Being a teacher during the Estado Novo in Portugal. A look through of the sociodynamic perspective

Schooling during ‘Estado Novo’ (1933-1974) reflects a time of transformation in the Portuguese political, social and cultural sphere, characterised by authoritarian policies and a predominantly rural country with a high rate of illiteracy and impoverishment. During this period, the regime's ideology influenced the education system, which emphasised the trinomial ‘God, Homeland and Family’, alignment with Catholic Social Doctrine and political, ideological and social control over teachers and students. Spread throughout the national education system and regulated by Normative Acts that legislated education policies, the regime's ideology significantly impacted educational dynamics and teaching practices.
Through the lens of a sociodynamic perspective of school memory, this study aims to see how teachers remember exercising the teaching profession during this period and how they refer to their professional identity. Adopting a phenomenological qualitative approach, 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted between 2017 and 2019 with primary school teachers who taught during the Estado Novo period in Portugal. From a vertical cut in the data set, 18 interviews were analysed whose participants' profiles shared the most extensive common characteristics. Using microanalysis, the data was coded considering how time, space, conditions and their effects (the sociodynamic perspective) are reflected in the teachers' memories.
It emerged that the teachers' narratives highlighted the impact of the regime on their private lives and their profession. They highlighted the strong influence of the regime on the iconography of the classroom, on the content of textbooks, as well as the standardisation of procedures related to the marriage of female teachers and the feeling of surveillance by the state police (PIDE). Paradoxically, comparing the past (when they were teachers) and the present (when they were interviewed), they say that there was more discipline and respect at school before, as well as more appreciation of the teaching profession.
The social and temporal dialogue of school memories was revealed in the recollections about being a teacher during the regime. From a sociodynamic perspective, the remembered past was distanced from its negative political and social context by reflecting on their professional identity, the economic and social conditions of the pupils and the material limitations in some village schools. Therefore, adopting the sociodynamic perspective, it was possible to detect the elements in the teachers’ narratives that indicate the relevance of context (time and space) in the (re)significations of biographical events to the extent that the lived past was observed through lens of the narrated present.