Reflective exercises at University in two stages: literature architecting pedagogical spaces

Abstract

This article aims to build some approximations between literature and education based on the suggestions provided by the idea of pedagogical spaces developed by Carlos Reis, professor at the University of Coimbra. Considering the constructive effects of the literary space in the representations of the school enviorment and, therefore, the various refractions of this in the training of teachers, two hypotheses will be discussed, that have guided the forms of teaching in Pedagogy and Bachelor’s degrees, taking the literature as a structural element. In the first stage, it is the proposal to read “The Tongue Set Free”, by Elías Canetti, and the subsequent development of essays in which the students themed various dimensions of the educational processes. In the second stage the creation of teaching practices through the reading of fictional works, is presented. Although the pedagogical exercises where implemented in different periods- the first between the
second half of the 1980s and the 2000s and the second in 2021- they indicate the relevance of the approximations between fictional, memoiristic and/or autobiographical works and the education, allowing the creation of links between traces of the biographies of the subjects involved in the described activities, their educational trajectories and their personal categories of perception and appreciation of reality. The sharing of meanings attributed to the classroom, to the students, to the educators, among others, were fruitful for teaching in the initial training. Furthermore, the exercises made teaching a creative activity that provisionally established pedagogical spaces.