During the second semester of 2001, a research was conducted in a history class for children, aged 9 to 11 who studied at UFMG's Pedagogical Center. It aimed at identifying and analyzing the representations of these pupils concerning black people throughout the History of Brazil. The first and last classes developed the following theme: "the role of Black people in the shaping of Brazilian History". We asked the children to draw "Black people and their ways of life" and write captions for their drawings. Between these two classes, a set of activities was developed, which used various historical sources and the teacher's mediation. They were intended to allow the pupils to raise this issue and broaden their own representations in order to incorporate a more complex and pluralistic vision of the presence of black people in the shaping of Brazilian History. Some of the questions discussed in this article are: "What changed and what remained of the children's initial representations?", "Was there any relationship between the representations and practices concerning the Black people transmitted through these children's social relation network, the means of communication, school or other places and the children's own representations?" and "What contribution can the studies of social representations may offer to history teachers in their task of forming a new idea of citizenship and new social identities
Teaching history; Social representations; Learning