Public history, corporality, and participatory research with history teachers

The article reflects the theoretical-methodological challenges and possibilities of the interface between teaching body-orality and public history, based on participatory research with narrative performances of teachers in History classes. The methodology was developed through an investigation conducted with three basic education teachers in Rio de Janeiro between 2022 and 2023, in collaboration with the Rede Trajetórias Docentes, utilising public interviews and participatory observation of the audiovisual materials and photographic sequences produced. The oral history work, where participating teachers analyzed their own images and speeches, produced narratives about their practice, was added to the study of classroom performances, understood as a dialogical space for teaching and mediation in public history. Thus, it was possible to bring together the Gumbrechtian concepts of meaning and presence in a dialogical and intercorporeal movement that favored the understanding of the classroom as a space of public history. This understanding extended to the research process. Paying attention to their gestures and voices, the teachers developed a participatory methodological approach to memory work, which also favored the shift from the idea of teachers as objects of analysis to subjects who construct reflections on their practice and on the public dimensions of history.

KEYWORDS:
public history; body-orality; participatory research