Interfaces between education and language: an experience of extension

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/198271991398

This article aims to reflect on one of the experiences of the Center for Language Studies (NEL) of the Regional University of Blumenau (FURB), Brazil: the Research Group, which was formed in 2004 gathering teachers and undergraduate and graduate students of the teaching degree courses, fellows of the scientific initiation program and Teaching Initiation Scholarship Program (PIBID), as well as former students of the Language Department Graduate Program. To this end, we sought to conduct such discussions from the analysis of the NEL Research Group participants’ testimonies collected by means of evaluation forms at the end of each semester in 2013 and 2014. In weekly meetings, the group members discussed the language phenomena and their interface with education. In those workshops, the activities were based on texts produced by the group members, such as research projects, abstracts, complete papers for events, scientific articles, and theoretical texts that helped expand the participants’ language education. Having its focus on two of the NEL objectives: to involve teachers and undergraduate and graduate students from the Language and Education Department, and to articulate the teaching-research-extension relation with regard to linguistic education. During those years, the Research Group became a core space of extension inside the university, mostly for the implementation of continuing education actions, exactly because it represented an encounter and articulation point between the knowledge produced by research conducted in the academic sphere, and the teaching that occurs not only in higher education, but also in elementary schools.

Keywords: Language education, Extension, Research Group, Teacher training.