Historical thinking of young students about Brazil: an analysis from the contributions of Historical Education

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to understand the historical thinking of young students about Brazil. From the theoretical-methodological contributions of Historical Education, we analyze the substantive and second-order concepts mobilized to answer the following question: Considering the news that you obtained through news programs, magazines, the internet or other means of communication, how would you explain current situation in Brazil? The responses of the 111 participants were analyzed according to Grounded Theory assumptions. With this method, we identified different concepts that were categorized into a dendrogram composed of three classes. This process was aided by IRAMUTEQ, software that enables different types of textual analysis based on the frequency of words. The results implied the understanding of agents, entities, among other factors related to the idea of “crisis” (class 3). In addition, students used explanations, based on “causes” (class 1) and “consequences” (class 2) for the said substantive concept.

Keywords:
Historical Education; History Teaching; Historical Thinking; Students