1 Introduction

The present work comes from research carried out in the Masters in Education at the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), the bibliographical choices for that study involved historical heritage and its relationship with education and the city. When studying heritage sites, we see that it's still a field full of conflicts that expand beyond conceptual reflections, since “[...] we are facing an extremely important category of thought for the social and mental life of any human collectivity” (^{GONÇALVES, 2002}, p. 22). Its importance isn't restricted to modern Western societies, and to understand it as a category of thought is, therefore, to assume its presence in the formation of the individual.

Education is a powerful practice for mediating the subject's relationship with the city and its cultural heritage. Conflicts present in the field of heritage, by extension, also affect education. In this sense, we seek to understand how research has been naming the educational processes that mediate the subject's relationship with the city and its cultural heritage.

2 Methodology: what do the researches show?

For the development of this study, the methodology used was a state of knowledge² carried out in the Bank of Theses and Dissertations of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes), using the following descriptors: “education”, “city” and “heritage”. The search was for master's theses and doctoral theses resulting from postgraduate programs available on this platform and published between 1997 and 2018.

3 Results and discussion

In this section, the results found from the state of knowledge carried out in 2019 and arranged in numbers; we also show the reflections we made about the data that was found.

4 Rethinking theories and practices

The Basic Heritage Education Guide was (and still is) the main reference to guide the practices involving educational actions related to cities and cultural heritage. ^{Demarchi (2018}) analyzes the guide and we realize that he understands that heritage education is a specific methodology of action that must adhere to the following steps to work on heritage: observation, recording, exploration, and appropriation, all focused only on physical heritage, which shows that such methodology is insufficient in its approach to cultural heritage as a whole. About the object to be analyzed, the guide understands that his choice should come from the teacher who runs the class, which demonstrates a certain verticality in the understanding of cultural references. Still questioning the guide, it's clear that it understands that heritage education should work as an instrument of “cultural literacy”. For Silveira and Bezerra (2007 apud^{DEMARCHI, 2018}), this conception is symbolic violence, as it disregards the other as capable of developing their understanding of the world, based on the assumption that the subjects are unaware of their heritage.

We observed the fluidity of the notions of heritage and heritage education, meaning that they aren't static concepts throughout time. Thus, the current understanding of what is heritage don't match the actions conducted based on the methodology proposed by the Basic Guide for Heritage Education, but even with the advancement of discussions around “education” and “heritage”, the association of expression “patrimonial education” to this guide persists (^{TOLENTINO, 2016}).

Another important aspect is that the guide adopts a notion of instructional education, understanding it as the transmission of knowledge. Perhaps because it is still based on a notion of school education, mainly as a remnant of an encyclopedist, mnemonic, perspective, which only began to change in 1996, with the institution of Law No. 9,394/1996, the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDBEN), whose character is to be imminently democratic and participative. On the other hand, what we observe in the most recent literature related to heritage is the tendency to a conception of education with a transversal, dialogic and relational bias (^{FLORÊNCIO, 2012}; ^{FONSECA, 2012}; ^{FRANCO, 2019}; ^{SCIFONI, 2017}).

But what is it possible to say today, according to this literature, about heritage education? ^{Franco (2019}) says that we currently understand heritage education as an education that has as its starting point the purpose of making visible what is not yet visible concerning cultural heritage, allowing the subject to recognize the sensibilities, senses, knowledge, beauties, inconsistencies, contradictions, etc. that are related to heritage.

From the recent bibliography, we can state that heritage education is a process that can materialize through different methodologies since we are talking about a transversal field. It's also pertinent to clarify that, when talking about heritage education, we are dealing with the valuation of different forms of existence in a world that tends to nullify (or make invisible) what is different (^{FLORÊNCIO, 2012}). We believe that this is the hidden power behind educational actions aimed at the city and its cultural heritage.

Educational processes can be seen as mediators of the relationship with the world around us because education is capable - if that is its objective - of articulating school and non-school scenarios. We also understand that it's the role of education to promote and enable citizenship and, therefore, educational processes must occur in the everyday life.

It seems clear that education can mediate our relationship with the city and the cultural heritage that belongs to it. When we say that education can mediate the subject's relationship with the space around them, we argue that it can function as spectacle lenses that allow us to see what surrounds us, to read the city and its daily life. It's important to keep in mind that education is not a neutral field, but permeated by current beliefs, dogmas, laws, and policies; this observation is also valid for the notion of mediation (and also of patrimony).

When the subject is in the position of the mediator, they can't abandon their cultural baggage to mediate an action. Likewise, the other subjects involved in the process also have their cultural background, meaning that all those involved in the process are agents. When it comes to cultural heritage, each has its own cultural references - personal or collective. This understanding is fundamental for heritage education practices that are established through exchanges, not impositions.

^{Coutinho (2013}) says that mediation is a space (also) for confronting the conceptions of art, culture, and education. Since these notions are the pillars of institutions, it is through them that institutions are created and maintained. The author warns of the need to reflect on these conceptions because when the mediator simply reproduces the institutional discourse, they are at great risk of nullifying any educational intention for social transformation contained in the mediation of the action in question.

We can understand mediation, especially that which turns to art/culture/education, as a possibility of recognizing the subjects as the agents they are, like mediation, as an exchange, allows those involved to express their dreams, wishes, desires, satisfactions, and frustrations related to your reality. Here, mediation is perceived as a power for a heritage education that is critical, because, by enabling the subject to express himself, it also allows him to reflect on his existence not only as a human being but as a subject who constitutes (and is constituted by) the space that surrounds it.

Having demonstrated the importance of mediation for heritage education, we will return to discuss some contemporary conceptual pillars that support the execution of educational actions related to heritage. Icher (2008 apud^{FONSECA, 2012}) states that to work with heritage can't be seen as a mere accumulation of knowledge, but should help to develop an education of the senses and assist in structuring time and space. According to the author, this can be accomplished through discovering the other and awakening curiosity.

In the early 2000s, with the launch of the aforementioned guide, the focus of heritage education was on cultural objects, not on subjects. From the most recent literature, the core of the development of the processes lies with the subject, as it is in then the ability to give meaning to cultural references.

Today, it's understood that there is no point in just instruction and explanation of the basic concepts related to heritage, such as “memory”, “history”, “identity”, “culture”, etc. It is very important to start from the people's experiences, that the subjects understand the meaning of these concepts in their daily lives; otherwise, any action will be empty. By acting in this way, we allow interlocutors to place themselves as subjects at the center of their culture (^{SCIFONI, 2017}).

We conceive that memory is a discursive construction of reality. It can be erased, silenced, or manipulated based on discourses that prevail in society, becoming an element of power with the capacity to exclude non-hegemonic cultures. We now highlight a little of the importance of the discussion of memory when we talk about heritage and heritage education.

To understand the relationship between urban landscapes and memory, it's necessary to go through the symbolism that is contained in the spaces. The symbolism of the city is given by a mixture between its materiality and immateriality, thus forming an imaginary that is also part of the identity of a certain group.

This is how memory produces its effects in the city: directing certain historicity to the senses and the subjects. The arrangement and functioning of the urban structure - its architecture, its debris, paths, made up over time - provide access points in space to different ways of telling the city. Memory is, therefore, understood as the supply of meanings, as a file that can be forgotten, as a loose anchor for the affiliation of what has happened, while still letting it happen. (^{FEDATTO, 2009}, p. 5).

Memory is one of the extremely relevant psychic functions for the constitution of the subject and also of heritage, as it is from it that we can make sense of the cultural references in the world around us (^{MIRANDA; ALMEIDA, 2017}).

In addition to the concept of memory, we believe that the concept (and practices) of an educating city is relevant for thinking about heritage education. This notion presupposes greater engagement between public authorities and subjects, a factor that is extremely vital for us to think about the relationship of subjects with cultural heritage.

The city is the space of the collective; it's where life is ordered in its gregarious sense; where it's possible to see the other, with their nuances and differences. It's in the public space that we understand ourselves and face otherness and the need for coexistence. It's in that space and in everyday life that we have the real dimension of the presence of the other and the differences. This is what public space can provide us: an education for collective life (^{SEVERO; MOURÃO, 2018}). However, the city is also configured as the place of inequality, where hierarchies are imposed and access to services, equipment and even places is sometimes restricted to a portion of the population.

5 Final considerations: advances and challenges in the state of research knowledge

From the state of knowledge, we were able to better understand which conceptions academic research has used to address education related to cultural heritage. We believe that the quantitative difference between the works found over the years, especially with the leap in research in 2014, is closely related to the opening of new undergraduate courses (through the Support Program for Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities - Reuni, expansion program for Brazilian public universities started in 2003) and postgraduate courses covering education and heritage.

In Brazil, the launch of the Basic Heritage Education Guide marks the opening of investment by IPHAN in the area of Education. It was important for the beginning of the consolidation of policies aimed at heritage education, but this publication presents heritage education as a somewhat inflexible and contestable action methodology nowadays. However, the researches found show that researchers still use this publication as the main reference for heritage education in Brazil.

Concepts, theories, and practices are made by people situated in a historical time and space. This guide, therefore, is the result of the effort of individuals who were thinking about heritage some 30 years ago, and what we observe today is that this publication no longer corresponds to current ideas. The gap between theory and practice is evident when the subject is heritage education. We need to update ourselves and produce not only new concepts but also new methods. That's why we believe in the importance of practices that are supported in new thoughts.

Educational actions related to heritage put into practice in the Brazilian context in the early 2000s contributed to reinforcing the importance of monuments as the only form of existence of Brazilian heritage. In addition, they corroborated a hierarchy imposed on our cultural values, not taking into account the subjects who have a direct connection with the heritage in question, an understanding that only emerged from the 2000s onwards, when the concept of cultural heritage was expanded. Therefore, the concept is valid at that time of its production, a factor that doesn't disqualify it today, even though we have another perspective on what heritage is.

This research showed that the nomenclature “patrimonial education” in the works found still works as a kind of synonym for the Heritage Education Guide. It also showed how educational processes linked to cultural heritage can start from different premises, since, as ^{Scifoni (2017}) told us, the theoretical framework is still incipient for thinking about heritage education. We also point out the need for a theoretical and practical deepening so that we can rethink educational practices linked to cultural heritage and, above all, we allege the importance of taking into account the city, the subject, and the public space as categories in this process.