The construction of an object of historical knowledge. From archive to text – investigation into the history of educational institutions

Abstract

Taken in their specificity, the educational phenomena refer to an action which inserts itself into a context and evolves in a given direction, comprising a materiality, a materialization as well as a substantivation; a relationship of communication, otherness and transmission between agents and subjects; a projection and an appropriation. Summarizing, we could admit that a historiographic treatment which envisages this complexity, understanding it and explaining it in a critical and integrated way, translates itself into an epistemology which correlates the contexts with the material and objective structures and conditions of production; with the agencing and mobilization of the agents; with the involvement, projection and appropriation of the subjects. The educational action involves consequences and reflexivity through the reference to spatial, historical, social and cultural frames of their intervenients, namely subjects and agents. An epistemology with this complexity is symbolized and written based on the concepts of materiality, representation and appropriation, concepts which favor and constitute a heuristics and hermeneutics that make it possible to conceptualize, interpret and translate (to inform, interpret and narrate) the substantivation, the functioning and the historical relationship between the different material, human and cultural elements involved. I will discuss these issues in the complex and multidimensional paradigmatic framework of the educational institutions, focused on as the object which constitutes a totality in organization and evolution. I will adopt a theoreticalpractical register, searching for archival, hermeneutical and discursive references in this specific investigative framework of the history of the school institutions and educational practices.

Key words: history of educational institutions, hermeneutics, archives.