Os mapas e os livros didáticos de geografia: aproximações entre a cartografia Escolar e a linguística

Abstract

What is understood by cartographic language in studies related to School Cartography? This is a key question in this PhD work. However, going through its answer is a complex task and requires a dialogue with the trajectory of School Cartography as a field of knowledge, as well as it was necessary to revisit the official curriculum documents and also dialogue with other fields of knowledge. That is the challenge we have set ourselves. To continue on this path, we initially carried out a movement of "looking back" by revisiting the work of great researchers of School Cartography, who over five decades discussed themes related to School Cartography in different contexts and objectives, but who were able to identify weaknesses, resistances and also courageous in proposing solutions to overcome them. This long-lasting and reflexive movement allows us to affirm that School Cartography is a consolidated field of research in the heart of Geography in Brazil. And being a consolidated field, it also allows the identification of recurrent discourses over time, where similar conclusions are repeated and confirmed, even if in terms of space and time, they are completely different. Thus, a first challenge is to overcome the recurrent discourses, that is, to advance in the conclusions and propose new keys for reading and research for the theme. On the other hand, the advancement of research and experiences in teacher training converge to another point of attention, curriculum policies and textbooks. Hence our second question: why don't textbooks change? If there are so many indications of advances in School Cartography and Teacher Training and, more recently, in curricular guidelines, what justifies the resistance of textbooks to maintain illustrative cartographic representations, disconnected from texts or only informative, without exploring the potential of this language. Since the textbook is our basis of investigation, our challenge with this work is to indicate some suggestions and directions so that future didactic materials can incorporate the advances achieved in school Cartography and, thus, overcome the discourses identified here and reach the potentialities of Cartography for the Teaching of Geography. Finally, our third and final question is: What does School Cartography understand by language? Thus, our challenge is to establish a dialogue between School Cartography and Linguistics in order to shed light on the discussion of the concept of language and, thus, propose new perspectives on the conception of cartographic language and its extension and importance for School Cartography.