Resources mediating the history of primary schooling during the normalization period in the Czech Republic (1969-1989)
Author(s):
Michal Šimáně (presenting / submitting) Jiri Zounek (presenting) Dana Knotova
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
17. Histories of Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

17 SES 08, Specificities of Being a Child

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-10
09:00-10:30
Room:
427.Oktatóterem [C]
Chair:
Beatrice Haenggeli-Jenni

Contribution

The paper is yet another output of the research project called Everyday life of basic schools in the normalization period as seen by teachers. Applying oral history to research in history of contemporary education (the project has been supported by the Czech Science Foundation, no. 14-05926S).

 

Research focusing on contemporary history (including this project) involves both work with traditional sources and history research methods (e.g. of Ranke school) and searching for new resources and methodological approaches (Le Goff, 1983). Methodological issues in contemporary history research arehowever close to non-existent in Czech educational sciences. One example may be the failure to use oral history. This method is, nevertheless, an important resource for getting to know events of the past and represents a topic to be discussed in the context of developing methodology of history research in education and school education. Oral history is a method of key importance to the project whose first results we presented at the ECER conference in Porto (2014). We focused on partial results of a pilot study focusing on exploring everyday lives of basic school teachers (ISCED 1 and 2) during in the Czech Republic during the normalization period.

 

Although oral history is the method central to our research, we do draw on traditional methods and resources for understanding the past. Resources as such (including oral-history resources) are the main topic of this paper. We have asked the question what resources are available to a historian researching the contemporary history of school education in former Czechoslovakia. At the first glance it may seem that the availability (and the information value) of resources on socialist formal education is must be uncompromised because the period is a recent one. The resources have not long been exposed to ravages of time for long and there have not been many reasons to destroy the materials (on purpose). But as the partial results of our project suggest, the reality is relatively complicated and researching the contemporary history of formal education may be far from easy. Availability of resources mediating knowledge of history of contemporary formal education and their informative value thus become of crucial importance. We believe these issues may pose a challenge even to researchers working in other European countries.

 

The main objective of this paper is to describe and explain availability and information value of resources mediating understanding the history of primary school education in the Czech Republic in 1969-1989, in the region of the former South Moravia region (one of the largest regions of former Czechoslovakia). The other objectives include exploring acquisition and analysis of selected types of resources including oral-history resources.

Method

Collecting all available resources for getting to know the past, their study and interpretation are the alpha and omega of most history-oriented research. Resources for getting to know the past include all available and usable materials, information and knowledge (material and digital) which can be used to explore the past. Resources for getting to know the past in history-of-education research include not only historical resources and specialized literature but also literature on methodology, encyclopaedias and dictionaries, archive objects, history of pedagogy textbooks – but also consultations with experts, discussions with experts at conferences, online discussion forums focusing on history etc. We perceive as increasingly important those resources which are available in a digital form. These may be, in some cases, digitalized original history resources (including transcribed oral-history interviews); in other cases they are various digitalized archive objects or published studies available through electronic databases. Digitalizing classical but also other types of resources may transform many aspects of historians’ work. The change may involve speeding up searches in the digitalized resources or specialized literature and/or online encyclopaedias. The objective of this paper goes beyond theorizing resource typologies. We focus mainly on ways of studying these resources and their information value. We will be presenting findings from various archives (the Brno City Archive, the National Library in Prague etc.) but also less traditional resources (such as the digital collection of interviews at the Centre for Oral History; Czech Academy of Sciences). The paper will also present our own data, i.e. interviews with teacher narrators who taught at basic schools during the normalization period. We will focus on some methodological issues in oral history such as how to ask questions, how to deal with the narrators going silent or clashes between narrators’memories and information from official sources.

Expected Outcomes

Understanding the history of socialist school education can be mediated by a relatively wide range of resources; unfortunately the available resources which have been known so far cover only a part of life in schools and lives of its protagonists. This is due to the fact that this kind of research is only emerging in the Czech Republic. The limited access to the resources is a more serious problem. Especially unprocessed archive collections may be perceived as a major factor limiting the expansion of history-of-pedagogy research, and this is not very likely to change. Materials we were able to access however promise that these resources may contain a lot of precious information. One example may be the sum of the official documents accumulated by a particular basic school headmaster, which allows one to reconstruct the life history as well as the professional and political career of the woman in great detail. Other materials contain statistical data on the number of schools in the region or reveal a lot about how final student evaluations and were drafted and how references for further study were given. Given the lack of available relevant resources mediating the history and considering that people with the experience of socialist school are still alive, the oral history method seems very beneficial to deepening our understanding of the recent past. Combined with traditional history research methods, oral history therefore offers an immense opportunity to history of education and schooling and a pathway to acquiring new unique resources. Data retrieved from different sources may be combined or they may reveal certain myths and inaccuracies as false, or open up new research areas. It is for these reasons that methodological issues in use of oral history need to be considered, ushering development of the method as such but also paving a way to acquiring richer sources.

References

Aldrich, R. (2003). The three duties of the historian of education.History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 32(2), 133-143. Atkinson, R. (1998). The Life Story Interview (Qualitative Research Methods). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Goodson, I., & Sikes, P. (2001).Life history research in educational settings: learning from lives. Buckingham: Open University Press. Iggers, G. (2002). Dějepisectví ve 20. století: od vědecké objektivity k postmoderní výzvě. [Being a historian in the 20th century: from scientific objectivity to postmodern challenge] Praha: Lidové noviny. Le Goff, J. (1983). Later history.Past and Present, 100(1), 14-28. McCulloch, G., & Richardson, W. (2000).Historical Research in Educational Settings. Buckingham: Open University Press. Otáhal, M. (2002). Normalizace 1969-1989: příspěvek ke stavu bádání. [The normalization period of 1969-1989]Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR. Průcha, J. (2011). Vstoupit či nevstoupit na tenký led analýzy socialistické pedagogiky? [To enter or not to enter the thin ice of socialist pedagogy analysis?] Pedagogika, 61 (2), p. 187-190. Vaněk, M., & Mücke, P. (2011). Třetí strana trojúhelníku: teorie a praxe orální historie. [The third side of the triangle: theory and practice in oral history]Praha: Fakulta humanitních studií UK v Praze. Vaněk, M. (2013). Around the globe: rethinking oral history with its protagonists. Prague: Karolinum. Thompson, P. (2000). Thevoice of the past: oral history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weller, T. (2013).History in the digital age. London: Routledge. Zounek, J. (2011). Učitel – Příběh normálního života v nenormální době. [Teacher – the history of a normal life in not normal times] In L. Fasora, & J. Hanuš, & J. Malíř & D. Nečasová (Eds.). Člověk na Moravě ve druhé polovině 20. století. [People in Moravia in the second half of the 20th century] (s. 241-252). Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury.

Author Information

Michal Šimáně (presenting / submitting)
Masaryk University
Department of Educational Sciences
Brno
Jiri Zounek (presenting)
Masaryk University
Brno
Dana Knotova
Masaryk University, Czech Republic

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