Educational Field and Statistical Field: different appropriations of numbers in education

Abstract

The present article analyses the speeches on educational statistics released in publications which circulated in the decades of 1930 and 1940. The sources used hereby were produced in the Serviço de Estatística de Educação e Saúde, under the coordination of Teixeira de Freitas, and in the Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos, organized by Lourenço Filho. The focus of this article is on perception of the existence of different appropriations for the educational statistical numbers. There is a considarable link between the aspects that are chosen to be mentioned in each case and the issues that are on the scene in the fields in which each author is initially attached to – as we intend to highlight by the analysis undertaken.