Sobre el treball amb fonts: consideracions des del taller sobre la història de l'educació = About working with sources: reflections from the historian of education's workplace

Abstract

In this contribution we enter into the workplace of the historian of education. By reflecting on their own production of «histories» of education it seems to the authors that the methodological advantage of the use of oral history, ego documents, statistics, pictures, films, material objects of school culture, and other «forgotten» sources from everyday life in education was often exaggerated because of the enthusiasm for the «innovation» of their approach. On the basis of their own research experience they develop the thesis that there is no single privileged source for research in the history of education. Well nuanced and contextualized «histories» of education have to rest on a combination of all sorts of source material. Historical research is more than a search for the ultimate source: a historian who remains imprisoned in the sources necessarily produces descriptive works with explanations «from» the sources. But it is not the source that stands at the beginning of the historiographical operation, but rather the research question, and it is this question that is determinative for the use of sources, including traditional ones (like the journals of education, made by teachers and educators for teachers and educators the so-called pedagogical press which is labeled by the authors as the «mother» of all sources in history of education). And the answer to this research question is not only and not primarily dependent on the sources used but again on the interpretation that is formulated on the basis of these artifacts from the past. So, the workplace of the historian is not only filled with sources, but an entire arsenal of tools: concepts, theories, paradigms, and the like. There is no ultimate source just as there is no ultimate interpretation, argumentation, proof and/ or explanation. From this perspective, the critique that has been formulated against both authors, who have been for their part wrongly accused of being «iconophobe», does not say very much. Iconophobe or iconophile, it actually makes no difference, as long as the results of the histories of education are valid.