Abstract:
This work discusses using Narrative Interviews as a methodological approach in social justice research. For this, we used the perspective of Narrative Interviews, defined by Jovchelovitch and Bauer (2013) as a vivid experience where participants can choose the most important topics of their stories. The narrative interview is an opportunity to invite the participant to be the owner of his own experience by reconstructing the order of facts, following their memories, creating the sequence of importance, and contextualizing what is necessary without the interference of the researcher. To discuss these elements, we illustrate this reflection by research that analyzed the professional journeys of Brazilian rural teachers considering the presence of struggle and social transformation in their pedagogical approach. By bringing out the debate on professional journeys in these narratives, this research incorporates the discussion in the Rural Education Movement, which has been collectively organized for more than 20 years in Brazil in search of education access. This Movement claimed the formulation of public policies for in-service teacher training, which resulted in initial and continuous training programs for teachers, besides bringing schools to the leading role in the struggle for land rights. By looking at the narratives as an opportunity for participants to exercise their autonomy in the research process, we included the concepts of autonomy, critical consciousness and oppression developed by Paulo Freire (1970). As academic researchers committed to the protagonism of marginalized people, this method of Narrative Interview allowed us to authentically understand the aspects of the struggle in teaching practices that carried the intentionality of transformative education in Brazilian rural schools.