Mudanças no letramento acadêmico de cursistas do ProfLetras: questões de linguagem e identidade

Abstract

Our motivation for this thesis comes from the fact that we teach in basic education, and became familiarized with the issue of academic literacy in a course by dr. Izabel Magalhães in the M.A. Course in Linguistics. In addition to literacy, we are also committed to set up a profile of teachers and their practices. Both the Social Theory of Literacy and Critical Discourse Analysis helped us in this regard. We are particularly committed to answering the following question: being a new mechanism of continuing education, how far does the Professional Master´s Program impact on teacher identities? The main purpose of this work is then to pull together findings that directly address this question, reporting on data from teachers who are enrolled on the Professional Master´s Program (Profletras). Given the limitation of any textual analysis vis-à-vis the need to take up seriously social features, we adopted ethnography as a methodology that would generate the data required. This methodology was necessary because it allowed for a useful triangulation for intensifying and ensuring all the qualifying procedures related to teachers´ interviews as well as participant observation. This enquiry follows previous research by Social Theory of Literacy scholars (STREET, 1984; 2003; 2010; 2012; 2014; BARTON and HAMILTON, 1998; BARTON, HAMILTON and IVANIC, 2000), and Critical Discourse Analysis according to Fairclough (2001, 2003). Other investigations show the compatibility between both theories (MAGALHÃES, 1995; RIOS, 2009; SATO, 2013; BATISTA JR, 2013, FONTENELE, 2014). With the Social Theory of Literacy at hand, we described some literacy events within the Professional Master´s Course and relate them to literacy practices, which in turn involve social and cultural dimensions, such as values, attitudes, feelings and social relations. And with the help of Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyzed the meanings of identity, by means of the categories of modality and evaluation, both related to speaker assumptions. The analysis revealed continuing and widening literacy practices among the participants under analysis, in part due to reading, writing and discussing about texts which were presented to teachers by the Professional Master´s Course. In the context of these changes, we observed a redefinition and reconstruction of the teachers´ social identities.