Notes for a history of the teaching children’s literature in teacher’s formation courses for elementary school in Brazil and in Portugal

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to produce a history of the teaching children's literature in Brazil and in Portugal and to understand aspects of the history of school subjects and school cultures in these countries. For this, we focus on the requirements for the teacher’s formation courses for elementary school in São Paulo State, Brazil, and Portugal after 1950.Through analysis of official documents it was observed among other aspects that, although created in different historical moments, the school subject ‘Children’s Literature’ followed the movement for the construction of an ideal of teacher formation, coherent with the concept of childhood, with the movement of the children’s literary production and with the systematization process of the discourse about this literary genre in each country. Furthermore, this teaching was associated with the dissemination of specific ways of thinking about children's literature in both countries, contributing to current practices of teacher’s formation.