School inspection and strategies to set the limits of power space and professional autonomy (1912-1914)

Abstract

This article analyses resistance operations against school inspection, focusing on strategies and tactics an elementary teacher and a school headmaster use and who build their identities and fight for professional space in the first decades of the 20th century, in Montes Claros, in the State of Minas Gerais. The search occupies the Cultural History in the trend proposed by Chartier (1990) and exploits official correspondence, inspection reports, the magazine Revista do Ensino and the newspaper Gazeta do Norte as document sources. It is considered by Certeau (1998) that strategies have as reference a place and a space of their own power; while the tactic is a calculation which plays the others’ power and in the studied cases, the identification of the good teacher representation and the good teacher is enabled.