Competências sociolinguísticas na escola pública cearense: saberes, atitudes linguísticas e práticas pedagógicas de docentes no 5º ano do Ensino Fundamental

Abstract

This thesis investigates the didactic and pedagogical treatment given by teachers to linguistically variable phenomena, with a view to the development of sociolinguistic competence of students in the 5th year of elementary school from Ceará, Brazil, studying in the public municipal system. Under the Variation Theory and Language Changes Basis from William Labov (1977, 1978, 1983, 2003, 2008) the sociolinguistic knowledge which permeates teachers initial and continuing education, their attitudes against variation phenomenon and language change and their pedagogical practices in classroom aiming students „sociolinguistic competencies development. The sample schools for this study was defined by the smaller (< 48,0 % (Group A)) and larger (> 77,8 (Group B)) adjustable percentages obtained by the schools in the Linguistic Variation Descriptor (D29) and SPAECE 2012 exam. The total of schools is 397 municipal schools, distributed in 135 towns. The quantitative and qualitative study was performed in two stages. The first stage (quantitative) was analyzed based on knowledge, attitudes and practices of 255 teachers from 5th grade from the 397 selected schools referred from an online questionnaire. Completing the analysis, the result of the total of students who did SPAECE 2012 exam (124.173) was analyzed. The percentage of trial and errors on each of the D29 items was dissociated considering the teacher`s group academic education: Pedagogy or Languages. The first step results demonstrated that there are no relevant differences between teachers from Group A and Group B about knowledge, attitudes and pedagogical practices related to linguistically variable phenomena. Referring to this result, on the complementary study, there was not also a relevant difference on the students‟ results related to the two items which were considered easy, no matter the students are from a teacher who studied Pedagogy or Languages. About the two items which were considered difficult, there was a larger percentage of corrected items from the students who are leaded by the teacher who studied Languages. On the second stage of the research (qualitative) 09 schools from Fortaleza, Ceará were involved. They were from the initial sample - 05 of them with lower percentage of correct answers (Group A) and 04 of them with higher percentage of correct answers on D29 (group B). It was involved 09 teachers from 5th grade (01 per school) altogether. The observed results from Group A teachers, graduated in Pedagogy, and group B teachers, graduated in Languages were relatively distant. Group B has demonstrated specific knowledge about linguistically variable phenomena and sometimes less prescriptive attitudes face the facts of linguistic variation. They also make use of different strategies related to linguistic variation in class. The two groups need more theoretic and methodological sociolinguistic basement in order to contribute for the students sociolinguistic competences.