The formation of the young people’s social consciousness in the horizon of history education

Abstract

In the project “Historical Consciousness – Theory and Practices” has been exploring the narratives about the contemporary world, in the first phase of those studies the participants were a group of preservice trainees from three portuguese universities; in subsequent phases, the participants were youngsters attending the final years of compulsory schooling, from several regions in Portugal, Brazil, and Mozambique. The inductive analysis suggested that the youngsters reveal a relatively well-grounded national identity, showing no signs of xenofobia. However, the world accounts given by Portuguese and Mozambican youngsters appear much less substantiated than the national ones, contrary to those of the Brazilians, who account for the history of their country and the world at the same level, interrelating them. In the accounts written by Portuguese and Brazilian students only a few individual characters appear, just a few ‘villains’ emerging. But, if the youngsters in Brazil and Mozambique show to be keen to intervene in their time.