Abstract:

In Portugal, in the 80s of last century, in the context of national education system reform, it was designed and implemented, in public and private schools, a project called Cultural School Project. The study now presented was intended to study this Cultural School Project, as a way of thinking about education from the standpoint of the person the student is. The study was carried out using subjective and objective memory of the Cultural School Project (1986-1990). The subjective memory was recovered through two interviews, open and non-structured, to two protagonists of the Project implementation, on a school and on the central structure of the Ministry of Education, who tutored the Project.

The objective memory resulted from analysis of the legal documents and other documents produced by the commission of national education system reform.

Given the nature of the phenomenon under study, we carried out a qualitative analysis of the collected data, inspired by Grounded Theory Approach. Data analysis showed two main aspects - the historical perspective and the significance that this experience had for actors involved in it. The analysis of open interviews revealed five dimensions: "how did it start", "innovation", "teacher training", "outcomes" and "how did it end". The innovation category, intentional core of educational reform, in this study is cross-sectional, being present either in legislation or, in a clear way, in the narratives of the interviewees. This category was conceived as a gradual transformation of the educational system. Change should come from an ongoing work over the living core of tradition.

Keywords:

Cultural School, innovation, memory(ies), multidimensional organization.