The oral testimonies of former teachers about school and Estado Novo in Portugal from a sociodynamic perspective of memory

Abstract

The historiography of education has increasingly used oral testimonies to understand school culture and the social microcosm of a school in its historical and social dynamics – as, through oral testimonies, past experiences can be evoked and resignified in the narrated present. This paper thus aims to explore oral testimonies of former Portuguese teachers about their memories of school during the Estado Novo using a set of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2017. These interviews explored teachers’ perceptions of their teaching career, childhood and the school’s historical, political and social context during the Estado Novo. The data were then clustered into “Individual accounts of professional experiences” and “Memories of childhood from Estado Novo”. Taking a sociodynamic perspective of memory, the analysis shows an ambivalent perception of the past with regard to the political, economic and social contexts. For example, although some perceptions were negative when talking about discipline in the classroom and the punishment of students, participants also pointed to the higher level of respect given to the teaching profession. These autobiographical memories show that oral testimonies allow a mental journey in time, combining assumptions of episodic memory with semantic and autobiographical memory as the experiences resignify the past in the present, revealing a sociodynamic perspective of memory.