Towards a new disciplinary code in teaching history in Argentina

GONZALEZ, MARIA PAULA

Social Studies Education in Latin America. Critical Perspective from the Global South

Routledge

Lugar: New York; Año: 2021; p. 130 - 145

From the end of the 19th century and throughout most of the 20th century, school history in Argentina had a civilizing, nationalistic, and factual effect. However, in the last 30 years, there have been many variations: New educational regulations and successive curricular changes, intense transformations of the educational system, diverse pedagogical proposals, and an important cultural and communicative mutation. In this context, where does the history go (as a school discipline)? In other words, how is history configured and transformed as a school discipline? To answer this general question, this chapter looks at two specific aspects of today’s history teaching at the secondary level: Activities and materiality. The main motivation is to show not only what endures but also what has changed and what is still in the process of mutation and invention. For this reason, history is analyzed as a discipline in the “school culture” and through the concepts of representations, practices, and appropriations typical of cultural history. Through the analysis of classroom sources, but also of normative and pedagogical sources, the reader will notice the dominant, emerging, latent, residual, and perennial elements. Overall, the work will show a slow but determined process of building a new disciplinary code for this discipline.