Becoming a history teacher in Brazil: challenge the present and dream the future

Abstract

The paper analyzes the challenges and aspirations of becoming a professor of history education in Brazil. The authors are professors who supervise pre-service teaching in a public university, and they draw from their work’s experiences elements to reflect about teacher education in this area. Based on post-structuralists’ and anti-colonialists’ perspectives and in the intersectionality, we present the main public policies, decrees and regulations that govern teacher education in Brazil, and a review on doctoral thesis published in the last five years. We also analyze ethical and political aspects of the formative paths, and we defend the importance of the social differences in history teachers’ education, in particular gender, race, class, generation, and sexuality. Last, we narrate our experiences in educating history teachers. In this dialogue between the life and the law, we consider our practices as a constant challenge, but not to imprison us in goals, old dichotomies and deadlines. The proposal is to work as someone who dreams: to let flow the discourses, the different stories that postpone the end of the world and transit through all the places.