The History Taught as an Object of Inquiry in the 1990s: Silma do Carmo Nunes’s Scholarly Trajectory

Abstract

The interview with Professor Silma do Carmo Nunes (ESEBA, currently Cap/UFU) illuminates the emergence of research on History Teaching during the 1990s, a period marked by sharp precariousness and the complex challenges of conducting investigation in Graduate Studies. From this trajectory, we observe the demands of the field for structured methodologies, its own instruments, and academic recognition. The act of investigating one's own pedagogical practice stood in opposition to the logic of purely instrumental teacher training, criticized under the influence of theories by Donald Schön, Maurice Tardif, and António Nóvoa. Amid political and epistemic adversities, Silma demonstrated that basic education schools are territories for knowledge production and political articulation between school and university, emphasizing that this collective and institutional mobilization culminated in the organization, in September 1993 at the Federal University of Uberlândia, of the 1st Meeting of History Teaching Researchers, under the theme "History teaching as a research object," a fundamental milestone in overcoming the traditional model of Social Studies and in consolidating scientific research in the field of teaching in the country.