Teacher Education and Written Culture: History Of Libraries, Books, and Practices (2024 – 2029)

Convenors:
Ana Laura Lima, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil.
Jordi Garcia Farrero, Universitat de Barcelona, España.
Gerardo Garay, Universidad de la República Uruguay.
Ana Paz, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.

Description and Main Objects:

Teachers’ identification with reading is as evident as the connection between reading practices and school in all stages and across all the modern schooling systems. Supposedly, teachers are people who read a lot and place great value on reading. If we consider the different stages of schooling, we observe that an important part of the work carried out by early childhood education teachers consists of reading stories to children. In the first years of elementary school, teaching reading and writing occupies the center of their work. In the following years, teachers make students read aloud, recommend and require readings, and evaluate the quality of the students’ reading. Teachers are expected to contribute to training readers and creating a taste for literature among students (BOTO, 2019) Moreover, the relationship between reading and writing in the modern schooling subverts the original primacy of the oral over the written word: writing is henceforth considered the centre of assessment and reading comes as a means for writing – even if there is no real entaglement between both (Ó, 2019). Although reading and literature have been extensively studied in the field of history of education, there is still much to be investigated about the history of teachers’ relationship with reading and literature and its self-referenciality – both as means for self-identification and for an autobiographical perspective -, whether the history of readings done by teachers or the history of recommended readings to teachers (LIMA, MENEZES, 2022).

From Cultural History, we approach the materiality of reading and, by extension, written culture, because it is argued that what is printed in book form is a historical artifact that presents content inside. It is true that there are antecedents in other disciplines, such as German reception aesthetics. Therefore, it is important to highlight that most pedagogical literature studies reading and books to understand the circulation of ideas between different territories, to know who their recipients were and, as a consequence of this, their final appropriation. It is worth remembering that this dialogue with what is written has been part of political culture since the 18th century, which combines solitary but also shared reflection through writing and printing (CHARTIER, CAVALLO, PETRUCCI, JESÚS ANTONIO MARTÍNEZ)

This SWG proposes to focus on the theme of reading as an action deeply identified with the teachers’ profession, investigating and problematizing issues such as the following: teachers’

readings at different times; titles present in their personal libraries; teachers’ reading objectives and practices; readings prescribed within the differentsubjects of teacher training courses; libraries of normal schools, pedagogy courses and other degrees; (BITTENCOURT, C; SILVA, C. M. N.; BOTO, C., 2021); formation of book collections aimed at updating and improving teachers; relationships between the readings done by teachers, inside and outside professional preparation courses, and their written productions, in the form of course plans, classes and published texts.

In addition to these fundamental questions, it would be possible to investigate how the lives and jobs of teachers were narrated in biographies and autobiographies, becoming, in turn, readings, including for the teachers themselves. Regarding autobiographies, it would also be possible to consider, should self-education projects be of interest to the history of education? In the case of teacher training, it is common to find a demanding individual training project. It could be added that the decisions made in relation to the readings, the attitude with which one reads, the places where one reads, etc. They build representations about what should be “known” and what should be “ignored” (BURKE, 2023). It would also be worth asking how readings by teachers and for teachers crossed temporal and/or geographic boundaries (VIDAL, BOTO, 2018). Which readings became classics read by many generations of teachers? (CATANI, 2008). What others were translated into different languages and became mandatory references in diverse countries in each period?

We understand that reflection on these and other issues from a historical perspective is especially relevant today, when there appears to be a decline in reading practices in a world that is becoming increasingly focused on new audiovisual technologies.

This SWG aims to bring together work in the following thematic areas:

  • Teachers’ readings and reading practices.
  • Readings recommended in teacher training courses.
  • Teacher libraries.
  • Libraries and collections aimed at updating and improving teacher training.
  • Teachers’ readings in their written production.
  • Autobiographies and biographies of teachers.
  • Readings by teachers and for teachers across temporal and geographic boundaries.

Keywords: Reading Practices. Books for Teachers. Libraries. Teacher training

Actions planned for SWG’s five years of activity:

  • Holding an annual symposium, with a view to encouraging discussion among researchers involved with the general theme of the SWG and identifying issues of common interest, which can guide the call for articles for the next ISCHE meeting.
  • Call for papers; reading and selection of submitted abstracts; organization and coordination of working sessions dedicated to the SWG within the scope of ISCHE.
  • Organization of a conversation session on the SWG theme with Early Career Researchers registered at ISCHE, online to encourage participation.
  • Organization of a special issue on a relevant topic investigated within the SWG to be submitted to Paedagogica Historica or another international journal on the History of Education.
  • As a final product, it is planned a book that brings together a set of selected works on the general theme of SWG for possible publication in the ISCHE Global Stories of Education Book Series.