Travessias, experiências e sensibilidades de professores de História no Museu da Cidade de Governador Valadares e no Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto/MG

Abstract

This study investigates the pedagogical and emotional experiences that emerge from the walks taken by History teachers through the exhibitions at the Museum of the City of Governador Valadares/MG (MCGV) and the Abílio Barreto Historical Museum (MHAB) in Belo Horizonte/MG. In this research, we understand city historical museums as institutions with excellent potential for fostering learning and historical sensibility. Throughout the process of walking alongside the teachers in the MHAB and MCGV, we (re)discover alternative paths and a closer connection with feelings, emotions, and lived space-time experiences. Thus, accepting that knowledge, critical reflection, and sensibility are integral parts of the museum’s role ensures that the ideas and the bodies on display also become simulacra of the physical, material, and corporeal reality of life. To achieve the central objective of this research, we adopted a theoretical-methodological approach by combining principles and procedures of qualitative research. The study was structured in five data and information collection phases: literature review; field observation (analysis of the exhibitions at MHAB and MCGV); document research in the museum archives; analysis of the Educational Departments and their actions at both museums (including interviews with the staff responsible for these activities); and "walking interviews" with History teachers through the museum exhibitions. Throughout the investigative process, it became evident that, despite the museums having distinct institutional paths and historiographical perspectives, the experiences of the teachers led them to narrate their pedagogical practices, life stories, and knowledge, using the displayed objects and settings as tools. The findings of this study also revealed that museum spaces can serve as fertile ground for reimagining time and proposing new directions for History teaching. When teachers engage as collaborators of the museum—not just by bringing their students for a visit but also by contributing to a shift in the scope of activities and actions developed by these institutions— they help reshape the processes of historical knowledge construction within their field.