LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN THE LIGHT OF CRITICAL LITERACY AND

MULTILITERACIES in BRAZILIAN EDUCATION

Daniel FerrazFaculdade de Tecnologia – São Paulo, Brazil

PhD student, Universidade de São Paulo

Policies

How do we connect LED

presentations to FOREIGN LANGUAGE

EDUCATION in BRAZIL?

TREE METAPHOR

Monte Mor (2007)

Challenges...New times? New pedagogies?

ABSTRACT: This paper aims at investigating language and culture in a Language and

Culture graduate course from a university in the State of São Paulo, Brazil.

• Language and Culture

• Based on:

• Critical Literacy and Multiliteracies

CRITICAL LITERACY (Luke, Snyder)

:

Multiliteracies (Kalantzis & Cope)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

DesignCritical LiteracyMultiliteracies

-Pedagogy

-Practice

LanguageCulture

-Objects of study

-Theory

CONTEXT: the course

• 13 students• All of them English teachers and coordinators

of private and public schools in São Paulo, Brazil

• Course: Language and Culture through English

Objetives

• Discuss language and culture through English

• Problematize / question monolithic views of language and culture

• “expanding views” = to expand their interpretations about language and culture

CLASS 1 Culture, Post movements, knowledge and perspectives,

- Culture

- Post movements; post-modernity, post-coloniality, post-structuralism(texts: Bakhtin, Derrida,Usher and Edwards)

-  Films: Truman Show

Class project: OSDE – Open spaces for development and equity – Knowledges and perspectives

For class 2: Text 1- A Tale of differences (Cervetti, Pardales and Damico) Text 2 - Postmodernism, Post-modernity and the Post-modern movement (Usher and Edwards) Text 3 –Eu e o outro: imagens refletidas ( MonteMór,W.)background readingText 4 –Culture, Class and Pedagogy in Dead Poets Society”

Text 5 - Teorias do Pós-Moderno

(Jameson

How...?

• Theories: articles about language, and culture • Class project: films for discussion connected to

the theories (visual literacy, critical literacy)• Interaction in the discipline´s Blog: videos,

youtube videos, links, images, cartoons (multiliteracies)

• Response Papers: students wrote reflections upon the process ( linguistic, critical literacy)

Students’ responses: some interpretations

• WHEN IT COMES TO LANGUAGE AND CULTURE…

• Reproductivism• Fragmented knowldge• Expansion of interpretations

Bourdieu´s critique: REPRODUCTIVISM

• STUDENT E2• Response Paper - First Class• In my opinion this first class was just great. We were a little tired of having so much theory during the previous

modules. It was really good to discuss important and interesting issues. Professor Daniel Ferraz showed the differences between the Modernism and the post-modernism movement, making us having a whole picture in our minds.

• Probably, I have heard in my school time these names before (Positivism, Rationalism, and (Neo) Liberalism) but I’ve never thought about the influence it had on people and mainly on education. Positivism, Rationalism and Neo Liberalism are part of the modernism movement which focus on society. The positivism shows us that everything has two sides the good and the bad. The differences of cultures used to be seen as good and bad cultures and not as different and acceptable. The Rationalism used to say that if you were not a scientist, a rational man, you were not part of a society, you were put aside. The Neo liberalism used to say that everybody is free, everybody has the same rights, but it made me think that this is beautiful in theory because it’s not what really happens in real life due to the fact that some people have more freedom than others and unfortunately they have more rights than others as well. I could understand that during the modernism, people lived in the feudal system in which people (society) were under control the King who had the power within his domain that in fact used to follow the Pope’s rules. God was the Center of Universe that’s why the church was the greatest power especially in Europe. The people started to leave the castles forming societies and cities. They started to question the King and to rethink some ideas and concepts they used to have. From that moment, the man starts to be the Center of the world. This new man can create technology and rethink the notion of God. They established science and a new movement “the Enlightment” that I had never thought about the meaning before that is light the world bring the light. Now we have another movement that is the Post-modernism, which focus on language and not on society, it is more flexible and they will question and challenge all the movements. Bahktin, Derrida and Foucault are the important names in this movement. Bahktin, with the idea of dialogism. Derrida, with the concept of deconstruction and Foucault with the notion of power, how to work with it and if it is possible to negotiate this power.

• This class made me think about many concepts we may have in our minds and we use them as they are universal truths. In education, I can say that we were taught in a way and even after having a lot of information on new things and ideas, for many reasons we keep doing the same, just repeating our teachers’ steps.

Response paper 1• Student F• During Feudalism, God was the center of the universe. Man couldn’t do much

without his help. As population grew, many people started to live farther and farther from the kingdoms, where they were controlled by kings and religious authorities, and began to question the idea that God was the center of the universe.

• Modernity consists of admitting that man is the center. Due to man’s capacity, many things that make it easier for humans to live have been invented. As a consequence, the world has become a place where people who have a higher level of intellectualism and greater purchasing power to buy whatever is invented receive recognition, while those who aren’t talented or don’t have money are often put aside.

• Post-modernity comes to combat structuralism (emphasis on structures), which has been viewed as the way to achieve success. Applying this in education, teachers are supposed to stop giving importance only to the structures of their disciplines. They also need to call their students’ attention to the role of the latter in society as agents of transformation. Besides that, it’s essential for students to know what the contents they are learning are for.

• So, the first class of this course helped me reflect on my responsibility, as an educator, to form active citizens for society. By doing so, I will be making a contribution to my students’ lives which will be as important as the contents I may help them learn.

Morin´s critique: Fragmented knowledge

Expansion of Interpretations • Final Paper – Group B interpreting the movie

BLINDNESS:

• Therefore, this essay on “Blindness” is an attempt to express how the movie echoed with our thoughts and our reality as we believe the blindness in this case is not a matter of being visually impaired but the ignorance to comprehend the world around us.

BLINDNESS = metaphor for

• CULTURE• GROUP D

• Since talking about culture is talking about ourselves, our group couldn’t help but come up with examples from our everyday life in Brazil: our own version on how multiculturalism works. Have we been promoting multiculturalism ? Or have we just been trying to pour our cultural backgrounds in a pot and spread the word that we’ve been living happily ever after?

Expansion of Interpretations

To conclude...

• This kind of course design MAY look simple or a taken-for-granted design, but it is something new in Teacher education and Language education in the contexts where I teach.

To conclude...

• Foreign Language Education in Brazil needs to be problemitized at an epistemological level - if we are to engaje with our student´s education.

• The pedagogical assumptions and practices we are based on when we design our courses will contribute to this engagement (or not)

• How can we – Foreign Language Educators – foster Linguistic enhancement and at the same time prepare our students for active citizenship?

• THANK YOU

• DANIEL FERRAZ

• danielfe@usp.br