Oral History As Research Methodology

Oral history as research methodology

Introduction.

To describe the methodology used at work we begin with oral history, this being a narrative resource used by people when accounting for their vital experiences, it is the way they have to interpret and explain to themselves these experiences, notOnly to make sense, but also to ensure that this sense is intelligible for the similar ones with whom they share a vital environment and/or a daily activity.

Developing.

It is an indispensable resource for the historical survival of culture to the extent that it implies the exercise of communication in the framework of everyday social relations and its circulation contributes, in itself, to the maintenance or renewal of cultural fields and human traditions .

According to Fraser, oral history has a broader definition, so it highlights three essential points:

1. Collective representations, that is, a non -necessarily systematized body of beliefs and myths, including religion, to which she adds mental and emotional attitudes, world visions and cultural identities embodied in written and oral traditions.
2. The series of elections made by individuals or groups like the family to resolve the crucial affairs of their life. Subjectivity appears here as a rationality that should not be understood as if it is only a conscious and a priori plan, but as an invention and an adjustment to what happens and what is possible. That is, in these elections decisions can be mixed at the individual and collective, conscious and unconscious, social and personal level.

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3. The private framework and the public that creates and maintains social relations, such as networks, groups and subgroups that are part of longer entities: nations, classes, parties, etc. Both social solidarity and the conflicts of everyday life are expressions of the interaction of the objective- that is, the given- and the subjective. Finally, for Passerini, rationality, understood as the ability to face reality and irrationality, can be present in some or all of the three points already mentioned.

Taking into account the definitions found we know that oral history gives us “unofficial” information of what happened and nobody gives voice, we know the great events, but this knowledge is incomplete if we do not know how they affected the population. It is important to know history beyond what theoretically happened, for this oral history uses journalistic resources such as the interview to analyze how these events change depending on who narrates it.

So oral history gives us different points of view of much more varied sectors than traditional history, people who are not taken into account, marginal groups, detractors to the sectors that traditionally hold power, when we talk about ‘oral history’, we refer to the production and use of oral sources in historical reconstruction. (Sepúlveda, 2000)

In this way we use oral history to know events directly from the citizen, as they affect society, beyond the theory we are interested in knowing the social impact it had, as lived between the different sectors of the population.

Oral history is presented as a very suitable research technique for the study of the educational field, since if we want to understand what is happening in the present, a look towards the past is necessary. Another benefits found in the use of oral history is that it approaches students to research processes, which entails a more attractive reconstruction of historical knowledge for them.

On the other hand, oral history and interview can contribute to strengthening intergenerationInformation collection process. In the case of older people, it can contribute to a rise in self – esteem and a feeling of worth due to the interest in knowing their person’s life.

So what is oral history for? 

Having clear the methodology to be used in the investigation, we proceed to carry out the interviews, the interview was conducted to three 69 -year -old women, close relatives who were delighted to tell us those years that despite everything remembers with such tenderness, women of differentPoints of Andalusia, 3 housewives that develop in rural or semi -urban environments, with these interviews we discover their experiences in school, as an impact the educational system in their lives, the internal functioning of the school and the differences and similarities between their narratives. Stories that develop in an childhood marked by Francoism and its consequences, daughters of war that without having lived it will mark their lives.

To optimize and facilitate both its realization and its subsequent analysis, they are divided into the following categories: image of childhood, context and relationships, image of the teacher, schedule, schooling, architecture and furniture, curriculum, didactic material and books, extracurricular activities andLeisure, teacher method, student activities, exams. Thus having a total of 12 categories and 76 questions in order to delve into the most objective and analytical way possible.

Subsequently we started an information collection to know what history tells us about this era, as the education system, the Education Law, etc. For the recoletation of all this information, databases were used, to ensure the reliability of the documents, and to expedite the data collection process, different filters were used, in order to limit the search. 

The searches were made mostly in Spanish, and on the other hand in English, observing at this point that the search was simpler and more abundance of documents if it is done in English. During this process and to facilitate the work we use the following keywords, education in the sixties, education Spain, Franco and Education, Oral History, Education Law.

conclusion.

Oral history serves to save the gap between academic and community;Bring the story to the home, since it relates the world of class classroom and the textbook with the direct and daily social world of the community in which the student lives. Finally with the interviews conducted and knowing the state of the matter, the subject is analyzed following the previously detailed categories, detailed the content of the interviews in relation to the information found.