THE MEMORY OF OLD AGE AS EPISTEMOLOGIAL AND POLITICAL INSURGENCY IN THE CRITICAL CURRICULUM: CONTRIBUTIONS OF ORAL HISTORY TO DECOLONIAL TEACHER TRAINING

Abstract

This article analyzes the contributions of older adults’ memories to teacher education within the field of critical curriculum studies. The objective is to understand how life narratives of institutionalized elderly women may contribute to problematizing technicist rationalities in teacher education and expanding the epistemological references of teacher formation. This is a theoretical-empirical study grounded in social memory studies, oral history, and decolonial perspectives on curriculum. The research was developed through the project “Baú da Memória” (Memory Chest), carried out at Vila Vicentina in Lavras, Minas Gerais, Brazil, involving conversation circles mediated by evocative objects and narrative interviews with nine elderly women residing in the institution. The narratives were analyzed through the perspective of critical oral history and the sociology of absences and emergences, seeking to identify meanings attributed to experience, memory, and education. The results indicate that incorporating these narratives into teacher education enables the recognition of historically marginalized knowledge, fostering processes of epistemic justice and expanding the understanding of curriculum as a space of meaning-making and symbolic disputes. It is concluded that intergenerational dialogue can constitute an important formative device for critical and context-sensitive pedagogical practices.