Abstract

Researchers of CRIA, the Anthropology Research Network Centre, one of the largest European centers dedicated to anthropological research, propose a partnership with teachers from EB1 Sampaio Garrido, Arroios, to promote weekly Anthropology workshops with students in the classes 4A and 4B.

The project fits into a school reality with multiple nationalities, where knowing the other and oneself becomes a fundamental tool for the well-being of the school community and individuals, thus promoting better coexistence and new ways of acquiring knowledge and new educational practices that can help students in school performance.

The project, through weekly workshops of 1 hour, aims to implement the unique methodology on which the discipline is based - the ethnographic method: direct observation of social realities through the collection of life stories, interviews, participant observation. Observation thus becomes the starting point in understanding the other. Anthropology is proposed as a tool for students to acquire life skills, such as self-awareness, management of emotions, critical thinking, the ability to solve problems, effective communication, promotion of interpersonal relationships and empathy. Through the ethnographic method, children will be invited to acquire direct information, not mediated by the media, and to go to the local (micro) environment of their own neighbourhood, to better understand the global (macro) they know through the media filter.

Students will be invited to carry out small ethnographies within the school environment, and with the involvement of their parents, thus bringing together communities of different origins. Students will thus be able to investigate the life trajectories of their parents and their peers (parents of origin, profession, mother tongue, history of parents of origin, childhood memories, traditional tales, traditional festivals, cults, cuisine). The students themselves will also be able to identify specific themes to be deepened, with the help of monitor and teachers involved in the project.

The ethnographic method aims to stimulate the production of knowledge by students, through participant observation, qualitative interviews, life biographies, producing field diaries, graphic diaries (drawing as stimulus for observation), neighbourhood cartographies, photographic records and graphics, bringing together art and ethnographic content.

At the end of the project, students will be invited to share their own productions with the school community and the neighbourhood community, through collective exhibitions of field diaries, photographs, drawings, audio-visual captures, small descriptive texts.

Through the activities developed throughout the project, the recipients will acquire new skills, such as the practice of direct investigation, the ability to use multiple tools such as photography, text, drawing, video.

Team