Teacher education and taste for the arts: understanding possibilities

Abstract

The objective of this work was to analyze the existing relationships between the cultural formation of teachers of elementary and high school in the state of São Paulo and their perceptions about the educational potential of art museums. Having as main theoretical reference the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of cultural capital, it was intended to apprehend to what extent the cultural formation of teachers may or may not determine a more fertile relationship with art museums. To this end, between September and November 2007, questionnaires about social origin, school and professional training, information on leisure and culture habits and opinions about museums and art exhibitions were applied to two different groups of teachers. Group 1 included twenty teachers who, during 2007, spontaneously scheduled more than one monitored visit for their students at the Lasar Segall Museum, located in the Vila Mariana neighborhood, in the southern area of ​​the city of São Paulo. Group 2 included twenty other teachers, who scheduled monitored visits to the Lasar Segall Museum due to the school's participation in a project financed by the São Paulo State Department of Education and who did not return to the Museum until the end of 2007. Observation of the results obtained allowed the perception of approximations between the two groups with regard to their social origin, but differences in relation to the training institution and the relationship maintained with cultural goods in general, and more specifically, with the art museum.