This article incorporates the results of the research made for a doctoral degree which examines pedagogical manuals, published in Portugal and Brazil between 1870 and 1970, in a comparative socio-historical perspective. The corpus is composed of 80 titles on didactics, pedagogy, methodology and teaching practice of which 25 are Portuguese and 55 are Brazilian. These books summarise the educational bibliography and explain to future teachers the different elements of school culture disseminated in diverse parts of the world. Its aim is to compare references mentioned in the pages of these manuals in order to understand how they were used in the construction of conceptions on the teaching profession and to comprehend the forms of circulation and appropriation of knowledge produced in different places, times and areas of knowledge. The history of the pedagogical manuals set out in this text emphasizes, however, the ways in which these books collaborated in spreading a model of school which is known worldwide today.
pedagogical manuals; worldwide diffusion of the school; comparative education