When the city becomes a classroom: teaching Sociology beyond school walls

Abstract

The present work is a pedagogical intervention developed with high school classes in the time and space of an elective course called “Rolê Sociológico”. This intervention was carried out in the interior of the state of Ceará, in the city of Canindé, which is known internationally for holding the Pilgrimage and the Saint Francis Party. This experience aims to show how the city is a fertile pedagogical environment for the development of the sociological way of thinking. The teaching methodology used in the construction of the intervention was the didactics for a historical-critical pedagogy, as it is considered a pedagogical orientation that meets the objectives of teaching Sociology in basic education. Along with this, the technique of applying questionnaires was also used, one at the beginning and another at the end, with the objective of identifying the participants' prior knowledge and verifying sociological learning. Furthermore, to assist other teachers in the construction of this type of intervention, this work presents a methodology called Local Sociology, which consists of a set of procedures that guide the planning of a “Rolê Sociológico” taking into account the conditions of the educational reality itself. From the development of the proposed didactic sequence and the analysis of the data obtained, it was possible to identify a change in attitude on the part of the students who, little by little, were able to relate their biography with social phenomena in the city and use the epistemological tools of estrangement and denaturalization, thereby developing the sociological way of thinking.