António Nóvoa

Ways of Saying, Ways of Seeingx Public Images of Teachers(19th‐20th Centuries)

The article is organized into three main sections: In the first section, inspired by the work of Martin Jay, I try to show the denigration of vision in historical thinking, suggesting that images are demanding new theoretical and methodological approaches susceptible of elucidation in their own terms. In the second section, I attempt an analytical interpretation of a collection of public images of teachers, dating from the second half of the nineteenth century, in order to show the heuristic potential of this material in the historical treatment of educational matters. Finally in the third section, I outline some trends of historiographical renewal, giving attention to the way images can help to reshape the remembering‐imagining and the space‐time relationships in the History of Education field. 1 Translated by Tom Joseph Kundert. I want to thank the collaboration given by colleagues and friends like Lynn Fendler and Sterling Fishman (United States of America), Ana Laura Lima, Cleide do Amaral and Ana Lúcia Fernandes (Brazil), Martin Lawn (United Kingdom), Jacqueline Fxeyssinet‐Dominjon and Michel Manson (France), Agustin Escolano, José Maria Hernàndez and Maria del Mar del Pozo Andres (Spain), João Carlos Paulo (Portugal), and J. ter Linden (Netherlands).

Numbers Do Not Replace Thinking

The article is organised around three themes, each one illuminating half a century of historical life: (i) the first theme relates to the second half of the nineteenth century, analysing the role of statistics in the formation of state education systems; (ii) the second theme concentrates on the first half of the twentieth century and the importance of tests, examinations and surveys in the development of ‘pedagogical modernity’; (iii) the third theme looks at the historical period of the second half of the twentieth century, and how databases began to be used as an important tool in the formulation of educational policies. To conclude, the article underlines how comparison is becoming one of the main instruments of governance in contemporary societies — in other words, how power tends increasingly to be exercised through policies that claim to be ‘obvious’, ‘natural’, ‘evidence-based’, instead of being grounded on ideological and political options.

On History, History of Education, and History of Colonial Education

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Walter Benjamin, 1940)

Empires overseas and empires at home

The history of problematisations, that is, the history of the way in which things become a problem1, was central to the definition of ISCHE XV, held in Lisbon in 1993 under the title: “Education Encounters Peoples and Cultures: The Colonial Experience (16th–20th centuries)”. The collection of papers, The Colonial Experience in Education: Historical issues and perspectives (1995), was published as the first volume of the supplementary series of Paedagogica Historica. Needless to say, the Lisbon Conference was organised in the background of the historical commemoration of 500 years since the Discoveries, mainly the “1492 celebrations”. The term “encounters” aimed to suggest a broader analysis of a theme that, for a long time, was only analysed through the lens of the influence of the colonisers on colonised peoples and cultures. But one should recognise that our intentions were more profound than the historical tools we implement to achieve them. That is, our capacity to theoretically think out the colonial experience was much more sophisticated than our capacity to write historical essays in line with these ambitions. Nevertheless, the Lisbon Conference gave rise to important discussions and debates inside ISCHE as is very well explained in the Editors’ Introduction to the present collection, edited by Joyce Goodman, Gary McCulloch and William Richardson. They explain the developments that took place namely in Sydney, first in 1999, about “Education and Ethnicity”, and then in 2005, about “Borders and boundaries in the History of Education”. Now, working on “Empires Overseas and Empires at Home” a very significant step has been taken endorsing, as written in the Editors’ Introduction, more recent developments in historiography moving away from the unidirectional flows from “centre” to “periphery” that has framed much colonial and imperial history and studies of education and empire. Adopting the same tone as in my historiographic essay published in the ISCHE XV volume2, I will try to identify three tendencies that may help to rethink educational history in the light of colonial and post-colonial issues: first, the reconceptualisation of space-time relations; second, the multiplication of spaces and the unfolding of times; third, the search for new zones of looking, fostering new meanings and understandings.

School and modernity: Knowledge, institutions and practices. Introduction

This issue of Paedagogica Historica brings together 15 articles selected from more than 200 hundred papers presented at the 25th session of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE XXV, 16–19 July 2003). It was an important decision to hold this Conference in São Paulo, Brazil, to encourage educational historiography in Latin America. The organization of the present issue reflects the main theme of the meeting, School and Modernity—Knowledge, Institutions and Practices. The articles are organized under five subheadings in function of the themes analysed by the authors: the social and political construction of educational systems; illuminations of modernity in science, innovation and religion; travel, circulation and international influences; school objects and buildings as ‘documents’ of modernity; and the emergence and worldwide diffusion of New Education. Modernity is one of the most difficult, yet necessary, concepts, and it is related to distinct understandings and even to distinct historical periods, depending on the disciplines using it. A precise definition of the term depends largely on its specific usage: a historian may use it to address the changes after the Renaissance while a political scientist may use the same term to refer to the period after the ‘Great Revolutions’ and an artist may use it to indicate the first half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, ‘modernity’ has its own ‘variations’, with differences and subtleties which lead to very different positions that are often at odds with one another. ‘Modern’, ‘modernity’, ‘modernism’ and ‘modernization’ are far too univocal, even when used in the same breath or to discuss similar issues. Finally, it is impossible to utter the word modernity, without a reference to premodern times or to postmodernism or without entering into a debate about late modernity or liquid modernity.1

Education, History of

This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 6, pp. 4317–4323,

Looking for freedom in contemporary universities: What is educational research for?

After seven intense years as President of the University of Lisbon, I had the opportunity to spend the last academic year in Brazil. It was an extraordinary experience that allowed me to live, in loco, the reality of another continent and to understand that the issues that affect us are the same, on both sides of the Atlantic, everywhere in the world. Throughout the year, while preparing this keynote address, I gained a better understanding of the insanity that is transforming our academic world.1 The signs are not new, but they are extending, day after day, before our malaise, but also before our resignation; as if things were inevitable, as if there was no alternative. The time has come to say ‘no’. This year we celebrate the centenary of the Great War. It is worth remembering that it took place, like all wars, not so much because of the bellicosity of some but rather the consent of many, a general consent of people whose victims they were going to be.2 ‘We see, we hear, and we read. We can’t ignore’ – these verses by Sophia de Mello Breyner, sung during the struggles for freedom in Portugal, explain my decision to use the time granted to me at this Conference not for a ‘conventional’ keynote address, but rather to join my voice to the appeals and manifestos that are fighting against the dominant trends in universities, that are fighting for a new organization of academic life.

Comparing Southern Europe: the difference, the public, and the common

ABSTRACT After criticising the solutionist drift, this article argues for the need for three gestures, in order to build a more problematised Comparative Education: estrangement, that is, the ability to see the unknown and therefore to distance ourselves from what is already known; intercession, that is, the ability to perceive the importance of mediators; communication, that is, the ability to work in common with others, from different positions and perspectives. Based on these three gestures, the article argues for a Comparative Education that seeks to develop three lines of work: to build a science of difference, rather than a ‘solution’ that tends to homogenise educational directions throughout the world; to strengthen the public space, instead of contributing to the authority of experts; to revitalise the common, instead of yielding to the current fragmentation, in which we interact only with what is similar to us. The arguments are not limited to Southern Europe, as they intend to open up a set of general questions about the meaning of comparative work in education.

Firmar a posição como professor, afirmar a profissão docente

The first section of the article discusses the need to think about teacher training as professional education. For this, it is fundamental to build a new institutional place, so that the profession occupy its place within the training institutions. Between the two sections, it is argued that training should consolidate the position of each person as a professional as well as the position of the profession itself. In the second section, the need to reorganize the place of teacher education is discussed, unfolding the concept of position in five movements: personal disposition, professional interposition, pedagogical composition, research recomposition and public exposition. The text concludes with a coda, which stresses the importance of the profession to the education of teachers and of teacher education to the profession.

Em busca da liberdade nas universidades: para que serve a pesquisa em educação?

This text is a transcript of the keynote address delivered in Porto, at the European Conference on Educational Research (4 September 2014). It begins with four stories that are symptoms of the current corrosion of universities and research, which we cannot ignore. Then, in the second section, three words, plus one, are presented to criticize the ideologies of “modernization” that are dominating the university world: excellence, entrepreneurship, employability, and Europeanization. At the end, some conclusions are drawn for educational research, advocating the need to strengthen: (i) dialogical practices and cultures of collegiality; (ii) methods of diversity and convergence; (iii) educational development in a framework of openness and social commitment. The first and the last word of this text is freedom, because without it there is no thought, no knowledge, no education, that is, there is no university.