The science of geography prioritizes the relationships between society and nature as an object of study. However, one needs to reflect on the possibility of listening in the teaching of geography in schools, in dialogue with its epistemology. The outline chosen to illustrate the potential of this approach results from the quest to understand the reading of the world from the favela, considering the plurality present in the productions of senses and meanings of the subjects who observe it. In such productions, there are mediated experience and direct experience with/in favelas. What notions guide the concept of favelas constructed by students, though? Understanding how students perceive favelas and create senses and meanings when conceiving their notions was an important connection between school and non-school knowledge in the educational process and spatial learning. This study points to humanistic geography as a possibility of understanding the investigative universe in contemporaneity, by allowing to shift various meanings - in this case, of urban space and its relations with teaching - to shore up teacher education actions. Rethinking notions such as space and place provides a reflection on the appropriation of different meanings and knowledge in school and beyond. Urban space is filled with social practices that reveal different temporalities and spatial experiences. Thinking it within the school means giving visibility to different subjects and their territorialities. To achieve this goal, this study used children's drawings as a tool for dialogue with the subjects.
Teaching of geography; Humanistic geography; Children's drawings; Favelas
