ABS326 - Challenges of collaborative research in a cultural-historical perspective: the relevance of the relationship between school and community and the multiple meanings of environment

For the purpose of this presentation, we will focus on the challenges of two projects developed in São Paulo, Brazil, that are deeply connected with the researched realities. The first one had as basic aim the investigation of the relationship between memory, narrative and experience in accounts produced by people from a school setting and the local community. Articulated to it, in a collaborative work, extension projects were developed, with the active participation of the school team and the acknowledgment of school and community history. The second project is being carried out in two Unified Educational Centres (CEUs) – complexes built in peripheral areas for educational, cultural, sportive and leisure activities –, with the aim of exploring the importance of school practices, spaces and context, related to narrative, memory and imagination practices. In an interdisciplinary approach, we try to analyse the conception and use of these spaces; to create opportunities for the arising of narratives about the environment and the local communities, and to apprehend in the accounts social practices of memory and imagination. The main challenges for the related researches have been to entwine diverse methodological perspectives and to provide the collaborative character of the research, ensuring that the work can consider the point of view of the subjects involved. The studies are based on the assumptions of cultural-historical perspective and explore the possibilities of analysis mainly from the concepts of “semiotic mediation” and “social situation of development” (Vygotsky), considering context as a dynamic, relational, meaningful and interpretative dimension.