Letramento de professores de inglês em formação: novas perspectivas?

Abstract

This study focuses on the investigation into literacy perspectives in English as a foreign language in the context of teacher education in a Language (‘Letras’) undergraduate course with dual qualification – Portuguese and English Languages – and in a language school at a public university. The study searched for responses to the following questions: (a) how do English teachers-in-education – students in the ‘Letras’ course – understand the concept of literacy?; (b) how do students in the ‘Letras’ course, in their everyday experiences, have contact with informal literacy events, beyond the literacy events which take place in the formal educational contexts?; (c) what literacy events may be observed in the supervised practicum activities of students in the ‘Letras’ course?; and (d) how do English teachers-in-education relate formal and informal literacies in the foreign language and what implications do these relations have for the teaching practice? The main objective in the present study was to identify which literacy model (STREET, 1984, 2012) guides English teacher education and the following secondary objectives were set: (a) to investigate the conceptions English teachers-in-education – students in the ‘Letras’ course – have of literacy; (b) to search for informal literacy experiences in the English language which students in the ‘Letras’ course have, beyond the formal educational contexts; (c) to investigate the literacy events which take place in the supervised practicum activities of students in the ‘Letras’ course; and (d) to analyse the relations which English teachers-in-education might draw between the conceptions of literacy and the teaching practice. The study is based on a qualitative-interpretative methodological design and finds its theoretical framework in the seminal contributions from Street (1984, 2012), referring to the Literacy Models – the Autonomous and the Ideological – the fundamental distinction between literacy practices and events (STREET, 2012; SCRIBNER and COLE, 1981), the essential conception of literacy as social practice (BARTON and HAMILTON, 1998, 2000), the dialectical-relational approach (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003), and the socio-discursive perspective on literacy practices (BLOMMAERT, 2005). The analysis of the data implies that the literacy perspectives teachers-in-education develop, in the context of the research, replicate those held by their educators, being oriented towards the Autonomous Model of Literacy, in a practice which seems to promote a cycle of repetition of values, beliefs and attitudes in the teaching of foreign language.