UNDERSTANDING THE PAST TO RETHINK THE PRESENT: THE CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN THE HISTORY OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Aiming to understand the history of teaching children's literature in teacher education courses and contribute to the current debate on policies and practices related to this teaching, we present, through historical research, aspects how it was prescribed the "teach to teach" children's literature in Sao Paulo State, between 1947 and 2003. The inclusion of this teaching in teacher education has been directly related to the construction of a school knowledge about this literary genre, that has been theoretically supported by concepts of Psychology. This has directly contributed to the formation of a concept of children's literature related to children's mental development. With the strength of an "invented tradition", this teaching has contributed to building a specific way of understanding children's literature in Brazil and to subsidize educational practices relations about this literary, still used in the present.