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General information

Code:
12303
Main Scientific area:
  • Education
Regime:
Half-yearly
ECTS:
5
Teaching type:
Presential
Language of instruction:
Portuguese

Contact Hours

Autonomous work:
95  hours
Classes:
15  hours  -  Theoretical
30  hours  -  Theory Practice

Objectives of education

Master students prefer that more attention may be given to contemporaneous times. Notwithstanding, this curricular unit will, in a systematic way, be about the most salient tendencies of the more fundamental pedagogical trends since Antiquity. After the entrance of the Western countries of the postmodern age, with the resulting consequence of the fall of the metanarratives, pedagogy was faced with new challenges.
The so called Critical Pedagogies, originated in the theoretical reflections of Adorno and Horkheimer (School of Frankfurt) and having Paulo Freire as its inspiring pedagogue, highlighted in an emphatic way that the curricular and pedagogical knowledges could be studied so that it would enhance autonomy and emancipation, whatever the pedagogical work involved. A good balance at the level of the environment, of the societies (justice and equity) and the subjectivities is sought, that is, a balance that will promote a true ecosophy (Félix Guattari).

Key learning outcomes

- To characterize the main features of the pedagogical trends in the Western culture from the Antiquity, to contemporaneous times;
- To highlight the connection between the pedagogical and the political;
- To circumscribe the dilemmas of the contemporaneous Pedagogy;
- To question texts (and also films and videos) that may help to understand the development of the educational and pedagogical thought;
- To describe the fundamental trends of the western pedagogical tradition;
- To reflect upon some of the great issues explored by the western pedagogical tradition (for ex., the relation between the teacher and the student - or the educator and the learning person, the idea of educability, the relation between pedagogy and politics);
- To debate the current nature of the professional responsibilities of educators in the way they establish the fundamental connections between education and the lives of each woman and man.

Program summary

1. Conceptual and epistemological considerations.
2. Pedagogy in Greco-Roman Antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in Renaissance, in the 17th century, in the Age of llluminism (or Enlightenment), in the 19th and 20th centuries, between the end of the 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st.
3. The emergence of new educational questions
3.1. The crisis of Pedagogy: an education without foundations:
3.1.1. First attacks: end of the XIX century/the 1950s;
3.1.2. The hardening of the critic: the 1960s and 1970s;
3.1.3. Postmodernity, lack of “foundations” and education.
3.2. Critical Pedagogies and the tension between “absent and present voices":
3.2.1. Paulo Freire and the pedagogy of autonomy and hope;
3.2.2. The question of hegemony and of the transforming intellectual work;
3.2.3. The male domination, the gender questions and the feminist pedagogies.
3.3. How to educate after Auschwitz: death and the “banality of evil"
3.4. In defence of an ecosophical pedagogic

Essential bibliography

Boto, C. (Org.) (2019). Clássicos do pensamento pedagógico: Olhares entrecruzados. EDUFU. 

Fernex, A. (2020). Créer l’école. Les institutions scolaires selon Bentham et Condorcet. Hermann. 

Gauthier, C., & Tardif, M. (Dir.) (1996). La pédagogie. Théories et pratiques de l’Antiquité à nos jours. Gaëtan Morin. 

Hofstetter, R. (2010). Genève: creuset des sciences de l’éducation (fin du XIXe siècle – primière moitié du XXe siècle). Librairie Droz. 

Houssaye, J. (Dir.) (1996). Pédagogues contemporains. Armand Colin.

Teaching methods

In what concerns the hours of contact with the teacher, an interactive methodological register will be privileged, mostly supported by the discussion of texts, as well as of some films, videos and iconography, previously defined (at the beginning of the course). The independent work of the students will be supported and guided by plans previously negotiated with the teacher. Complementing the previous periods, it should be noted that “contact hours” will always have in mind a permanent questioning of an epistemological and conceptual nature, which, from a socio-historical perspective, favours contextual specificity in diachrony, but also does not forget comparative, or connected history, which refers to other universes or societies, which do not fit into the European context – this scale exercise can be carried out at the level of a country, in a logic between the national and the local.
This critical approach implies that it is possible to think and understand synchrony, bearing in mind mobility, circulation and transference of pedagogical ideas, key elements in the formation of national pedagogical trajectories. With this methodology, it is intended that students acquire skills that allow them to think about the times of creation of educational systems, but it is also intended to promote dialogue and cooperation between students, as requirements in the construction of knowledge. In addition to the basic bibliographic references, specific bibliographies will be provided, based on the particularities of the scientific areas, biographical dimensions and historical periods.

Assessment methods

The evaluation is periodical, as students analyse and discuss texts in every class, in addition to videos and films. This kind of evaluation includes: a) Group project work - 50% and b) Individual reflection - 50%. The exam, whenever necessary, will follow the rules stipulated at the University of Minho (RAUM).
The pedagogical dynamics intended in the “group project work” configure the groups to define the objects and objectives of the investigation that pass through their areas of academic training, and that maintain the guiding thread of a professional identity. The plurality of students' backgrounds (Music, History, Philosophy, Informatics, ...) also allows for the design of research projects with a strong interdisciplinary nature, or the more substantive treatment (probably a more micro approach) of particular themes of a disciplinary area.
As for individual reflection, students are encouraged to essentially seek biography of established, “emerging” and “unknown” pedagogues. In these last two cases, it is encouraged that the reflection itself is a biographical attempt with the potential of being able to visualize many professional and intellectual paths that punctuate the pedagogical contemporary. These two exercises (“group project” and “individual reflection”) also presuppose that there is a preferential interconnection between object, objectives and actors in order to understand the intimate connection between pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices, sometimes in the sense of If innovations are unravelled, sometimes how the dissemination of a thought and multiple receptions took place, sometimes, finally, how the pedagogical heritage is understood.