The Teaching Contents of Social Sciences Through Cinema

Abstract: We know that using cinema as a teaching and educational strategy may take up different shapes and have different goals. In the field of Education, the literature regarding the use of cinema as a teaching resource is quite extensive. The topic has been amply discussed in several works and in cultural and scientific events. The aim of this paper is to present some of the strategies that we have applied during the teaching of some contents and concepts of the Social Sciences by using the screening of movies and by discussing about these experiences. The strategies to be presented took place at the Viana do Castelo Polytechnic Institute, in the Bachelor Courses in Primary Education and in Gerontology Social Education and in the Higher Professional Technical Courses in Educational Intervention in Child Care and in Ageing and Social Community Intervention. By using cinema, various contents and concepts were discussed in depth, specially the following: what is Sociology and what is it for; ageing as a social phenomenon; the concepts of culture, multiculturalism, interculturality and the concept of generation. The movie chosen for the pedagogical experiments was Gran Torino (Eastwood, 2009).

Key words: education, teaching, social sciences, cinema, culture