Oral history in researching socialist education in the Czech Republic

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Authors

ZOUNEK Jiří ŠIMÁNĚ Michal KNOTOVÁ Dana

Year of publication 2015
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description The paper focuses on one of the new methodological areas, namely the use of oral history in researching socialist education in the Czech Republic. The authors will present the potential uses of oral history and will discuss links to other methods and approaches (life story, visual history). Methodological issues are among the key topics of the research project called Everyday life of basic schools in the normalization period as seen by teachers. Applying oral history of research in history of contemporary education (no. 14-05926S, supported by the Czech Science Foundation) being undertaken by the authors of this paper. The authors of this paper also work with archival resources. The paper will, for this reason, put special emphasis on availability of resources relevant to socialist education – in which the archives abound, a fact of key importance for research in this topic. The authors have established by research that archival resources covering the recent period have not been processed yet and are, in consequence, not available in practice. Oral history then provides one of the few opportunities to explore socialist schooling. This is why it is not only necessary to develop the method as such (considering specifics of education research) but also to employ knowledge obtained through qualitative education research. The authors will present some methodological inspirations and document them using examples from their original research.
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