SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

The purpose of the systematic literature review is to find, using objective inclusion and exclusion criteria, academic works produced in a certain research field. A literature review conducted in this way allows the study to be replicated and contributes to the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

Advances in scientific knowledge depend on the systematic accumulation of information. [...] Reviews of the literature are justified, given the wealth of information produced in different fields of knowledge. From the perspective of the reader, the objective of research synthesis is to concentrate in a single study results from various others and define the current status of knowledge about a given research problem, making unnecessary the systematic consultation of older studies. (^{Figueiredo Filho et al., 2014}, p. 207)

The search of the Catálogo de Teses e Dissertações of CAPES using the term “história do currículo” yielded 109 studies (35 theses and 74 dissertations) produced between 1996 and 2018. An analysis of the titles and abstracts of these theses and dissertations identified 25 works that, although related to curriculum issues, did not involve historical investigation. Considering that “the theme of the history researcher is located in the past” (^{Ayala and Zevallos, 2003}, p. 52), the exclusion criterion used was the absence, in the title or abstract, of a temporal profile to the research problem. Studies regarded as pertinent to the present history were included in the selection that resulted in 84 works - 54 dissertations and 30 theses.

The search for academic articles was conducted on the Plataforma Portal de Periódicos CAPES, with access through the Federated Academic Community (Comunidade Acadêmica Federada - CAFe), which allows remote access to the subscribed content of the portal¹². The search based on the Boolean formula (“história do currículo” OR “curriculum history”), with no restriction on date of publication, retrieved 210 articles: 115 in Scopus, 77 in the Web of Science Core Collection, and 18 in the collection SciELO Citation Index.

Considering the objective of this article, the filter “Brazil” was applied to the articles selected. This limitation allowed perceiving that Brazilian production has little representativity in databases with greater international visibility. In the Scopus database, 5 articles were identified, published in the journals Currículo sem Fronteiras, Revista Brasileira de Educação, and Química Nova. In the Web of Science Core Collection, two articles were found, published in the journals Comunicações and Química Nova. In the collection SciELO Citation Index, which is part of the Web of Science database, 15 articles were retrieved, published in the following journals: Revista Brasileira de Educação, Educar em Revista, Ensaio Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências, História da Educação, Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, Educação & Sociedade, Educação e Pesquisa, Estudios Pedagógicos (Valdivia), and Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem.

Out of the 22 articles identified, 3 were discarded for being duplicates. The preliminary analysis of these articles demonstrated that all address curriculum history. Thus, the final selection comprised 19 articles, of which 15 are part of the collection SciELO Citation Index, 3 are only available in the Scopus database, and 1 only in the Web of Science Core Collection, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Flowchart of the systematic literature review 

THEMES AND OBJECTS OF THESES AND DISSERTATIONS ABOUT CURRICULUM HISTORY

The analysis of theses and dissertations published by graduate programs allowed visualizing the origin and design of the studies that have been conducted in a certain field, and identifying researchers who are working systematically in the construction of knowledge about a determined theme.

Until the recent consolidation of digital platforms, theses and dissertations, which are produced in an academic context, semi-published, and without commercial purposes, were considered as gray literature or non-conventional literature due to their limited circulation. According to ^{Gomes, Mendonça and Muhlethaler (2000}, p. 96-97), these articles are highly important to academic communications, given that they contain more detailed information than those presented in the form of articles in academic periodicals.

In Brazil, the systematic production of theses and dissertations about curriculum history began in the second half of the 1990s and intensified since 2007, albeit without much regularity. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) has the highest number of works, although other higher education institutions also contribute significantly to the construction of this archive. Considering as an indication of systematic production a minimal frequency of three works at the same institution from 1996 to 2018, the Table 1 indicates the distribution of works by university and advisors.

In the period analyzed, among the professors who supervised the most theses and dissertations, only Márcia Serra Ferreira was linked to a single university. Professor Marcus Aurélio Taborda de Oliveira supervised the most studies about the issue at the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), while professor Antônio Flávio Barbosa had the work he supervised divided equally between the UFRJ and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Petrópolis (PUC-Petrópolis).

The first dissertations about the theme were written at UFRJ, supervised by professor Antônio Flávio Barbosa Moreira, and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP), supervised by professor Antônio Chizotti. Professor Antônio Flávio Moreira concluded his doctorate at the Institute of Education of the University of London in 1988, supervised by professors Michael Young and Robert Cowen, and his thesis “Towards a reconceptualisation of educational transfer: the case of Curriculum Studies in Brazil” was adapted and published in Brazil in 1990 by Editora Papirus with the title “Currículos e Programas no Brasil”, and quickly became an essential reference to academic studies about curriculum that began to take shape.

^{Moreira (2011}, p. 19) recalls that in 1984 curriculum history was little explored, but that as a “socio-historical study of curriculum disciplines”, it corresponded to one of the research lines of the sociology of curriculum. In 1997, Moreira participated as a co-advisor in the thesis defended by professor Elizabeth Macedo at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Her most recent supervision was in 2017, in the research line “Curriculum, teaching, and language” of the graduate program at UFRJ.

Meanwhile, the studies conducted at PUC-SP, despite having also started around 1996, did not appear with the same regularity. Professor Antônio Chizzotti worked in the graduate program in curriculum since 1979, supervising master’s dissertations about the theme. Nevertheless, the historical approach was not his main line of research.

The analysis of the research lines¹³ of the theses and dissertations identified, taking into account the changes that took place in this period of approximately 20 years, confirms that the academic production about curriculum history is divided into two areas: curriculum studies and history of education. The Chart 1 presents this division.

UFRJ: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; UFPA: Universidade Federal do Pará; PUC: Pontifícia Universidade Católica; UNIRIO: Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; UFF: Universidade Federal Fluminense; UFPR: Universidade Federal do Paraná; UFMG: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; UNICAMP: Universidade Estadual de Campinas; USP: Universidade de São Paulo.

Chart 1 - Production about curriculum history: institutions and research lines 

Nevertheless, the analysis of the titles and abstracts of the studies demonstrate that the line between an emphasis on curriculum studies or the history of education is not as evident when the research groups to which the studies are linked are not considered. The action in this territory of intersection that is curriculum history makes the borders less clear, mainly because the courses of origin of most master’s and doctoral students are quite varied, and the research themes are usually defined according to the questionings that stem from the students’ trajectories of education and professional practice.

^{Macedo (2001}) and ^{Moreira (2008}) identified three thematic lines in the historical production about curriculum in Brazil. Even when considering the differences in the denominations of these lines¹⁴, the close relationship between the two proposals allows achieving a synthesis with the following terms:

Analysis of the themes of theses and dissertations confirms the pertinence of these lines, and the comparison between the themes of works carried out in the field of curriculum studies and history of education shows similarities, mainly among studies related to the line “Curriculum of courses and disciplines”, as seen in the Chart 2.

Chart 2 - Theses and dissertations about curriculum history by thematic line (1996-2018) 

The line “Curriculum of courses and disciplines” aggregates the largest number of studies. The disciplines physical education, mathematics, geography, sciences, and music were used as objects of research in both academic and school contexts. Meanwhile, the disciplines of chemistry, biology, hygiene, Portuguese, Spanish, religious education, humanities, and history were analyzed only in the school context. Among the academic disciplines studied, those related to teacher education stand out, including: biology of learning, teaching practice, philosophy of education, and general didactics. Regarding the study of the curriculum of specific courses, most of them concern the university context. The most studied undergraduate curricula from a historical perspective are: education, physical education, sciences, history, nursing, and medicine.

In the themes related to the lines “Curricular thinking” and “Curriculum reforms, proposals, and practices”, the relationship between the two fields is less clear due to the different terms used in each research context. The line “curricular thinking” has a reduced number of works and demonstrates complexity at a time when intellectual history seeks to overcome a model inspired by the history of philosophy, which had predominated in traditional educational history manuals.

Intellectual history, according to ^{Vieira (2008}, p. 80), is associated with the history of languages and includes “the analysis of processes of production, circulation, and reception of ideas and scientific, political, educational, or artistic discourses.” From this perspective, beyond curricular thinking or ideas, the historical investigation of the contexts of curriculum theory production can be considered in the analysis of academic production, despite the difficulty in defining what is and what is not curriculum theory based on academic publications (^{Young, 2014}, p. 193).

^{Popkewitz (1994}, p. 183-185) evokes a historical tradition “that focuses on how ideas are shaped in the organization of school knowledge,” which allows recognizing that a curriculum theory developed in the academic context cannot be separated from subjects and social practices that form this set of specialized knowledge. Thus, the production of curriculum theories or of curricular thinking can be related to other curriculum practices.

The quantitative increase in academic production about curriculum history in the past ten years promoted a significant diversification of themes and objects of research. In 2008, Moreira’s reflections allowed inferring that the expansion of studies could result in new forms of systematizing academic production. At that time, the author indicated as emergent themes “curriculum reforms and proposals, curriculum of a course, textbooks and teaching materials, school spaces and times, teaching practices, and students’ notebooks” (^{Moreira, 2008}, p. 7).

Historical studies about curriculum policies and about practices that represent the “daily materialization” of curriculum (^{Macedo, 2001}, p. 144) became essential for contemplating new or renewed objects that respond to the broadening of the curriculum concept, which marked the development of the field in the past 30 years.

Based on these reflections, the analysis of the incidence of different objects of study in the theses and dissertations revealed that the academic production can be distributed in four thematic lines that concern both school and academic contexts: courses; disciplines; policies; and theories and practices.

Curriculum policy is a term that only very recently has been used in studies about curriculum history. The line “policies” encompasses historical studies about curriculum reforms, curriculum parameters or the national curriculum base, national exams, elementary schooling, and public education.

The organization of the line “theories and practices” considered ^{Vinão’s understanding (2008}, p. 191) about the history of elements that constitute and organize the school universe, such as textbooks and the history of school disciplines. Despite the inseparable aspects of these approaches, it is possible to identify the works that focus primordially on the elements of school culture and group together studies whose research objects are forms of teaching, textbooks and school publications, reading practices, recess, the construction of the memory of teachers, and professional identity.

By analyzing the themes and objects of the theses and dissertations produced in universities in which the curriculum history represents a systematic and persistent project, a significant difference is perceived between the various research contexts, which can be seen in the Chart 3.

UFRJ: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; UNICAMP: Universidade Estadual de Campinas; USP: Universidade de São Paulo; UFPA: Universidade Federal do Pará; UNIRIO: Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; PUC: Pontifícia Universidade Católica; UFPR: Universidade Federal do Paraná; UFF: Universidade Federal Fluminense; UFMG: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

Chart 3 - Themes of theses and dissertations about curriculum history (1996-2018) 

The Chart 3 reveals that the curriculum history line has its research objects located in both the school and academic contexts, with a small difference between them in the number of studies. However, a comparative analysis between studies in the fields of curriculum studies and history of education demonstrates that the first has emphasized school contexts while the second is more focused on academic contexts.

The curriculum of specific courses is the most explored theme in the curriculum field, particularly the history of undergraduate programs. In addition to studies on the history of education, this theme also includes research in other fields, such as nursing and medicine. The studies about the curriculum of courses that do not pertain to the field of education are produced in the context of their own graduate programs and have little relation to curriculum studies or the history of education. The history of school or academic disciplines is the thematic line with the second-highest number of studies and can be located in both perspectives, although the curriculum field has produced more works.

Studies developed in the field of history of education are more frequent in the thematic line “theories and practices”, with an emphasis on the school context. As in the school context, the academic context has materials, practices, rites, and guidelines that have been little thematized by curriculum history, which usually focuses on institutions, courses, and disciplines. Nevertheless, the most recent studies reveal an interest in investigating aspects related to curriculum practices and the conceptualization of curriculum from a historical perspective.

The line “policies” is less represented in this set of theses and dissertations. Curriculum policies aimed at the academic context are little explored in current studies, which is an important indicator for future projects. From the perspective of the history of education, the investigation of curriculum policies has emphasized the school context, especially the processes of schooling and public education.

In this regard, we highlight that themes related to curriculum policies, theories, and practices have a significant difference of denomination when addressed by the fields of curriculum studies and history of education. Even when discussing the same themes, the fields differ in their methodologies, periods of study, and definition of sources, which results in different narratives and theoretical considerations.

The most evident element of differentiation was the temporal perspective. Most works conducted by history of education researchers present a study period of 20 to 30 years, beginning in the late 19^th century or the early 20^th century and ending in the 1920s and 1930s. Meanwhile, most works performed by curriculum researchers present a temporal profile of less than 20 years, focusing between 1960 and 2010. This shift of approximately one century in the period investigated in each perspective is important for understanding differences in the terms used to indicate the objects of research.

According to ^{Reinhart Koselleck (1992}, p. 140), the semantic movement of words over time presupposes disputes over the attribution of meanings and senses that are found in the public debate. This movement produces new concepts, and even when words remain, others may emerge to meet new needs.

The approaches of similar themes at different times can be influenced by modifications in the semantic field or specialized lexicon of a certain area, given that concepts are polysemic formulations that can be generalized and that present some regularity of sense, but whose meaning can change in relation to the context.

As a tool for thinking, understanding reality, producing explanations, and mediating actions (^{Koselleck, 1992}, p. 136), grasping the changes of terms or linguistic meanings of concepts over time is essential to academic dialog and the historical comprehension of a certain field. Despite theoretical-methodological differences, the analysis of themes and objects of theses and dissertations about curriculum history produced in Brazil demonstrates a thematic convergence that justifies a greater closeness among the different fields of research.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASES OF ARTICLES ABOUT CURRICULUM HISTORY

The third part of this work seeks to identify some epistemological characteristics of the articles used in the systematic literature review through an analysis of bibliographical references and keywords indicated by the authors. The search in the Scopus and Web of Science - Core Collection and SciELO Citation Index collection - databases yielded 19 different articles published in 12 journals between 2002 and 2018. “Currículo sem Fronteiras” and “Revista Brasileira de Educação” were the periodicals that had the most publications about the theme.

Of the 19 articles found, 11 pertain to the field of the history of education, 6 to curriculum studies, and 2 to other fields of research. Most of these articles come from institutions with systematic production of theses and dissertations; however, considering all studies in the period, only approximately 12% were published as an article in the databased consulted, which indicates that Brazilian studies have low international visibility.

Five theoretical articles, 1 essay, and 13 empirical articles were identified. The theoretical articles were based on bibliographical research or theoretical-methodological reflections carried out in the context of research groups. Among the 13 empirical articles, 9 originated from theses or dissertations. The most common methodological orientation of the empirical articles was document analysis, in some cases associated with oral history procedures. The sources most used are reports, legislation, and teaching manuals; however, material artifacts are also an option for curriculum history.

As in the archive of theses and dissertations, the temporal profile of the articles encompasses the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Although the exact definition of the period to be studied depends on the topic of each research, in general, the articles can be divided into three groups:

The second period, which corresponds to the years when curriculum began to gain visibility in the Brazilian educational debate, shows a greater concentration of works.

The themes and objects of research of the articles also correspond to the scheme identified in the analysis of theses and dissertations, reinforcing the relationship already identified between these two types of scientific production. However, some differences between the fields of study responsible for this production are even more evident.

The Chart 4 indicates that most articles produced by those who investigate history of education are aimed at the study of curriculum history in school contexts, while articles published by curriculum researchers address theoretical and practical aspects specific to academic contexts. In this field, curriculum studies of courses and disciplines also stand out, even with contributions from other research fields, such as nursing and accounting.

US: United States.

Chart 4 - Research objects of articles about curriculum history by thematic line 

The conceptual dynamics of the articles published in academic journals, as well as the main references that support this production, was examined with the assistance of the VOSviewer software. This methodological tool allows visualizing the relationship between the works based on co-occurrence of keywords indicated by the author and co-citation, that is, the number of times that the authors are cited together in references of a single article.

The VOSviewer software also allows verifying the impact of academic collaboration networks through the frequency of co-authorships and reciprocal citations and identifying the influential literature in the field by bibliographic coupling, which uses as a base the number of shared references in the articles.

Analyses were based on a set of 15 articles found in the collection SciELO Citation Index of Web of Science. The collection SciELO Citation Index was chosen because it had more articles about the theme than the two other databases consulted, given that this tool does not allow a single network to aggregate articles identified in different databases. All articles selected are available for free download. The four articles not included in the analysis conducted with the VOSviewer software, for being available only in the Scopus database and the Web of Science Core Collection, are also available for free download. Based on the analysis of the elements systematized on electronic spreadsheets, we concluded that the exclusion of these articles did not compromise the results obtained. In the networks constructed by the VOSviewer software, the characteristics that should be observed are the distance and intensity of the graphic connection between words and the size presented by each one.

The analysis of co-authorship carried out in the software did not provide new elements to the assessment conducted with the spreadsheets. As seen previously, the main form of co-authorship established in this sample is between advisors and students in studies originated from theses and dissertations.

The analysis of citations, in which networks are formed based on the number of times that authors reciprocally cite each other, did not identify the existence of groups created by scientific affinities, which reinforces the need indicated by ^{Moreira (2013}, p. 6-7) for greater interlocution among researchers of curriculum history.

The analysis of bibliographic coupling, whose purpose is to find the emerging literature in a certain field and stems from the number of times the same references are used in different articles, showed that the use of common references is limited to institutional relations. Considering the institutions of affiliation of the articles, the only relationship of bibliographic coupling identified was between the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) and Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR).

The analysis of co-citations, which focuses on authors of the bibliographical references cited in the articles, aims at identifying intellectual traditions in a certain field of research. This resource verifies the relationship between references based on the number of times that they are concomitantly cited

(^{Grácio, 2016}, p. 84).

According to ^{Walsh and Renaud (2017}, p. 22), the more two references are cited together, the closer they are to a school of thought. The proximity, connections, and scale of these authors in the network indicate the groups of authors that are central to the development of curriculum history studies, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 - Network of co-citations in articles on curriculum history 

In the sample studied, Ivor Goodson is the most frequently cited author, with 21 citations, followed by Thomas Popkewitz, with 6 citations. Despite the significant difference in the number of citations, the network demonstrates that the two authors have an equivalent number of relations, given that the first is connected to 14 authors and the second to 13 authors. Thus, we can infer that Ivor Goodson and Thomas Popkewitz are the most influential references in curriculum history studies in Brazil. Based on reflections made at the Curriculum Studies Unit of the School of Education at UFRJ, Lisete ^{Jaehn and Márcia Serra Ferreira (2012}) discussed the contributions of these authors, indicating the differences and similarities between their perspectives and how each has contributed to the studies conducted at this institution.

The authors identified compose four groupings:

The structure of the network of co-citations demonstrates, as ^{Cassab (2010}) previously indicated, the existence of some relations between the theoretical reference used in studies conducted in the fields of history of education and curriculum studies. Nevertheless, a significant distancing can be perceived between the two perspectives, given that among the nine foreign authors included in the network, only Ivor Goodson, Thomas Popkewitz, and Herbert Kliebard are cited together with Brazilian researchers from the fields of curriculum and history of education. Among the Brazilian references, the sole authors from different fields that are cited together are Clarice Nunes and Elizabeth Macedo.

Meanwhile, the analysis of the co-occurrence of keywords defined by the authors indicates the conceptual dynamics of a certain field, since its units of analysis are the terms or concepts used to help other researchers interested in the theme find an article. According to ^{Van Meter and Saint Léger (2008}), the analysis of co-occurrence measures the strength of association between terms and, therefore, between research themes and objects. Considering that the unit of observation is the words that appear together in a given document and that the networks are formed from the relationship between the words, the strength of association is determined by the number of concomitant occurrences.

The co-occurrence network confirms the division of studies into two groups that have a weak relationship, one more associated with the term “curriculum history” and the other with the term “curriculum”. For a comparative analysis of these two groupings, three networks were constructed containing:

The network shown in Figure 3, that includes all articles selected, consists of eight groupings, and the two main ones are organized around the terms “curriculum history” and “curriculum”. The only term connected to both groups is “history of disciplines”.

Figure 3 - Network of co-occurrence of keywords of articles on curriculum history 

Figure 4, which shows a network formed by articles produced in the curriculum field reveals a stronger relationship between the terms, with “teacher education” being linked to all other keywords, except for “nursing”, which is the most isolated term. The keywords form the following groupings:

Figure 4 - Network of co-occurrence of keywords: curriculum 

Meanwhile, the network comprised of articles produced in the field of history of education shows an academic production divided into subgroups that address specific themes and interact only in these groupings. The software identified six groupings:

In this network, the term that connects all groupings is “curriculum history”. Groupings three and five are the only close ones, occupying the lower left quadrant of Figure 5. Out of the keywords that compose this part of the network, the term “body education” acts as a link between the terms: sensory education, history of schools, history of disciplines, physical education teaching, and Latin America. Since the term “history of disciplines” represents the link between studies produced in the fields of curriculum and history of education, the themes addressed by the two fields are closer in these groupings. Mariana Cassab also identified the possibility of closeness between the different perspectives in studies of school disciplines. Cassab argues that:

The study of school disciplines has caused an important shift in how schools are usually investigated, whether by suggesting new problematics, selecting various sources, or promoting a productive dialog between different theoretical perspectives. Nevertheless, as supposed in this study, this potential also seems to be open to broader exploration in Brazilian studies. (^{Cassab, 2010}, p. 246)

Figure 5 - Network of co-occurrence of keywords: history of education 

The analysis of bibliographical references and concepts that compose the keywords associated with the articles demonstrated that the epistemological base of this academic production is intrinsically related to the authors’ original field of research.

According to ^{Michel Foucault (2004}, p. 26), an author can be understood as more than the person who speaks or writes a text; they can be regarded “as a principle of discourse grouping, as a unit and origin of their meanings, as a focus of their coherence.” Based on this understanding of “author-function”, we can conclude that the current structure of academic production stems from different authorships instilled with discursivity that decisively act on the design of studies and composition of the theoretical horizon of the field.