Historiografia da educa？？o na América Portuguesa: balan？o e perspectivas

generally privileged in brazilian historiography, the colonial period has raised the interest of education historians for several decades, in contrast to what occurs with the empire and republican periods. the studies carried out before the 1980′s, which dealt mostly with the analysis of the educational action of the society of jesus in brasil and the reforms promoted by the administration of marquis of pombal during the second half of the 18th century, still predominate. the present paper aims to review the historiography of education in the portuguese america, to discuss its characteristics of production of the period, the prevailing approaches and their explanatory matrices, the sources available, and the possible reason for the secondary role of education in the colonial period in historiography, with the exception of the emphasis of some studies on the history of books and reading, but that nonetheless do not deal with education as their main subject. it is also sought to discuss some possibilities of investigation based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions used in other fields of historical research of the period.