Imaginário, memória e linguagem: as fronteiras entre o dizível e o indizível no ensino da língua portuguesa

Abstract

This work is linked to the teachers training research and social imaginary study group of Federal University of Santa Maria, RS, that investigates imaginary, memory and teacher training practices. It aims at unveiling teachers imaginary constructions in relation to Portuguese language teaching during the teachers training processes and the pedagogic practices of four language teachers, based on their life history. Such an approach brings to the educational setting the symbolic dimension of imaginary studies and the change of focus from ideological formation to teacher insertion as a historical being, lending a new significance to teacher s training and practice through the imaginary point of view. A first finding shows that liking to study language appears as a link between the teacher and her profession, supported by the opportunity to become a teacher. Negative images surface in considering professional/academic formation, in relation to technicism in education as it favors the study of grammatical structures and downgrades textual production, reading and methodology. Due to the fact that the academic teacher training program is considered inadequate to provide a good formation, the subjects feel that their pedagogical formation is completed during the professional practice, reinforcing the instituted imaginary that links teaching to improvisation. Also, there is a conflict between traditional teaching practices and new trends in language teaching, which take in consideration pupils insertion and individual differences. Thus, when teachers tell about themselves and their identities, they tell about the need to acquire knowledge, the professional Know how they lack. The constant search proficiency and the overload of school work tax the teachers severely. On the other hand, the Portuguese teacher myth is also a self valuing image in a society where teaching is not valued and therefore is a means to overcome contextual difficulties and feel imaginary completeness. Students images about the language study describe it as difficult , boring and so knowledge is very little. This fact adds to the conflicting image of the Portuguese teacher: someone torn between reality and myth, the personal and the professional, someone who cannot give what has not received but nevertheless strives for proficiency and completeness even though imaginary. In the subjects viewpoint, the ideal image of a teacher is someone who masters the knowledge about the pedagogical, experiencial and the specific teaching subject. However, as incompleteness is part of the person, identity is constructed daily by teaching conditions, historicity, innovations and knowledge production. To sum up, the various faces of teaching are composed by linking the language, myth, work overload, student relationship with the language and the imaginary and re-signified perceptions expressed in telling one s history. Memory and imaginary are intertwined, flow throughout life histories and whatever they can express or be left unexpressed as part of teaching.