The museum in History teaching

Abstract

The article aims to reflect on the museum space as a locus for initial teacher training and on the teaching and learning process from field studies carried out at the Solar Monjardim Museum. For this purpose, we sought to investigate Pedagogy students’ knowledge during their training as a device that trigger practices focused on the use of museum spaces, memory and heritage, intertwining sensitivities and critical analysis of their social, material, and cultural experiences. In the search for mapping and founding alternatives that provide sensitive views of historical-cultural aspects present in museums, the qualitative research methodology based on cultural history was used. In the preparation of this text, one used fragments of the reports presented in the discipline of History: Content and Methodology, product of the classroom debates about the observation of the museum space, in addition to the production of the exhibition entitled Leitura de objetos museais [Reading of museum objects]. These instruments have revealed that it is possible to go beyond the sensitive look at objects without disregarding the rigor of their content. If, before, the act of looking at the object, whether in the museum, in the classroom or in everyday life, was a contemplative act or within a supposed neutrality, we proposed, based on our educational practice, an interpretative, creative, sensitive reading, with the expansion of meaning, in a construction process that is not restricted only to questions and answers, but that can start from them and go beyond, giving the History teaching an orientation for practical life.