The Initial formation of the History Teacher in Brazil: Topics, Reflections and Challenges

Abstract

There is a relative consensus regarding the specialized bibliography on the fact that the book is still a tremendous and powerful work tool for teacher in the elementary and high school in Brazil. Due to the geographical dimension of Brazil, this article concentrates its research interests in the federal universities in the Amazonian region of Brazil in order to understand how the text books are analyzed during the initial formation process of teachers. As a methodological option, this research employed a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the curricular arrays of the courses offered in the federal universities of the Amazonian region of Brazil. We analyzed the place occupied by the teaching of history in these universities,  and, specifically, the role played by the debate on the history text books in the said programs. For that, the research analyzed mandatory courses dedicated to the study of the history teaching: the texts books, their objective and their workload. The analysis showed that, in the studies degrees, the classical topic division still prevails under a quadripartite Eurocentric model and that there is no consensus on the place occupied by the debate on the teaching if history. Furthermore, the research identifies an almost complete absence of studies on text books.