Images of Pedagogical Innovation: Escola da Ponte (Portugal)

This paper highlights a pedagogical experience that began in Portugal in 1976, namely that of the Escola da Ponte, the success of which was based on a shift from the graded school model. Unlike the majority of educational reforms that were tested throughout the twentieth century, changes were made in Escola da Ponte precisely due to the fact that the genetic matrix of the school model, the classroom, had been called into question. Therefore, it is not surprising that since the late 1980s, Escola da Ponte has received multiple visitors, associated with the knowledge of new ideas and pedagogical methods. Departing from the research of Larry Cuban (2008), however, the initial aim of this paper is to reflect on the inflexibility of the school model. Secondly, with a view to understanding how Escola da Ponte was «regarded» by its visitors (based on their own photographic records), the use of visual documents in historical research is addressed. The pedagogical project of Escola da Ponte is then discussed. Finally, a number of photographs depicting pedagogical action in the School in the 1980s and 1990s are considered. Based on the assumption that images are representations of objects, in other words, re-representations (Collelldemont, 2010), this paper seeks to reveal what the photographs sought to transmit, and how they should be interpreted in terms of pedagogical innovation.