EPISTEMOLOGY OF HISTORY AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH EDUCATION: STORIES OF HISTORY ON CONTEMPORARY PORTUGUESE STUDENTS.

Abstract

Exploring the construction of youngsters’ historical consciousness has been one essential target in recent research in history education, particularly in Brazil and Portugal. Within this scope, a study with 82 Portuguese young people attending school year nine was carried out. It was proposed to the students to account for the history of their country and of the world in the last hundred years. The students’ productions, collected in 2010- 2011, were analysed in the light of an epistemological framework that allowed to make inferences about senses of identity, notions of change in history, and individual postures in their lives, upon narrative structure of the individual productions and nuclear messages across those productions of the young people. Studies like this one aim to make a contribution as a diagnosis and useful clues to consistent practices of history teaching. This can be fostered by applying models of continuing teacher education that promote a profile of the teacher as a social researcher.