Geography teaching, curriculum and identity: the role of physical themes in the construction of the ideia of nation in Brazil

• Grant number: 16/11817-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2016
• End date: June 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Rafael Straforini
• Grantee: Thiago Manhães Cabral
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this research project is to understand how the curriculum of the geography in the school, in the political context of the Brazilian Nationalist State of president Vargas (1930-1945), contributed to the construction of national identity based on territory, from the approaches of physical geography in the school. Thus, we believe that this analysis of the functions and proposals of the geography in the school is important because it contributes to reflection on the role of pedagogical practices in geography when working the Brazilian space, these practices which, in some aspects, preserve up until current days. We used the methodological tools of qualitative research, focusing on analysis of documents and teaching materials. We intend, in the end, elucidate the construction process of Brazilian identity in geography lessons in the school, identifying the impressions of guidelines and educational materials produced in the proposed period, with special emphasis on language, cartographic treatment and the imagistic descriptions that forms the representations of the physical themes in lessons. (AU)