Revista UNINPAHU No 9

24 Pp 23 - 31. Nº 9, octubre de 2013
Introduction
In the article titled “Lessons on Teaching and
Learning in History from Paul’s Pen” (2000),
Leinhardt (2000) introduces the notion of
‘educational opportunity’ as a mix of significant
learning experiences. Inquiring about what might
be taught and learned in classrooms, and what
might be the best way to go through in reaching
a really fruitful history instruction at school,
she opens up an important discussion upon
issues of meaningful pedagogical experiences.
‘Educational opportunity’ in this sense calls our
attention to the potential value and meaning of
the so-called informal learning instruction.
In the practice of teaching history Leinhardt
(2000) pursues the question: “Instructionally,
what are the richest mixes of educational
processes, such as physical experiences (field
trips, films), textual analysis and integration
(reading and writing from historical sources),
and performance (debates, theatre) in which
students should engage?” (p. 224). As a history
teacher, she is interested in looking for productive
combinations of educational processes, textual
analysis, and performance-events that students
could be involved in, so teachers can get the best
instructional benefit.
Reflecting on the in-classroom teaching-learning
praxis, she states that there are many other spaces
where educational experiences and significant
learning can take place. She referrers to the
venues of museums and mass media (Leinhardt
,2000, p.243), to cite one or two examples, but
Historical National Archives visits could be
included in the list as well, as a resourceful
venue for history learning involving rewarding
pedagogical strategies.
This was a research project that explored the
kind of pedagogical possibilities that collective
remembrance mediated by practices of drama
in education could offer to the work of social
memory. At stake in the study was a dramaremembrance
project that attempted to link
significant historical learning with critical
remembrance through the classroom drama
praxis. We worked on the possibility of the school,
and particularly the drama class, as a terrain
within which the formation of a community of
memory was possible, and a process of drama
linked with personal and collective remembrance
could take place.
It was a collective-collaborative research process
in a pedagogical environment in which to
work out the ethical accountabilities of the
exploration of the past. The memory work we
were particularly interested in was comprised
of the social acknowledgement of previously
forgotten histories and their contemporary rearticulation
in specific social and political settings;
the class, the school, and the community. From
an artistic and an educational point of view, the
project attempted to offer alternative pedagogies,
different ways of learning to make history and
social studies curriculum more relevant to
students and educational institutions.
The research was implemented in the Normal-
Distrital Maria Montessori School, in Bogotá,
Colombia-South America. Participantresearchers
worked through questions regarding
the pedagogical meaning of personal memories,
and the public remembrance of the story of the
Colombian Afro-descendant Manuel Saturio
Valencia, one of the last prisoners to be executed
by the State before capital punishment was
eliminated from Colombia in 1910. Saturio’s
account as many other Colombian minority
groups’ accounts, still struggles to overcome a
legacy of oblivion and historical erasure, since the
story of his life and subsequent execution remains
little known in the collective Colombian history.
A visit to the Colombian National History
Archive was set up as a final research step to
facilitate participants gaining direct contact
with archival documents, particularly a 1907
telegram announcing Saturio’s execution. It was
a research strategy chosen as an experiential
way to give students a more vivid sense of the
reality of the past.
Trajectories of the touch of
the past
“Lo que más me gusto, que no aprendimos
con la cátedra tradicional sino que también