DIVERSITY, TEACHING AND LANGUAGE: WHAT CHALLENGES AND COMMITMENTS WILL THE CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE PROFESSIONAL FACE?

In general, diversity can be conceptualized as the expression of opposites (BARROS, 2008). Despite the homogenization of several kinds and in the various areas promoted by the current process of globalization, the so-called ‘flat world’ will never be able to express the whole without considering the parts. In such a context of different ways of being in the world, language learning is a crucial condition for citizenship education, it is the key to get to know other people (BYRAM, 2006). Because of that, educational processes have been going through significant changes, fostering, among other things, postures aligned with the new world order, where the preparation of learners to able to exercise their rights at a global level and take advantage of mechanisms which guarantee their intercultural citizenship, has continually gaining ground. Linguistic education has been taking a similar path. In its scope, discourses and pedagogical practices which take into consideration the sociopolitical character of any educational process start to be required. In other words, it has been demanded an egalitarian linguistic education which, above all, struggles for diversity and is able to guarantee total inclusion, creating ample opportunities, especially for those learners who come from less privileged classes and historically marginalized groups. Having human diversity in the background, the article aims to discuss the role of the contemporary language teaching professional, highlighting the challenges and commitments which await them at different levels, and the central position this professional occupies at this crucial moment of the global society in which we fight for the historical, cultural and social (re)construction of our differences.

LITERATURA INFANTIL PARA UMA FORMAÇÃO LEITORA MULTICULTURAL

This essay aims at presenting some reflections on the compositional structure of two children literary works based on African-Brazilian theme and their implications on the elementary school reader’s background. The selected works are "The Little Kings of Congo" (2007), written by Edimilson Pereira de Almeida, and "Africa, my little Chaka" (2006) by Marie Sellier, and translated by Rose Freire D'Aguiar. Our basic principle is that, during the formative process in reading and culture, the structural organization of children's literature work comes as a factor that can trigger more or less interest from this reader under construction in the early grades. The educator who wishes to educate proficient readers should know and explore the structural, linguistic and contextual aspects from the literary text so the student can deduce their meanings. These studies are based on sociological aspects of reading, as Freire (2006) and Silva (1998), of culture in Hall (1997), of training reader through children's literature in Zilbermann (2003), Abramovich (1983), Aguiar and Bordini (1993), Cademartori (2009), Coelho (2000), among others. It is also bring into account that the school is the locus of ethno-racial diversity and the Afro-Brazilian children's literature, when present in this context and properly handled, can create opportunities to train children to be proficient readers; to give knowledge concerning the African culture and promote respect for differences, since the early school years.