Representações e ensino de História: imagens de alunos do ensino médio sobre a escravidão negra no Brasil

Abstract

The object of this work is the social representations of high school students on black slavery in Brazil in its possible relations with the socio-economic and cultural contexts in which they belong to. New ideas and concepts of the New Cultural History, such as the imaginary and social representation, as well as the cultural appropriation and practices guided the construction of this object and its analysis. Concerning the issue of black slavery in Brazil, we present the bulk of the historiographical debate since the nineteenth century, as well as the main slavery images broadcasted by other means and existing instruments in our society. In order to conduct the research, four classes of the 2nd year of high school of Colégio Estadual Central, in Belo Horizonte, on the responsibility of the same History teacher and belonging to a very heterogeneous socio-economic and cultural context were selected. These students participated in classes on African slavery in Brazil, consonantly with the new emerged concepts, mostly from the 80s in Brazil, and in many aspects based on innovation elements of history teaching. We adopted a set of methodological procedures and data collection instruments for the identification and analysis of representations. The students were asked to perform an activity which consisted in the production of a fictional story based on images of black slavery in Brazil selected by themselves from a universe of 38 images which were available for analysis. Moreover, the subjects answered a socio-economic and cultural questionnaire and the class teacher was interviewed as well. From the methodological perspective of content and textual analysis we performed reading and examination of the students narratives to build a conceptual map. This map served as a guide for our analysis, allowing us to identify similarities and differences between the representations and create categories of analysis from the identification of nucleation areas of the stories told. From the categories created, we tried to characterize the social groups that were part of each of them. Our analysis, besides other conclusions, allowed us to identify among the majority of students the perpetuation of a vision of the slave victimizer and among a few students the presence of evidences which indicates a more critical view, which considers the complexity of slave life in Brazil in line with the new historiography about the theme. Our study also allowed us to identify the presence of a variety of representations from all socio-economical and cultural groups. Our results suggest the need for further investigations regarding the relationship between representations and social practices and broadcasting instruments of representation of the historical knowledge.