), objects of cultural history, in the transnational perspective, have since then inspired studies in the field of the history of education, in themes such as the circulation of cultural objects and teaching methods; intellectuals of education and educators; events of exhibitions and congresses. In other words, they have as an investigation object the internationalization processes of models, artifacts, and pedagogical knowledge.

She highlights the advancement, since the 1990s, of studies about school expansion, grounded in the concepts of school grammar (Chervel, 1990), school form (Vincent et al., 2001), and school culture (Julia, 2001). The author also presents, as the researchers’ main question of interest, in the historical-cultural approach, the identification of homogenization, variation, and difference in the internationalization of education.

Histories of educations: the possibilities of decolonial approach in a global history

Beyond transnational and connected histories, it is possible to propose another approach more suited to questions about countries with a racist colonial past: the decolonial approach. This focus seeks to problematize and break away from Eurocentrism and the coloniality of the education historical knowledge, and question the many histories of educations in a global history.

In this case, the perspective of global history is not presented as an investigative method but takes globalization itself as an investigative problem and discusses it as an event within the colonizing process since the 16th century (Lander, 2005; Pacheco, 2017; Subramanyan, 2017). The global history approach problematizes the local subjects and objects transformed, by global processes, into new invented identities, as is the case with Indigenous, black, and mixed-race people.

In turn, he criticism of Eurocentric history intends to give visibility to the fundamental role of the enslaved work of the original population and the trafficked African peoples in the exploitation of colonial wealth and, thus, the key role of the enslavement of non-white people in the constitution of a new Europe, since the 16th century. Hence, it is necessary to break away from a historical conception that considers Europe as the protagonist of modernity and civilization, as well as from the perspective that the knowledge developed, since colonization, was a result of a supposedly European genius, intrinsic to its authors.

According to Lander (2005), this tendency greatly favored the colonization of knowledge, languages, memory, and the imaginary of people submitted, or rather, the world’s colonial organization, with the separation between the European/Western world, considered as civilized and advanced, and the other peoples on the planet, taken as exotic, primitive, and inferior.

In the 17th and 19th centuries, we can identify the systematization of the Eurocentric perspective through a discursive elaboration that universalized experiences as resulting only from intra-European events. Since then, the understanding of progress universalized itself in the categories of state-nation, capitalist market, schooling, and whiteness, and, consequently, these were the same categories that presented themselves as sources of identification for backwardness, shortages, and absences.

As Lander (2005, p. 13) affirms, “the other forms of being, the other forms of societal organization, and other forms of knowledge are transformed not only in differences but in deficient, archaic, primitive, traditional, pre-modern”, elements conceptualized by Quijano (2005) as coloniality of power, knowledge, and being.

The end of colonialism in Latin America and the organization process of independent countries cannot be understood as the end of colonialist relationships. Since the 19th century, Latin American countries have continued to constitute themselves as an appendix to European history, and their populations are subalternized and inferiorized, a process Quijano (2005) calls the coloniality of power.

In the long civilizing/colonizing process of Latin America, the main landmark was, according to Quijano (2005), the mental invention of the race category, when the phenotypical traces of the subjugated peoples, their knowledge, and cultures present themselves as naturally inferior compared to Europeans, to white people.

Globally, the racial division of labor is imposed as a systematic part of the civilizing/colonizing process, or yet, “A new technology of domination/exploitation, in this case race/work articulated in a way that seemed to be naturally associated, what has been, up to now, exceptionally successful” (Quijano, 2005, p. 109).

Considering such issues, we can discuss the racial division of education (Veiga, 2022). This process originated in the early colonial period, when the epistemicide was established with the imposition of European knowledge and the establishment of different types of learning depending on the “race”, such as the religious harassment towards the original peoples, with the Christian indoctrination and the teaching of crafts considered to be inferior for the black population.

In the 19th century, the recently independent nations organized themselves in a deeply exclusionary manner, in a global phenomenon intrinsic to the very notion of nation, forged by Europeans and U.S. Americans in that context. In the Americas, in general, the idea of citizenship was applied only to whites, landowners, and literate people (Ohmstede, 2010), though in Brazil, until 1881, illiterate people could vote.

That is, in the context of the end of colonization and the establishment of legal equalities, the subalternization process of black and Indigenous people got more refined, consolidating color as a delineating criterion of social hierarchy. In the colonial context, characterized by absolute monarch and Christian politics, color was a criterion taken as “naturally” fated to domination and subalternization. In the 19th century onwards, the inferiorization of non-white people was made scientific.

This displacement process of domination relationships, under the perspective of labor racial division, transformed racial inferiority from a natural state into a scientific inferiority, with a long historical duration, reaffirming the Latin American place in the geopolitical construction of Europe as superior.

Latin American intellectuals broadly contributed to affirming the racial hierarchy, such as the Brazilians José Bonifácio, Perdigão Malheiros, and Nina Rodrigues; the Argentine Domingos Sarmiento; the Peruvian Francisco García Calderón; and the Paraguayan Demersay, among many others, whose works had ample circulation and repercussion (Veiga, 2022).

Two questions, apparently contradictory, presented themselves: the need to continue feeding the stigmatization of inferior groups as a domination tactic while simultaneously creating mechanisms for controlled insertion of these populations into under-construction constitutional governments. The invisibilization of people in their political rights and their cultural diversity was the main strategy to maintain their subalternization and to control their social experience.

What can be said about schooling? According to research (Veiga, 2022), we can say that the dissemination of universal and obligatory schooling, with an Eurocentric standard, was the crowning of the inferiorization and subalternization process of Indigenous and African-descendant populations.

This can be seen from three main factors. The attribution of one more new identity, the one of an ignorant person, given to those who did not attend school. The irregular offer of public schools. The unequal offer of instruction depending on skin color. From the perspective of global education history, it is possible to identify the role of school education in consolidating identities forged by the establishment of racial divisions in education.

In the same global perspective, we can observe that the studies about the (hi)stories of non-schooling educations have little visibility, due to the Eurocentric tradition of associating civilization with literacy and schooling, and to identify the history of education with school history. In the WG, there is a significant predominance of institutional histories, the history of books and printed materials, the history of reading practices, school objects, teacher education, education and religion, escola nova [new education movement], or even the schooling of poor childhood, orphans, etc.

The eurocentric influence in the historiography of Brazilian education is visible in the absent, or little present, themes, in the WG debates throughout these 40 years, for instance, black women and children; black feminism; Indigenous children and their masters; orality in the organization of Brazilian society; African religions and education; education in the Indigenous villages, in the quilombola communities, and in the terreiros; schooling racial division, among many others. In the case of the history of intellectuals, for example, studies of educators connected to the new school movement are recurrent, and, in contrast, it was possible to identify only a work about intellectual educators, such as Paulo Freire. Regarding social movements and education, I found only one work about the Teatro Experimental do Negro (1989).

Nevertheless, it was possible to find, in a very punctual and spaced manner, some works approaching the history of education, schooling or not, of Indigenous and black people in 1992, 1994, 1997, 2006, 2008, 2019, 2021, and 2023, which increasingly stood out in the last two meetings, which took place in Belém (2021) and in Manaus (2023), establishing a rupture with the WG geopolitics.

In turn, due to the creation in 2002 of WG 21 (Education and ethnical-racial relationships), it is possible to identify, in the period 2002-2021, the presentation of 13 works in history of education, be it on WG21 or in special sessions, with the participation of colleagues from WG02²⁰. This subdivision, undoubtedly, implies content losses in the debates about WG 02.

Still, regarding the decolonial history approach, I understand that it is necessary to broaden our research beyond Brazil and to consider the history of education in Brazil within the broader history of education in Latin America. It is curious to observe that only one work about Latin America was recorded in these programs, in the case, in 2008 “Current tendencies in the History of Education in Latin America” from the Argentine Silvina Gvirtz; on the other hand, in 40 years, there is no record of any Latin American guest but, in 2010, the Englishman Gary Mc Culloch was invited to speak about the “History of Education Scenarios in England.”

Not ignoring the importance of exchanges with European countries and the United States, the intention here is to highlight the need to problematize the political identity of the history of education in Latin America and, thus, advance the critique of the history of education and its historiography.

Final remarks

Professor Ester Buffa, in her article, comments that writing about the WG's 30 years was a “dear and difficult” task (Buffa, 2016). I can say the same in this text about the 40 years. It is a history of power relationships, disputes, vanities, in which the monopoly of decisions in the hands of some colleagues is not rare, what implies reiterated exclusions, not ignoring the geopolitics of the WG. As we can read in the reports published, coordinators were acclaimed and not elected. In this case, I also highlight an accentuated concentration of coordinators from Southeast and South institutions, which has caused discomfort among many people.

On the other hand, it was very dear, made especially possible by the research in the sources of the PROEDES - UFRJ archive and the digitized archive of the ANPEd websites. They raised to memory-rich presentations from colleagues, followed by much repercussion, debates, and learning. That is, they brought up memories of the WG as a place of formation and anxieties.

Nonetheless, I highlight, based on the reading of the reports, programs, and some more recent studies, the impression that a certain accommodation/depoliticization in the writing of the history of education, in this case, I return to the problem of Eurocentrism.

The Eurocentrism mark, whether in historiographical excerpt, or in the concepts of reference, can risk a single history of education, descriptive, and little problematized. The more we advance in time, the more we perceive the dependency on European and North American historiography to affirm any authority in the field of the history of education among us. In turn, there is hardly any dialogue with Latin American historians.

It is important to highlight that what is at stake is not the competence of European and North American historians, but Eurocentrism. We can also observe in the trajectory of Brazilian teachers and researchers the little autonomy regarding the paradigms of European historiography. At what point can we break away from colonizing practices in the elaboration of historical knowledge?

Due to Eurocentrism in the history of education, the studies’ priority continues to be the history of schooling or the history of school, excluding other educational processes. Following the European religious tradition, the school presented itself as a fundamental space of ideological inculcation, continuing the process of the monopolization of knowledge by the State. Very different from our original traditions. However, this is what granted the legacy of the history of education in Brazil as a history of school and governmental regulations.

From the theoretical and conceptual point of view, in the 1970s and 1980s, all eyes converged on Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci, hindering, among other themes, the problematization of racism as a founding element of Latin American history. In the 1990s onwards, the approach of the so-called new cultural history stood out, in all its nuances, and we continue the fragmenting tradition of culture in relation to other fields. The phenomenon Roger Chartier, mainly, reinforced the history of education as the history of school and literacy writings: objects, books, pedagogical materials, curriculum, subjects, press, and themes that stood out in the historical European school experience.

However, we cannot ignore the key contribution of European historians when re-dimensioning document sources. Still, it is important to highlight that, way before they did their “documentary revolution”, the (hi)stories were already told with other sources that were not official writings. For example, in the local Indigenous and African traditions the (hi)stories are told through oral/body traditions music, tales, legends, culinary recipes, dances, clothes, corporal graphisms, monuments, masks, rituals, paintings, non-alphabetical writings, etc., all this has been at the reach of our senses for 500 years but completely made invisible by the Eurocentric historiography.

Finally, this balance had to register the issue of digital sources, digitized sources, and archives. A great challenge for the field because they are altering our historical imagination. We need to bring this debate to the WG.

I finish this text with the reflections of Antônio Bispo dos Santos (1959-2023), wishing that the WG can raise many confluences in the writings of the histories of educations.

I have no doubt that confluence is the energy that moves us towards sharing, towards recognition, towards respect. A river does not stop being a river because it flows towards another river; on the contrary, it starts to be itself and other rivers, it gets stronger. When we converge, we do not stop being ourselves, we start to be us and someone else - we become more. Confluence is a force that becomes more, increases, enlarges. This is the measure (Santos, 2024, p. 15).

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• Peer review rounds:
  R1: two invitations; two reviews received.
• How to cite this article:
  Veiga, C. G. Histories of Education: Celebrating 40 Years of Working Group 02 and Celebrating Generations of Researchers in the Historiography of Education in Brazil. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 26, e407. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v26.2026.e407en
• Funding:
  The RBHE has financial support from the Brazilian Society of History of Education (SBHE) and the Editorial Program (Call No. 30/2023) of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
• Licensing:
  This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4) license.
• Data availability:
  All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
• 1
  Movement created in 2004 by the lawyer Miguel Nagib.
• 2
  Programa Nacional das Escolas Cívico-Militares [National Program of Civic-Military schools], established by the Decree nº 10.004/2019.
• 3
  PROEDES (Programa de Estudos e Documentação Educação e Sociedade- Program of Studies and Documents- Education and Society) is a documentation center of the School of Education- UFRJ and has a rich physical archive about ANPEd (I take the opportunity to thank Denise for her attention). The ANPED bulletins from 1979 and 1991, where we can find the WGs reports can also be researched in the website https://legado.anped.org.br/biblioteca/. The specific WGs programs can be found in PROEDES physical archives and the program of digitalized national meetings, with the complete works since 2000, can be accessed on the website https://legado.anped.org.br/reunioes-cientificas/nacional.
• 4
  CEDES started to edit the Revista Educação & Sociedade, and later the Cadernos do CEDES. For more information see CEDES official page, https://www.cedes.unicamp.br/
• 5
  In the1980s, six Conferências Brasileiras de Educação (CBE- Brazilian Education Conferences): I CBE, 1980 - São Paulo; II CBE, 1982 - Belo Horizonte; III CBE, 1984 - Niterói; IV CBE, 1986 - Goiânia; V CBE, 1988 - Brasília, and VI CBE, 1991 - São Paulo (Brasil, Ministério da Educação, n.d.).
• 6
  The Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES- Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), was established by the Ministry of Education and Health (Management Ernesto Simões Filho and Anísio Teixeira) through the decree 29.741/51 originally aiming to improve the expansion of graduate education (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [CAPES], n.d.).
• 7
  The Instituto de Estudos Avançados em Educação (IESAE- Institute of Advanced Studies in Education) from Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) was created in1971 and finished in 1990 (Fávero, 2003)
• 8
  In synch with this perspectives, the first work group created, and their respective coordinators, were: Primary education (Guiomar Namo de Melo); Secondary education (Luiz Antônio Cunha); Higher education (Neidson Rodrigues and Laura da Veiga); Popular education (Osmar Fávero and Carlos Rodrigues Brandao); Education and Work (Jacques Velloso); Education for the rural area (Maria Julieta Calazans); Education and Language (Magda Soares); Preschool education (Maria Malta Campos). (ANPEd. 1981, p. 5).
• 9
  As an example of the work groups created similar to the teaching structures, we have registered in the 1985 Boletim the reports of the following WGs: Secondary Education, Preschool education; Rural education; Higher education; Teaching undergraduate degree (ANPEd, 1985a, p. 7).
• 10
  Probably due to the fact that the conversation occurred in Belo Horizonte, all professors were from FaE-UFMG, except Professor Ira Maria Maciel (UERJ). The participants were professors Carlos Roberto J. Cury; Glaura Vasquez de Miranda; Miguel Arroyo, Léa Paixão, Magda Soares, and Eliane Lopes (ANPEd, 1986a, p. 4/8).
• 11
  The Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas História, Sociedade e Educação no Brasil (HISTEDBR- Research and Study group History, Society, and Education in Brazil) is organized into state WGs with national Seminars (Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas História, Sociedade e Educação no Brasil [HISTEDBR], n.d.)
• 12
  INEP, Instituto Nacional de Pedagogia [National Pedagogy Insitute], was created in 1937, in the following year the name was changed to Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos [National Institute of Pedagogical Studies] and, in 2001 for Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira [National Institute of Educational Studies and research Anísio Teixeira] (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira [INEP], n.d.).
• 13
  Which are: “Social change and pedagogical change: the trajectory of history research” and “About the origins of the terms class and curriculum” (Hamilton, 1992).
• 15
  In the 13th meeting, in the axis “History of Education: theme and methodology in debate”, the following works were presented: “Mentality and education: a necessary intercross” by Eliane Lopes; “Contributions of Human Sciences to Education: a History” by Ester Buffa, and “Three paradigms of theory in the History of Education” by Paulo Ghiraldelli. (Boletim, 1990, p. 44)
• 16
  An example was the survey linked to the WG can be found in the book “Research in the history of education in Brazil”, organized by Professor José Gondra (2005), which grounds the seminar “Research production in the History of Education in Brazil” held in 2004 at UERJ and promoted by the WG. At the event, the academic production from different regions was presented. The book reproduces reference articles about the production balances mentioned here (Nunes; Carvalho, 1993; Catani; Faria Filho, 2002), and presents reports of the production in history of education in graduate programs by states/regions, there are comprehensive studies about the themes, time frames, lists of dissertations and theses, which also indicate a certain homogeneity in theoretical choices, with a majority of European authors and the cultural history approach. The most recent, not specific to the WG, but in the larger field, is the dossier “The writing of the history of education in Brazil: experiences and perspectives” organized by professors Carlos Vieira and Claudia Engler, published at RBHE in 2019, as a celebration of the 20 years of SBHE, gathering 13 articles. In the presentation, the organizers inform the journal’s quantitative date, not intending a historiographical analysis (Vieira & Cury, 2019).
• 17
  During the 40 years, several foreign professors were present in the WG 02, as guests or not, for instance: Anne Marie Chartier, Trindade Dionisio, Ivor Goodson, Jacques Revel, Gary Mc Cullock, Silvina Gvirtz, Mariano Narodowski, Jean-Pièrre Fagner, David Vincent, Juergen Schriewer, Silvia Finocchio, Patrice Vermeren, Rogerio Fernandes, Justino Magalhães, Adrian Ascolani.
• 18
  The 33rd ISCHE from 2012 had the theme Internationalization in Education(18th - 20th centuries) (International Standing Conference for the History of Education [ISCHE], 2012).
• 19
  In 1990, the Group Modernity/Coloniality was created, formed by Latin American intellectuals. In 2000, one of the most important publications was released, “The coloniality of knowledge: eurocentrism and social sciences. Latin American perspectives”, organized by Edgardo Lander. The group broke away from the Eurocentric episteme and stands out by the analysis around the coloniality concept and the introduction of the notion of decolonial turn.
• 20
  In 2007, I highlight the special session “History of the education of black people in Brazil: perspectives and limits” with Maria Lucia Rodrigues Muller and Cynthia Greive Veiga (Veiga, 2008).
• 14
  The text cites some authors-authorities, among them, Febvre, Marc Bloch, Le Goff, Ariès, Andre Chervel, Michel de Certeau, Peter Burke, Antonio Novoa, Hayden White, Roger Chartier, Foucault, Jean Hebrard, Marie Madeleine Compère, Antonio Viñao - Frago, Agustín Escolano, Antonio Nóvoa, Peter Cunnighan.

• Responsible associate editor:
  Carlos Eduardo Vieira (UFPR)
  E-mail: [e-mail]
  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6168-271X

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  29 June 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Published
  12 Apr 2026