Public history, corporality, and participatory research with history teachers

ABSTRACT

The article reflects the theoretical-methodological challenges and possibilities of the interface between teaching body-orality and public history, based on participatory research with narrative performances of teachers in History classes. The methodology was developed through an investigation conducted with three basic education teachers in Rio de Janeiro between 2022 and 2023, in collaboration with the Rede Trajetórias Docentes, utilising public interviews and participatory observation of the audiovisual materials and photographic sequences produced. The oral history work, where participating teachers analyzed their own images and speeches, produced narratives about their practice, was added to the study of classroom performances, understood as a dialogical space for teaching and mediation in public history. Thus, it was possible to bring together the Gumbrechtian concepts of meaning and presence in a dialogical and intercorporeal movement that favored the understanding of the classroom as a space of public history. This understanding extended to the research process. Paying attention to their gestures and voices, the teachers developed a participatory methodological approach to memory work, which also favored the shift from the idea of teachers as objects of analysis to subjects who construct reflections on their practice and on the public dimensions of history.

KEYWORDS:
public history; body-orality; participatory research

RESUMO

O artigo reflete sobre os desafios e possibilidades teórico-metodológicas da interface corpo-oralidade docente e história pública, a partir de uma pesquisa participativa com performances narrativas de professoras/es em aulas de História. A metodologia foi construída em uma investigação realizada com três professores da educação básica do Rio de Janeiro, entre 2022 e 2023, vinculados à Rede Trajetórias Docentes, por meio de entrevistas públicas e observação participativa dos materiais audiovisuais e sequências fotográficas produzidas. O trabalho de história oral, onde os docentes participantes discutiram suas próprias imagens e falas, produzindo narrativas sobre sua prática, foi somado ao estudo das performances em sala de aula, compreendidas como espaço dialógico de ensino e mediação para uma história pública. Assim, foi possível aproximar os conceitos gumbrechtianos de sentido e presença, em um movimento dialógico e intercorpóreo que favoreceu a compreensão da sala de aula como um espaço de história pública. Essa compreensão se estendeu ao processo de pesquisa, atentos aos seus gestos e vozes, os docentes produziram um percurso metodológico participativo do trabalho de memória, o que também favoreceu o deslocamento da ideia de professores como objetos de análise para sujeitos que constroem reflexões sobre sua prática e sobre as dimensões públicas da história.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
história pública; corpo-oralidade; pesquisa participativa

INTRODUCTION

The article examines the challenges and theoretical-methodological possibilities of public history, focusing on the intersection of body and orality. It is based on participatory research with primary school teachers in Rio de Janeiro. Through building a collection of oral history interviews, classroom recordings, and photographic sequences of teaching performances, the teachers discussed their own images and statements, creating public narratives as active participants in the research. By combining Oral History and studies of Corporality, this paper emphasizes the collaborative development of historical knowledge and expands methodological discussions within the public history movement.

Public history is understood in two connected aspects: teaching performance as a possibility for public history and participatory research on teaching memory, aimed at creating a collection of public narratives that focus on body-oralities. In the first aspect, the classroom is not just a place for delivering content but also a performative space where body, voice, and presence foster dialogues about history. Meanwhile, the second aspect emphasizes participatory research that integrates oral history and studies on body-oralities, allowing work with teachers’ memories that are produced collaboratively and archived in the public narrative collection of the Rede Trajetórias Docentes (Teachers’ Trajectories Network).

From these perspectives, the following questions arise: How does dialogue with Gumbrechtian concepts of meaning and presence help us think about teachers’ performances in the field of history as bodily-oral narratives that catalyse public histories? How much does participatory research with teachers change the role of the teacher from object to subject of research, encouraging the creation of collections of memories and inter-corporeal practices that shape dimensions of public history in the research process itself?

The methodology was developed based on participatory research conducted with three primary school teachers in the state of Rio de Janeiro from 2022 to 2023, in collaboration with the Rede Trajetórias Docentes (Teacher Trajectories Network). This research involved analyzing each teacher’s classroom performance through audiovisual recordings and photographic sequences, as well as collecting memory work on teaching practices through oral history interviews. The participating teachers reviewed their own images and statements, creating narratives about their teaching practices and performances.

History lessons can be seen as a form of public mediation of the past, where body and voice are essential parts of the teaching experience, fostering a stronger connection between public history and teaching performance. By connecting public history, oral history, and research on corporeality in memory work, this article offers reflections on interdisciplinary conversations centred on participatory processes for constructing historical knowledge with teachers.

PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND ORAL HISTORY WITHIN THE PUBLIC HISTORY MOVEMENT: BODIES IN DIALOGUE

The national and international public history movement has expanded reflections on how historical knowledge is produced and circulated. Notable in this movement are practices that emerge from diverse experiences and are socially committed to historical work. As Paulo Freire (1987) stated, connections among different forms of knowledge are sparked through the encounter of embodied knowledge. Debates around public history in Brazil include reflections on participatory research, narration methods, and ways of producing and sharing knowledge among universities, academia, and communities—initiatives that actively engage target audiences.

In this article, participatory research is central to public history, aiming to build knowledge collectively and actively involve people and groups at various stages of the investigation. Developed between the 1970s and 1980s, participatory methodology goes beyond the hierarchical divide between researcher and subjects, emphasizing collective commitment through its different forms, including action research, creative research, and intervention research (Brandão, 1984; Fals Borda, 1991; Torres, 2008). Today, the public history movement in Brazil is adopting participatory methods for creating, circulating, and sharing knowledge. As a response to academic isolation, the social commitment of research fosters more embodied dialogues.

Starting in 2011, the Simpósios e Cursos da Rede Brasileira de História Pública (Brazilian Public History Network Symposiums and Courses) aimed to highlight the diversity of historical knowledge and “memory work” conducted through dialogue and partnerships in an interdisciplinary way, promoting exchange between different forms of access to the ‘present pasts’. The connection between corporeality, oral history, and education is explored in this study from both theoretical and methodological perspectives, driven by the public history movement.

In this context, this article understands public history, mainly in its participatory aspect, as a way to address the divides between theory and practice, thought and body, research and teaching. It aims to blend rigor and sensitivity by recognizing the embodied nature of pedagogical practices and research projects, grounded in the experiences of bodies that are considered in their socio-political expressions—affected by social inequalities, structural racism, gender violence, environmental destruction, and denial of rights—as well as the relationships formed between them. Body and orality can be connected in memory work, where individuals work together to create a story with the audience in a face-to-face setting, rooted in the materiality of experience.

Thus, this marks a theoretical and methodological shift in the relationship between corporeality studies and oral history, with a particular focus on the gestural elements of narrative in public history. As a discipline centered around perceptions of oneself and others, based on relational principles, oral history has many lessons to offer public history—and vice versa (Almeida, 2018). The overlap between them enables dynamic interpretations that can enhance participatory actions in contemporary history. At the same time, it calls for caution to ensure that public history and oral history are not regarded as synonyms but as intersecting movements.

In Brazil, the development of public history has been driven by debates on oral history—particularly focusing on methodologies for creating, archiving, and accessing oral interviews, as well as on the public sharing of the knowledge produced. Conceptual revisions surrounding the so-called shared authority in public history (Frisch, 1990) and the ethical responsibilities toward research participants show how oral history can support a public history that emphasizes processes—listening, negotiation, and the joint creation of historical knowledge—rather than just the dissemination of finished products. These principles have supported projects that include participatory actions, helping to build public oral archives and encouraging discussions about social memory.

This is a key point for the field of education. Teaching history can be understood as an effective practice of public history in the classroom: 1) either through history as a subject in the national school curriculum, fostering a “public appropriation of history” (Andrade; Andrade, 2016, p. 176); 2) or in the classroom, through the dissemination of historical knowledge implemented by teachers (Souza, 2019); 3) or through teaching performance, embodying knowledge through voices, gestures, and emotions (Ramôa, 2024).

From this third perspective, orality is inseparable from corporeality. Interviews are complex oral performances of oral history work, where what is said and how it is said are intertwined — tone of voice, pauses, rhythm, hesitations, silences, and intensities that reveal as much as words do. Similarly, the teaching of history, embodied by teachers, is a practice in which knowledge is built in the body, in the presence of, and in relationship with, others. In this regard, the contributions of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (2010) on the effects of presence and meaning, and of “bell hooks” (2017) on the body/mind split in teaching, and Paul Zumthor’s (2018) approach to performance as a form and force help us reflect on how teaching is shaped as a historical practice—sensitive, embodied, and public. According to this perspective, teaching performance is not merely a technical or theatrical act, but a political gesture of inhabiting the classroom as a whole, activating forms of presence and sharing history.

Therefore, it is important to recognise that the history taught is also shaped by the presence and voice of those who teach it, and that the body in the classroom is simultaneously a historical subject, an archive, and a facilitator of meanings. This represents a practical and theoretical shift that acknowledges embodied experiences as valid forms of historical production. By understanding orality as performance and the body as a sensitive repository of memory and knowledge, it defines what can be called embodied oralities: narratives expressed not only through voice or words but also through gestures and movements.

In this context, the body functions as a living memory – able not only to preserve but also to transform and activate historically constructed meanings.

From this perspective, it is possible to map public history practices through expanded oral history work, which includes kinesthetic practices (meetings) in the process of raising awareness to build bonds and foster open dialogue among research participants. Whether using physical practices related to photography, dance, theatre, or improvisation, participatory methodologies suggest sensitive ways of creating works of memory. In this framework, body-orality history is not just verbal content but an expression of memory through presence and movement.

This embodied approach is employed in contexts marked by structural violence and institutional silencing, which constitute a form of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2018), militarized governmentality, or dictatorship. Oral history practices that are attentive to corporality and public debates can promote memory work that is not limited to legal rhetoric or the collection of testimonies, for example. By embracing the unsaid, silence, and gesture, embodied listening acts as a political gesture of recognition and legitimisation of unauthorised historical knowledge. In this case, the body not only communicates experiences but also occupies public spheres for building and politics of memory.

Contrary to the search for straightforward and fixed truths, the approach of embodied oralities suggests the presence of multiple interconnected layers — diverse forms of historical reparation connected to sensitive experiences and responsive to ethical, emotional, and political demands. Here, the body is not merely a support for speech but a site of embedded memory, an embodied presence.

Oral history work raises new research questions by proposing to understand the body as an object of historical investigation. Bodies in motion become interpretive agents, capable of producing and challenging historiographical narratives, destabilizing models based on the distance between the researcher and the so-called “human subject of research”—often mistakenly seen as a research object. Performances, workshops, and digital productions resulting from body-orality work demonstrate how orality, corporality, and digital technologies intersect through practices that open up educational, epistemological, and political possibilities for the public history movement.

This article aims to explore the challenges and theoretical-methodological perspectives that engage the concepts of teaching performance and embodied orality, expanding ideas and approaches for public history in education. To achieve this, we focus on a participatory study conducted within a collaborative network of teachers, emphasizing the value of individual authorship in the public performances and narratives they create in history teaching. This approach aligns with the shared construction of a participatory history, which questions teachers’ performances in their public roles, especially regarding the body and orality during their classes. A collaborative project was carried out as part of reflections on public history promoted by the Rede Trajetórias Docentes (‘Teaching Trajectories Network’), focusing on the narratives and performances of three teacher-narrators in basic education history classes in Rio de Janeiro (teachers: Phellipe Patrizi Moreira, Diego Gomes Souza, and Eleonora Abad Stefenson), to understand how these performances can construct narratives about teaching and public history (Ramôa, 2024; Almeida, 2024).

The participatory methodology involved forming a monitoring group of three History teachers from basic education. Photographs and videos of these teachers’ performances were created during meetings, selecting one lesson from each teacher. This material helped compile a series of sequential photos, frame by frame, capturing the teachers’ movements and expressions. The empirical study is further supported by oral history work on the teachers’ careers. Inspired by ethical reflections on oral history (Portelli, 1997; Pozzi, 2014), the collection emphasizes attentive listening and the participatory construction of narrative performances.

Considering the proposal of this article, which involves participatory research with history teachers about their performances as public history practices, we selected and used excerpts from interviews from the oral history collection linked to the Rede de Pesquisa Trajetórias Docentes (‘Teaching Trajectories Research Network’). This was justified by the way the oral interviews were conducted: they were based on questions related to classroom observation, starting with the teacher viewing a photographic sequence of their performance, composed of successive frames. After looking at the images, the teachers could frame their narratives around two main themes: [i] teaching activity and [ii] life and career trajectory. The preliminary meetings (regarding the process of photographing and audiovisual recording classroom performances) served as a methodological awareness-raising stage, enabling the oral history interviews to be conducted later. Based on these narratives, it was possible to develop reflections, between the individual and the collective, on teaching performances as ways of publicly narrating the profession. Therefore, public history is connected to teaching performance through participatory meetings with these three teachers, as part of a network observing and constructing pedagogical meanings expressed in performances within the public-school environment.¹

Since the beginning of the research, teachers have been involved in developing themes, methodological proposals, and theoretical guidelines, with each stage being discussed and agreed upon with them. This approach is based on the idea that the research participants formed a partnership within a support network in the “pronunciation of the world” (Serpa, 2010, p. 54). Above all, it is a movement to recognize the authorship of those who narrate, emphasizing that teachers are the authors of their classroom performances. Identifying them by their full names and photographs reinforced the shared authorship in the effort to bring the “presence” of the other closer (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 54)—a tangible, bodily presence that generates meaning, rather than just an aid or a simple academic research subject. It highlighted how much the history teacher embodies the significance and presence of a living memory archive, where his narrative performance serves as a historical communication of teaching.

As the previously mentioned explains, it is essential to introduce the three history teachers who are the focus of this study, along with researchers whose trajectories intertwine knowledge, practices, and reflections that permeate teaching. The partnership built throughout the research, through theoretical and methodological sharing (participatory experimentation, between body and orality, between the classroom and the Trajetórias Docentes research network, which facilitated conversations among the three teachers) and the teachers’ participation in methodological choices, not only supported but also emphasized the connection between public history and teaching history.

We started the interviews with Phellipe, a doctoral student in history who, at the time, was working in the private education system in São Gonçalo and Niterói, municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, Eleonora, who has a PhD in Education, is a teacher in the public education system in Niterói and the educational coordinator of the private education system in the same municipality. Diego, a doctoral student in Education, is a teacher in the public school systems of Rio Bonito and Queimados, where he was teaching during this research period. These teachers come from diverse backgrounds, have different body types, and possess unique stories. When integrated into the participatory collection of public oral narratives, this diversity enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the performance and teaching of history.

PRESENCE OF TEACHING BODIES AND VOICES

Even if theoretically, when considering the presence of teachers’ bodies and voices, it is not possible to separate their materiality from the construction of meanings that is commonly done. Gumbrecht (2012) cautions against this in his critique of metaphysics, emphasizing the significance of the interplay between the effects of presence and meaning. The process of transcending what is considered corporeal entails a necessary distinction between the material and the realm of ideas, the latter being regarded as the primary reality. In this scenario, there is a prevailing comprehension that it is not worth returning to the “forms produced by bodily movements and the presence of bodies” because they “simply cannot be important enough to become a subject of concern, much less to write about” (Gumbrecht, 2007, p. 31).

Gumbrecht (2007) distances himself from metaphysics and explores experience, affirming a relationship with the world and its objects—mainly cultural artifacts—without limiting himself to simply attributing meaning to them. The world and its objects are tangible, which has a significant impact on people. In other words, the relationship with reality occurs both spatially and physically, whether near or far from the body. Gumbrecht (2010, p. 15) states that this is not about advocating for the end of metaphysics or, even less, promoting the dominance of materiality. The aim is to perceive the effects of meaning and presence on reality, with the classroom serving as one of the spaces where this relationship of “oscillation” or “tension” (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 134) can become visible. We live in a culture rooted in meaning, and sometimes, being in this Cartesian world triggers a response—a desire to be present. This desire is connected to objects and events that can physically and emotionally touch people, even allowing moments of intensity to emerge, as the presentification of the past is sought through the enhancement of the “presence effects objects on human bodies” (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 13). The tension or oscillation between the effects of presence and the effects of meaning can lead to instability.

In the context of a culture of meaning, it is essential to incorporate studies on corporeality to deepen the connection between oral history and public history. From a perspective that views the body and mind as interconnected, this approach can strengthen ties and partnerships in experimental research, particularly in teaching. It emphasizes the materiality of the body and its sensory and physical aspects as essential parts of historical experience — a view supported by Gumbrecht (2010) that aligns with bell hooks’ (2017) thoughts on incarnate knowledge and embodied pedagogies. Highlighting the body in both academic research and classroom settings reflects the author’s ideas and supports this study’s focus. Using bell hooks (2017) expresses the desire for presence by framing the discussion around teaching performance, specifically in the classroom and through teaching as spaces where knowledge is embodied.

In fact, the author provides an explicit critique of educational structures and their blurred objectification of teachers. Sharing her experiences as a teacher, hooks describes the feelings that emerged when she entered the classroom and the harmful effect that the idea of separating body and mind had on students and herself. According to her argument, the erosion of the idea of the integrity of being goes hand in hand with the split between ‘life practices, habits of being, and teaching roles’ (hooks, 2017, p. 29). Education and cultural history have been dominated by the idea of the mind’s objectivity, which has promoted movements to remove the body with its experiences and biases, hindering the embodiment of life in the classroom.

In a discussion about race, gender, and social class, the author questions the silences surrounding the bodies in the classroom, highlighting the discomfort (especially in academic circles) that comes with debating the topic. In the institutionalized space of the classroom, students and teachers are burdened with understanding the purely intellectual relationship between subjects. Paying attention to the body challenges the power relations established in the educational environment. Furthermore, it is also recognizing “the presence of the teacher as a body in the classroom, the presence of the teacher as someone who has a total effect on the student’s development, not only an intellectual effect, but an effect on how that student perceives reality outside the classroom” (hooks, 2017, p. 183). In this regard, the narratives of teachers Phellipe, Eleonora, and Diego, in dialogue with hooks (2017), sharpen the lens on a teaching of History that is not static, but rather (re)elaborated alongside the presence of each teacher (Gumbrecht, 2010). To know them is to understand their performances, but it is also to realize that their bodies, when teaching history, create a practice of public history.

We do not dismiss the importance of the mind in social relations and teaching work. Nor do we see embodiment without the mind: by emphasizing bodies in the classroom, we aim to highlight materiality. The corporeality present in everyday classroom life, right before our eyes, has long played a minor role in society (Gumbrecht, 2010). The goal is to challenge the mind-body dichotomy by affirming the body’s full presence, in dialogue with the thoughts that shape it. This also means not separating body and voice, since the voice is part of the body and thus possesses material qualities such as timbre, amplitude, and tone (Zumthor, 2005). When focusing on teachers’ corporality, it becomes possible to see different forms of historical knowledge materialize through their bodies. According to Diego, Eleonora, and Phellipe’s performances, the stories they conveyed became a tangible presence in the classroom, shaped through their hands, expressions, and tone of voice. This means that body movements—including vocal expressions—expand the expressive dimension, allowing us to perceive intonation related to sensitive topics, moments of greater seriousness, or lightheartedness. In their approaches to historical knowledge, they drew attention to something when the subject caused discomfort. With their voices and gestures, bodies shape history lessons within a coexistence of gesture and voice, avoiding divisions or reinforcement of dichotomies between body/mind or presence/meaning. Nonetheless, through performance, teaching bodies create narratives and presentations of historical content.

By recognising and expressing themselves in these multiple dimensions, students and teachers transform the classroom into a space for collectively constructing meanings about the past and present. This practice extends beyond merely transmitting content; it constitutes an exercise in public history, as it involves horizontal dialogue, valuing diverse experiences, and listening to narratives from different social contexts. In this process, historical knowledge is developed in a participatory manner, anchored in the memories, sensibilities, and interpretations that circulate from intersectional dimensions² of the body. Thus, the classroom becomes a territory of shared production, in which the diversity of voices not only enriches the debate but also affirms the political dimension of history in the concrete struggles that traverse the bodies present, creating bonds and generating a sense of belonging.

Therefore, this is an experience of public history in the classroom, in which historical knowledge is constructed in a dialogical and participatory manner, recognising the multiple voices that emerge from the encounter between teachers and students. This dynamic enables the school environment to promote the development of a living historical environment, meanings, both rooted in collective trajectories and in the embodied singularities of each individual involved.

Below are the narratives of the teacher-narrators who participated in this research: Phellipe Patrizi Moreira, Diego Gomes Souza, and Eleonora Abad Stefenson. Following the order of the interviews, we start with the narrative of Phellipe Patrizi Moreira (2023), a teacher in the private education system and doctoral student in History at UERJ/FFP. Phellipe built his professional career by moving between different school systems and naturally blending teaching, research, and community engagement, including Carnival. He states that it is impossible to separate the teacher from the researcher or the reveller: for him, Carnival is a space for transgression, freedom, and expression — something evident in his speech, posture, and teaching practice. His personal experience with shyness and physical repression was changed by his Carnival experience, which led him to study History and make that the focus of his academic training.

‘I am a professor, researcher, and carnival enthusiast.’ Phellipe Patrizi Moreira enthusiastically discusses the value of his career, highlighting the inseparability between his three areas of expertise. In his speech, he reinforces the importance of presenting oneself in the first person: ‘History professors like to talk. I think it is essential to introduce myself. Even for people to understand who Phellipe is.’ His goal is to present the intersection among teaching, research, and passion for revelry, an element that has accompanied him since the beginning of his education. ‘It all starts with my love for Carnival [...] work for me is a space of happiness. There is no way I can separate it and say that Carnival is not my work.’ By emphasizing his belonging to this universe, Phellipe breaks the boundaries of formalism and incarnates a teaching style imbued with affection and popular culture through body and voice: ‘There is no way to understand me without knowing my history.’ His pedagogical practice is closely tied to his biography, and his carnival gestures are the performances that establish his presence in the classroom.

Eleonora Abad Stefenson (2023) also centers her teaching practice on bodily experience. Reflecting on the photos and videos taken during her class, she says: “When we are moving around so much, less restrained, we feel a strong sense of belonging to that space.” According to her, bodily movement is a form of expression that signifies connection, security, and a way of being that challenges traditional teaching. “This teaching of History [...] is still very much linked to the idea of History with a capital H, of historiography. I seek a history that is more lived, more felt.” Therefore, her teaching creates a shared history—felt through the body, listening, and affection—with students in classes built cooperatively, acknowledging their experiences and interpretations of the world in the historical debates.

The dialogical presence of students and teachers in the classroom can be understood as a space for the production of public history, sustained by embodied relationships that create bonds through welcoming, discussions that echo in catalysed voices, laughter, sighs, expressions of indignation and surprise; in moments when bodies are recognised in their political dimension — bodies traversed by intersections of class, race, and gender, but also by age, experiences of health and illness, functional diversities, territorial belongings, and different contexts of inequality, bodies that are not exhausted by these conditions, but reinvent themselves in agencies capable of producing new horizons.

Eleonora, who has over a decade of experience at the same state school, emphasises the feeling of belonging as a determining factor in her presence in the classroom. This connection with the space, strengthened by continuity and relationships built up over the years, gives her freedom of movement and comfort to teach more expressively. Commenting that her relationship with the space makes her feel ‘more comfortable with her movements,’ the teacher presents a body that becomes both medium and message, rather than merely a support for speech. Her academic background, with a degree in History and a postgraduate degree in Education, reinforces a teaching practice that spans multiple areas. She states that it is not just a matter of transmitting content, but of ‘feeling with the students’ what is being told. The teacher constructs a teaching of History that is embodied in active listening — a practice that reinforces the principles of a public history incarnated in the teaching experience — which considers the class a collective event in which ‘there is a first moment of trying to provoke the group, but also of getting that group to express itself, to put itself out there so that something happens there.’ Moreover, to achieve her goal, she recognises, in her body and her movements, the means of inviting effective presence in class.

In turn, Diego Gomes Souza (2023) reflects on displacement and teacher training in his narrative. Calling himself an exiled ‘mineiro’[a person born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais], he recounts with humour and sensitivity how his journey between Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro has shaped his life and his teaching style. His corporeity also appears in the subtleties of his self-presentation: ‘I discovered that I have curly hair during the pandemic [...] I have this new hairstyle with long, curly hair.’ By including this seemingly trivial dimension — such as his hair and appearance — Diego hints that the teacher’s body also communicates and narrates. As he himself says, ‘I am this exiled mineiro [...] who is in the classroom and who is also in transit’, embodying the plurality of experiences that characterise his teaching practice in the space-time of a migrant. Raised in São Gonçalo and working as a history teacher in Rio Bonito and Queimados, his trajectory encompasses diverse social and educational realities in the state of Rio de Janeiro. This transition between places and experiences is reflected in his classroom presence, where his body not only teaches but also carries his feeling of belonging. By mentioning particularities such as his height, his use of eyeglasses, or his newly grown hair during the pandemic, he asserts a presence that challenges stereotypes and connects with his students.

From an academic standpoint, Diego built his background with a bachelor’s degree, a teaching degree, and a Professional Master’s Degree (ProfHistória) from the Federal University of Fluminense (UFF), and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the same institution. His career combines the rigour of university education with the practical experience of the public classroom, revealing his commitment to a constantly evolving teaching process. His discourse — somewhere between affection and criticism — calls for attentive listening to the body that migrates, teaches, and gives new meaning, bringing to the fore a multiplicity of teaching presences in the public history experienced on the school grounds.

These embodied accounts challenge the notions of neutrality and detachment in teaching practice. Through their performances and presences, Phellipe, Eleonora, and Diego have transformed the history classroom into a space for the production of meaning, memories, and belonging, each one in their own way, in a public history made with the body, between words and gestures.

Drawing on the experiences of different teachers with unique backgrounds who share a common bond in teaching history is a way of facing the dichotomy between their thoughts and their bodies. They are flesh-and-blood teachers, with stories, doubts, and corporeal marks that cannot be “stripped away” when they enter the classroom. Amidst the emotion of recalling his career while looking at photographs in the classroom, Phellipe Patrizi Moreira (2023) states: “Why do I gesticulate so much when I speak? Because I grew up hearing: ‘You do not express yourself well, you do not speak well. So, if I cannot be understood through my orality, I need to use my hands to be understood.’ His emphasis on the potential of gestures not only highlights that the voice is part of the body, but that the body is fully present in the classroom, seen and heard, and is sensed, while simultaneously creating meaning through performance, as he narrates, ‘I do not just speak with my voice, I speak with my body. My body also translates what I want to say. [...] It is an attempt at whole-body communication, without separating orality from corporality.’

These questions echo hooks’ (2017) reflections on the teacher’s body, based on her critique of a body that remains immobile in front of a class or seated behind a desk.³

The teacher’s work in the classroom involves the whole body, facing its limits and confronting the notion of the teacher as an omniscient mind. In line with this, Phellipe Patrizi Moreira (2023) states that the body is also a place of discomfort and that its presence in the classroom can raise issues that affect it, but more important are the other narratives that this body conveys: “But it is a real classroom, with a real teacher, who has many demands, this is expressed in my language”.

Eleonora Stefenson (2023), also prompted by her photographs in class, suggests a concern in her performance: “[...] it has to do with my strong concern that this should not remain distant from the past or from the memories we are mobilising. But that it should, in some way, be shared, made sense of”. Her movements as she stands up, sits down and walks around the room are shrouded in clouds of meaning, as Gumbrecht (2010) would say, and on which she herself reflects, “I think it has to do with wanting, in some way, to get away from this feeling that nothing happened, you know? We talked about something and nothing happened”. Furthering her analysis, she says, ‘But there is an event there, a restlessness that there are events, that there is something and that we are mobilising together. Moreover, I think the body brings a small quantity of that desire. ’ This is not a neutral piece of information disconnected from the person sharing it, but rather the position that information arises through bodies. Thus, Eleonora Stefenson (2023) continues her narrative by emphasising the interplay between the presence of the body and the senses that can be developed, underlining that, “[...] and that is what is interesting, because throughout the class, even though we may not think so, we are developing all of that, we are also in the process of reflecting on what is happening there”. She adds: ‘There is a very strong intentionality in this. It is not a disinterested class.’

Gumbrecht (2010) explains the oscillation between the meaning effects and the presence effects. It is as if this game granted (even if only for a few seconds) materiality to this public encounter with history in the classroom, with performance being its leading articulator. This intersection illustrates how the stories, both personal and historical, shared at the classroom level become tangible, appear real, and are materialized by the bodies, gestures, and voices of these teachers. This movement shows that history is made by flesh-and-blood people, just like the teachers and students who debate it. This not only enables closeness but also constitutes a form of learning and knowledge production that, by taking the body as a relational place of meanings and feelings, corroborates the teaching of history as a practice of public history.

The unease mentioned by the author is not exclusive to the classroom; it was also experienced by Phellipe Patrizi Moreira (2023), Eleonora Stefenson (2023), and Diego Gomes Souza (2023) when observing their performances as recorded in the photographs. Diego even reflected on his own sensation, highlighting that “ ’Generally, in our lives, whether in our profession or outside of it, we look from the inside out, and here we have the perspective of another person observing, filming, and photographing our movements (recording our voices), our performance as teachers.” Cause and effect, he points out, ‘So, the first thing is to find these photos strange and see yourself, your body language, the way you move.’ He then conceives meanings for performance, stating: ‘Thinking about the research topic, which is performance, which is corporeity, I tend to find, in this common sense, that we think that only those who act very strongly with their bodies, in a more exaggerated way, have performance. However, in the end, everyone has performance.’

This lively encounter between the body and the senses in the performance shows us that history lessons do not only take place in the realm of ideas, but are viscerally linked to the body as something material, surrounded by gender, race, and class boundaries, permeating the form and content of the history presented to students. This is the understanding that leads us to Diego Gomes Souza’s (2023) narrative, when he says: ‘I thought I communicated very little with my body in class, that it was something much more focused on mentality, orality, and how the narrative develops throughout the class.’ This perception changes after experiencing the development of the research, in which he states: ‘But now I am seeing that there is a corporeal element, such as movement and gestures, that sometimes counts for a lot. Perhaps it counts for more than we think at first.”

The reflections shared here not only show that considering the perspective of presence makes teaching performance a central figure in the classroom, but also that the historical content shared in a history class bears the mark of each teacher who enunciates it. Therefore, one cannot obscure the horizon by claiming that performance involves neutral information unrelated to people when, in fact, teaching performance incorporates historical narratives rooted in these bodies and, through them, is emphasized.

Engaging in this debate encourages a focus on presence. This means that if Cartesian dualism places the body as a means for carrying out other activities, such as thoughts, or even seeks to domesticate it, defining ways of behaving and conducting its relationship with time and space, returning to its materiality is an act of positioning oneself in the face of discourses that attempt to delimit or erase it⁴. Therefore, we consider performance as a path to understanding teaching because it takes the body as the protagonist, seeing it in its entirety and totality, interacting with other bodies, and making itself present. However, in the next section, we present a study developed centred on performance.

BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND TEACHING “PERFORMATIVITY”: MEANING AND PRESENCE IN A PARTICIPATORY BODY-ORALITY STORY

The body of the performing teacher does not merely present, mediate, or facilitate knowledge—it incarnates it. When we selected some references that intertwine the study of the body and orality, we highlighted the work Corpo-história (Almeida; Mata, 2019), in which several authors observe, within the scope of reflections on time and narrative, the modes of production of historical knowledge based on memories inscribed in bodies that express gender, race, and class, among other social markers. The book Performances do tempo espiralar, poéticas do corpo tela (Performances of Spiral Time, Poetics of the Body Screen), by Leda Maria Martins (2021), systematises theoretical propositions developed by the author over more than twenty years, which deepen the conception of the body as a place of knowledge, based on Afro-Brazilian re-territorialisations and ritualities, articulating practices that integrate ‘synchronously, in the present of the performed act, the present of the past and the future’ (Martins, 2021, p. 83).

As Pereira (2013) points out, gestures, postures, and ways of walking are marked by collectivities and by historical and social dimensions. In this article, the teacher’s body, from the perspective of incarnated performance, becomes a place traversed by material and symbolic experiences historically associated with teaching practice, such as chalk marks, blackboard marks, or voices worn out at the end of class. Thus, the classroom becomes a stage where a history of bodies that intersect teaching and learning is written and inscribed. Zumthor (1997) expands on this perception by stating that external behaviour, such as objects, adornments, clothing, and gestures, is appropriated by performance.

However, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of performance and performativity. According to authors such as Ball (2002) and Moreira (2009), the latter is associated with the logic of control, productivity, and regulation in educational policy. Meanwhile, the approach to performance adopted in this study is based on the work of authors as Martins (2021), Zumthor (2018), and Pereira (2013). Teaching performance here is not reduced to enactment or portrayal. It is linked to action, presence and the construction of meaning through the body and voice, thereby distancing itself from a theatrical aesthetic or technical control of the teaching act. Pereira (2013) argues that teachers’ performance is marked by their own gestures and language, rather than by the portrayal of a character.

The concept of performance used in this work is based primarily on the studies of Paul Zumthor (2018), who proposes understanding it as a ‘form and force,’ a constantly developing dynamism. According to the author, performance is not a fixed structure, but something that reinvents itself with each event, always situated in space-time coordinates (Zumthor, 2018, p. 30). Zumthor identifies four fundamental characteristics of performance: recognition, irruption, openness, and communication. These traits help us understand how performance emerges from a context, transcends the daily routine, involves the subjectivity of those who perform it, and, at the same time, communicates and transforms: “form is perceived in performance, but with each performance it is transmuted” (Zumthor, 2018, p. 32).

In addition, Zumthor presents four questions that should guide the analysis of performance. The first concerns the means of communication and its social forms of expression; the second, the physical and irreducible presence of the body, permeated by smells, voices and wrinkles; the third involves space, whether as a place that evokes performance or as an environment re-signified by the presence of the subject; and the fourth question concerns the experience of performance as an experience, rather than as the origin or representation of something prior (Zumthor, 2018, p. 38). These dimensions favour an understanding of teaching performances as a complex event, situated between the body, the voice, the space, and the emotions mobilised during the lesson.

Schechner (2010) states that teaching is a performative practice in flux. Embedded in the living body of the teacher, it carries marks of belonging, memories, and unique ways of being in the world. It is a “knowing-how-to-be” in a body that continuously teaches, feels, and reframes the classroom experience. Recognising this means understanding that teaching performance not only communicates knowledge, but transforms it – and transforms itself – with each new pedagogical encounter.

The communication of teaching knowledge, both in terms of History and professional practice itself, involves the bodies of teachers in a specific space-time. In this context, spatiality not only connects the materiality of the environments but also reverberates knowledge that occurs about and with the world. Gumbrecht (2012) argues that performance and its spatial aspect can be better understood by distinguishing between two dimensions: meaning and presence. These dimensions, which are constantly in tension, mediate our relationship with the world and with material objects. However, the strong predominance of the dimension of meaning, typical of Western tradition and the hermeneutic paradigm, frequently prevents the whole experience of presence, which is directly related to spatial experience, according to Gumbrecht. When interpretation and the production of meaning are prioritised, there is a tendency to attenuate, or even erase, the materiality of experiences.

Considering this “material relationship with the environment” (Gumbrecht, 2012, p. 116) enabled the observation of History teachers’ performance. Spatiality is challenging, whether it be the school space, the classroom itself, or even the meanings this space acquires when traversed by the practices of the discipline of History (interactions that affect how the teaching staff performs). The physical space of the classroom has a strong influence on teachers’ performance, as it resonates with ‘colours, smells, moving and immobile forms, animated and inert’ (Zumthor, 1997, p. 164). Moreover, performance also expands this space. Everything affects and is affected by its materiality - being of the ‘order of the sensible’ (Zumthor, 2018, p. 71), that is, visible, tangible, and audible. Thus, not only does space affect performance, but performance also gives meaning to space. In line with Gumbrecht (2012), this interaction emphasises that there are multiple meanings in the classroom, including physical, intellectual, social, political, and cultural, which are inextricably linked to the teacher’s physical presence.

Therefore, the body should not be understood as a simple vehicle for transmitting knowledge, but as ‘the locus of the incorporation of that knowledge’ (Dal Bello, 2013, p. 138). This becomes evident in everyday school life, where it is possible to see that content, themes, or issues pass singularly through the bodies of teachers. Each teacher appropriates and expresses their practice in a particular way. In the relationship between body, intention, and space, teachers inhabit their teaching environments with their voices, gestures, and presence, not only occupying them with planned content, but with everything their performances narrate. Bodies moving around the classroom—walking, talking, and remaining silent—not only occupy a space but transform it. It is in this gesture that the room becomes a history classroom, in the corporeity of the teaching action.

Valuing teachers’ oral narratives—constructed from public interviews from a participatory history perspective—goes beyond a commitment to the memory of education in Brazil and also becomes a practice of public history. History teachers develop knowledge based on experience, and body-oral narratives become tools for reflection, learning, and sharing. In the interface with public history, interviews assume a relational and collective dimension in the field of oral history, reactivating ways of listening and constituting meeting spaces that broaden the participatory scope of knowledge production.

Through collaboration with researchers, teacher-narrators revisit their trajectories and often rediscover meanings for their teaching identities. The work of body-oral memory enables simultaneous teaching and learning, mobilizing the notion of shared authority (Frisch, 2016). These accounts engage in dialogue with teaching knowledge, especially that of an experiential nature (Tardif, 2002). By reminiscing about their history in front of another person, teachers broaden their understanding of the choices they have made and the challenges they have faced, triggering narrative learning that occurs over time and through sensitive listening (Goodson, 2022). In this context, interviews (in oral history work with teachers) are recognised as a space for training and transformation. The Rede Trajetórias Docentes (Teacher Trajectories Network) has strengthened this field by building public collections that link memory, training, and political action in teaching.

Goodson (2022) and Nóvoa (2022) emphasise that understanding teachers’ trajectories facilitates the analysis of the political, social, and curricular processes of the teaching profession. Life stories, by articulating the personal and the collective, offer critical tools for thinking about schools and their contemporary challenges. The work of memory, as explored through collaborative oral history and attentive to public debates, expands the possibilities for active participation and the reframing of educational practice. It is about building a history of education with teachers—and not just about them—by recognizing their voices, presence, and authorship as crucial to transformative training projects.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

This study aimed to explore the challenges and theoretical-methodological possibilities of the interface between teachers’ body-orality and public history, based on participatory research that focused on the narrative performances of teachers in history classes (recorded in audiovisual materials and photographic sequences) and the narratives produced in public oral history interviews. Basic education teachers in Rio de Janeiro, within the framework of the Rede Trajetórias Docentes (Teacher Trajectories Network), analysed their own images and statements, reflecting on their practices. The dialogical dimension of teaching, with its public narratives amid the diversity of bodies in the school space, allowed us to bring together the concepts of meaning and presence and recognise the classroom as a space for the construction of public history, in which the production and circulation of historical knowledge take place in an intercorporeal manner.

Participatory research allowed teachers to shift from being objects of analysis to being recognised as subjects who produce historical knowledge in the classroom, and it also enabled the formation of partnerships for theoretical and methodological discussions about teachers’ bodies and oralities.

As historically practised, embodied in dialogue with public history, teachers’ performances raised questions about the dichotomies of body/mind and presence/meaning. Observed and narrated by the teachers themselves, these performances revealed that history teaching is constructed in layers: through the voice, gestures, silences, and emotions that traverse the space-time of the classroom.

The concept of teacher body-orality adopted in this study is not limited to a repository of information, but rather understood as a living process, attentive to the performances and narratives that constitute educational practice. In line with Amato and Hermeto (2021), narrative performances can broaden the possibilities of listening and interpretation, articulating linguistic and paralinguistic elements — such as tone of voice, speech rhythm, gestures, and pauses — that communicate as much as words. Therefore, narrative is a way of remembering and forgetting, mediated by incarnate experiences.

The articulation between body and orality allowed us to perceive that teaching bodies are simultaneously archives, mediators, and producers of meaning and presence. Participatory research, in its ethical dimensions, offered a field conducive to expanded listening, in dialogue with subjects in basic education. The study of photographs, audiovisual materials, and oral interviews made it possible not only to observe teaching practices but also to share life stories, discomforts, desires, and bonds that traverse teaching performances.

As outlined in this study, teaching History is understood as a public and contextualised practice that goes beyond the transmission of content. It consists of bodies that carry social marks and, at the same time, trigger spaces for presence, sharing, and transformation. By understanding teaching body-orality as a public performance in the classroom, underpinned by knowledge and experiences shared through a dialogical process, it is reiterated that public history also materialises within schools, in the encounter between teachers and students, in processes of presence and meaning. This teaching body-orality catalyses voices, silences, gestures, postures, and intonations capable of recreating the past in the present. In addition, it enables the creation of support and research networks among teachers in a participatory manner, strengthening bonds and embodying political bodies in challenging times.

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• DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT:
  The entire dataset underpinning the results of this study has been published in the article itself.
• 1
  Bortolotto and Fiad (2017) describe the school as a public space where teachers and students share their understandings of the self-other relationship in the act of teaching, emphasizing aspects of ethical behaviour in dialogue with the aesthetics of the profession, seen as the living reality of teaching practice.
• 2
  In participatory knowledge production, bodies move and insert themselves into intersectionalities, since racism, sexism, classism, and colonialism operate interdependently, generating intertwined inequalities (Collins, 2022). It is therefore necessary to pay attention to the physical and political dimensions of this intersectional presence, in an ethic that values co-authorship and recognises the legitimacy of plural knowledge.
• 3
  Hooks (2017) draws attention to the class division that affects a service culture, i.e., a distinction made between jobs that involve physical labour and those that require a sedentary lifestyle. For this reason, even today, it is necessary to confront the distortion built up around teaching staff as a group that does not work.
• 4
  This implies that even though the body is sometimes relegated to the background in the educational process, it is still present in the school environment and leaves its mark on it; that is, bodies in the classroom environment are not simply at the disposal of being tamed (even though silence favours this, but in fact they are not).

• Editor in Charge:
  Ely Bergo de Carvalho

Data availability

The entire dataset underpinning the results of this study has been published in the article itself.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  01 May 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  21 May 2025
• Reviewed
  19 Oct 2025
• Accepted
  15 Aug 2025