Os Congressos Brasileiros de Pedagogia Espírita e os Congressos Internacionais de Educação e Espiritualidade (2004-2014): a contribuição de Dora Incontri

Abstract

This research aims to historicize the five Brazilian Congresses of Spiritist Pedagogy and the two International Congresses of Education and Spirituality, held in the state of São Paulo seeking to understand the genesis of the term "Spiritist Pedagogy", how and why these congresses are invisible in the History of Education. The congresses took place in a period of ten years, between 2004 and 2014.Taking as main source the Proceedings of congresses and an interview, we try to answer the following questions: What is the genesis of the term "Spiritist Pedagogy"? How and why were such congresses conceived by Dora Incontri? Who were the speakers and what was the content of the conferences of the Congresses? What books were published at these events? Why didn't they continue in time? Our initial hypothesis was that the organizer and participants of these events sought to legitimize an educational theory and practice in the scientific field based on a religious doctrine, and for this reason, they were opposed by other groups in the field. However, throughout the investigation we noticed the disputes around the meanings given to Spiritist Pedagogy by installing a dispute in the religious field itself as well. The absence of the central term of this research - "Spiritist Pedagogy" - in three journals of excellence in the field of History and Historiography of Education and only nine occurrences in theses and dissertations in the area, being the first in 2001 and the last in 2018, indicate that not only the effort of legitimation of "Spiritist Pedagogy" as a line or an area of research in Education did not succeed as they were invisibilized by the History of Education. The work is based on the concept of "scientific field" of Pierre Bourdieu (2007a) understanding it as a representation of a symbolic space and poles in dispute. It uses bibliometric techniques to identify general themes and the affiliation of the lecturers in addition to the analysis of the interview conducted with Dora Incontri, the creator of the congresses.