Os desafios da EJA/Santa Maria: uma análise de documentos, livro didático e práticas de letramentos de professores de inglês da rede municipal

Abstract

Youth and Adult Education (EJA, in Portuguese), presenting in its origin the idea that it is possible to learn for life and that literacy is an indispensable step in the process of building the autonomy of women and men, "has the commitment to be permanently aware of the changes that happen in society" (BARCELOS, 2009, p.53). Within this perspective, this work aims to investigate which literacy perspectives support the different instances of the pedagogical and political educational context of EJA in Santa Maria. We consider Critical Genre Analysis (CGA) (MOTTA-ROTH, 2006; 2008) and the proposal of literacies, developed by the New London Group, as they are in line with the principles of cultural plurality and diversity of languages recommended by experts in the field (ROJO; MOURA, 2012), as well as by official documents guiding EJA. Regarding the methodological assumptions, this research started from the analysis of the literacies and teaching perspective(s) that subsidize the official EJA documents, followed by the analysis of the literacies and teaching concepts underneath the activities proposed in a textbook approved by PNLD/ EJA, taking into consideration three literacy perspectives (ROJO, 2004; MOTTA-ROTH, (2008); FREIRE (2001)) and finally the analysis of the literacy practices identified in the discourses of teachers and coordination of the city’s board do education (SMED-SM) through a semi-structured interview. The results indicate that when it comes to the analysis of the concepts of literacies that guide official documents, we perceive an orientation that stimulates a critical teaching practice, the connection/ interaction with the most diverse contexts, cultures and multiple languages. However, there is no problematization on how this could be implemented in the classroom. In relation to the concepts of literacies that underlies the activities of EJA's textbook, there is a greater recurrence of activities that explore the concept of literacies as cognitive processing (65.85%), followed by activities that focus on critical processing (25.20%) and, finally, activities that explore decoding processing (8.94%). Concerning the pedagogical practices, the discourses analysed show that the teachers have difficulties to situate theoretically their teaching activities and their didactic materials. In addition, they affirm to participate in continuous education practices dissociated from the EJA’s reality and they present different perceptions about the practice of producing the guiding document developed by the municipality. These results show that the official national documents, the textbook, and the teacher’s pedagogical practices reflect what we call “the pedagogy of institutionalized abandonment in EJA”, term adapted from Feitosa et al. (2022), despite the efforts implemented by the municipal government to minimize this reality.