Educational Museums and Their Contribution to Education: A Bibliographical Analysis of Theses and Dissertations
Educational museums; academic production; teacher training.
This dissertation investigates the contributions of Brazilian academic productions (theses and dissertations) that address pedagogical museums, emphasizing their purposes, theoretical-methodological approaches, and formative potential in the educational context, especially regarding teacher training and possible articulations with the field of Mathematics Education. It starts from the understanding that pedagogical museums are configured as spaces of mediation between memory, school material culture, and specifically pedagogical practice, constituting themselves as historical and formative devices within educational policies. The research is characterized as a bibliographic study, of a qualitative and interpretative nature, articulating bibliometric analysis and thematic analysis. The corpus was composed of Brazilian theses and dissertations selected based on previously defined criteria, seeking to map the scientific production on the subject. The thematic analysis was developed based on Bardin (2011) and Braun and Clarke (2006; 2012; 2021), allowing the identification of patterns of meaning and recurring axes in the examined research. The evaluation of the 21 selected theses and dissertations demonstrates a predominance of investigations focused on institutional historicity and musealization processes, with a minority explicitly articulating pedagogical museums and teacher training. However, a predominance of approaches focused on school memory, material culture, and musealization processes is observed, to the detriment of more in-depth analyses of the formative potential of these institutions in the initial and continuing education of teachers. A conceptual fragmentation between school museums and pedagogical museums is also evident, indicating a need for greater theoretical precision. It is concluded that, although recognized as educational spaces, pedagogical museums still require investigations that deepen their formative dimension and their articulations with pedagogical practices, especially in the field of Mathematics Education, pointing to gaps and possibilities for advancement in the field.