The aim of this dissertation is to explore a local/oral history school programme which led to a documentary history film about Vassilissis Sofias avenue. More specifically, it examines whether the specific pedagogic practice transforrmed the existing relationship between everyday community and school knowledge as well as whether it had an impact on the identity of the students who participated in the programme as well as on the educational function of school. The programme was implemented in a state secondary school in Athens by a group of 3 teachers and 14 3rd grade Lower Secondary Education students and the research was carried out in the year 2017-2018. The research tools employed were open-ended, semi-structured group interviews (group discussion) along with field observation of the group and observation on the school premises.
Analysis showed that the programme offered students a way out of the traditional teaching of history as a narrative as well as an alternative approach to historical knowledge via field visits, interviews, research and film making. Through their field visits, the students gained access to the generality and abstraction of school history via the visible and tangible and had the opportunity to compare the field under study with that of their everyday life as well as to observe the social stratification and the human geography of the area. The interviews conducted were one more source of historical knowledge, although information came from a specific group of middle-class city-dwelling informants and the viewpoint of groups or individuals belonging to other social strata was not included. The analysis showed a weakening of the boundary between school history knowledge and that gained by common sense and everyday community knowledge. In conclusion, there are elements in the programme which differentiate it from dominant practices in accessing knowledge and in terms of student socialization but its impact on the core content of school history knowledge was negligible.