Knowledge and practices of literacy teachers: formative interlocutions in the research process

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the process of reflection on the knowledge and pedagogical practices of eight teachers who work in literacy classes in the municipal public schools of Capivari (SP) and are at the beginning of their careers, period between the first and third year of their teaching path (HUBERMAN, 1995; TARDIF; RAYMOND, 2000). Considering the research space as a formative field in which the teachers constitute and recognize themselves as educators, in this text our goal was to understand their concerns and reflections about their own knowledge and teaching practices, in other words, their own experience. For that, Vygotsky’s (2000) cultural-historical theory of development and Bakhtin’s (1999, 2003) perspective on discourse and enunciation were assumed as a theoretical framework and method, since both authors highlight the centrality of the other's language in the constitution of our subjectivity. The meetings were held individually in each teacher's respective school and totaled 56 hours of discussion that were audio recorded, transcribed and registered in the field diary of one of the researchers. The analysis of the material allows us to state that the collaborative research contributes to the professional development of beginning teachers, since the participants have changed their ways of teaching by studying and reflecting on their own practices from a different framework, the discursive perspective, which is opposed to constructivism, the hegemonic theory that circulates in schools, and by modifying ways of learning of the children, making teachers feel safer and as capable as their students in this movement.