Project description
The project ‘Race’ and Africa in Portugal: a study on history textbooks aimed at producing an interdisciplinary analysis of the (re)production of Eurocentrism in Key Stage 3 textbooks (pupils aged 12 to 15), considering their contexts of production, dissemination and consumption. The analysis focused on the ways in which Eurocentrism – as a paradigm of knowledge production and interpretation – naturalises the current absence of the History of Africa and invisibilises racism. The project was carried out between September 2008 and February 2012, and was centred in three moments: 1) Analysis of textbooks and education policy; 2) Interviews with diverse actors; 3) Participatory workshops. Avoiding an approach that overemphasises the interpretative aspects of texts or that places schools within a political and social vacuum, the project will engage with a variety of actors involved in the process of production and circulation of textbooks, namely: historians, university lecturers and students, publishers, authors, policy-makers, representatives of parents’ associations and social organisations, journalists, teachers and students. A study with some common aims was carried out in Brazil, at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), coordinated by Nilma L. Gomes.