New wine into old skins: the enactment of literacy policy in Singapore

To better comprehend how educational reforms and classroom practice interconnect, we need to understand the epistemic environments created for learning, as well as the pedagogical activities and the modes of classroom discourse related to these activities. This article examines how a particular innovation in English literacy, Strategies for English Language Learning and Reading (STELLAR), has been implemented in Singapore. Outlining the broader curriculum initiatives, current literacy policy landscape and pedagogical effect of classroom discourse, we look at how English language teachers in grades 1 and 2 interpret the STELLAR curriculum. Situated within the larger international zeal of educational reform, Singapore presents a rich case for the study of policy–pedagogy initiatives, literacy instruction and cultural values. Adding to the existing policy enactment research, this investigation provides an opportunity to probe both the prospects and limitations of policy implementation associated with centralised educational structures, examination-oriented systems and societal cultural frameworks.

Reading the world through words: cultural themes in heritage Chinese language textbooks

This paper explores the social and cultural knowledge embedded in the textbooks for language and literacy education in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo School, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It examines how Chinese language arts textbooks introduce the child reader to cultural knowledge considered legitimate and valued in China as well as in Chinese diasporan communities. Furthermore, it looks at the construction of cultural knowledge in Chinese language textbooks in relation to the mainstream ideology to which immigrant children are exposed in and out of mainstream school classrooms. It looks at how the power relationship between legitimate cultural knowledge in majority and minority contexts is established and to what extent it affects language minority students' literacy practices in mainstream school and heritage language school contexts. Data sources are the Chinese textbooks used from kindergarten to Grade 5 in a Chinese heritage language school.

Motivational trajectories for early language learning across the primary-secondary school transition

The transition from primary to secondary school is an area of concern across a range of curriculum subjects, and this is no less so for foreign language learning. Indeed problems with transition have been identified in England as an important barrier to the introduction of language learning to the primary school curriculum, with implications for learners’ longer-term motivation for the subject. This longitudinal study investigated, through a questionnaire, the development of 233 learners’ motivation for learning French in England, during the transition from primary to secondary schooling. It also explored whether levels and patterns of motivation differed according to the type of language teaching experienced, comparing a largely oracy-focused approach with one with greater emphasis on literacy activities. Learners showed high and increasing levels of motivation across transition, placing particular value on learning French for travel. Being taught through an oracy or a literacy-focused approach had less impact on learners’ motivation than broader classroom experiences, with the development of a sense of progress and feeling that instruction met their learning needs being especially important. A growing disjuncture emerged between valuing the learning of French for travel/communication and learners’ low levels of self-efficacy for communication with native speakers, together with a desire for more communication-based activities. By the end of the first year of secondary school less positive attitudes towards learning French and less optimism about the possibility of future progress were beginning to emerge. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of the study for classroom practice in language learning.

Letters, authority and secrecy : The case of Karagwe in Tanzania

This paper aims to show how letters, as a genre of literacy, are used in Karagwe in Tanzania, in relation to authority and secrecy. It is shown that literacy, in the form of letters, plays an important role in the negotiation of authority. Authorities as well as ordinary people use letters according to official norms to claim or manifest authority, while grassroots forms of literacy, dominated forms, are used to resist authorities. Through secret messages and letters people find opportunities to resist that are less dangerous than open rebellion, although the effects may be limited because of the secrecy. It is also shown how children are socialized into this pattern of secrecies through literacy as they are used as messengers. When delivering secret letters and messages, they may be said to exercise a passive voice through literacy.

Representations of culture in EIL : Cultural representation in Swedish EFL textbooks

The English language has become an international language and is globally used as a lingua franca. Therefore, there has been a shift in English-language education toward teaching English as an interna-tional language (EIL). Teaching from the EIL paradigm means that English is seen as an international language used in communication by people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As the approach to English-language education changes from the traditional native-speaker, target country context, so does the role of culture within English-language teaching. The aim of this thesis is to in-vestigate and analyse cultural representations in two Swedish EFL textbooks used in upper-secondary school to see how they correspond with the EIL paradigm. This is done by focusing on the geograph-ical origin of the cultural content as well as looking at what kinds of culture are represented in the textbooks. A content analysis of the textbooks is conducted, using Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English as the model for the analysis of the geographical origin. Horibe’s model of the three different kinds of culture in EIL is the model used for coding the second part of the analysis. The results of the analysis show that culture of target countries and "Culture as social custom" dominate the cultural content of the textbook. Thus, although there are some indications that the EIL paradigm has influ-enced the textbooks, the traditional approach to culture in language teaching still prevails in the ana-lysed textbooks. Because of the relatively small sample included in the thesis, further studies need to be conducted in order to make conclusions regarding the Swedish context as a whole.

Enhancing comprehension in low achievement 9th grades: a quasi-experiment study

This article describes the application of a Comprehension Strategies Programme (CSP) designed to improve the reading comprehension of students with learning difficulties. The programme was implemented with 102 ninth grade students from Portuguese public schools with low achievement on a particular subject: Portuguese. An evaluation was done on the effects of the programme on reading comprehension and on school achievement. The Experimental Group presented significant improvements when compared to the Control Group (n=108) on the dimensions considered. This indicates that the CSP an bring benefits to low achieving students who have Portuguese as a mother tongue.

Narrativas do Brasil nas memórias de Pedro Nava

This thesis is a translation of work of the Brazilian doctor, Pedro da Silva Nava (1903-1984), in particular, his memoirs and chronicles, articulated with the writings of medicine history, aiming to defend that the autobiographical narratives are sources of research capable of promoting discussions on the expansion of the present at the confluence of complex and unequal society in constant changing process as the Brazilian. The theoretical and methodological support circulates around studies, proposals and thesis by Boaventura Santos about empowering past, destabilizing subjectivity, sociology of absences, cosmopolitan reason and translation work. The empirical support drawn from the literature produced by Nava were analyzed with reference this reasoning and studies that have facilitated the flow of translation among others, the studies of Antonio Candido, Arrigucci Jr., Boris Cyrulnik, Beatriz Sarlo, Ecléa Bosi, Ítalo Calvino, José Willington Germano, José Maria Cançado, Lev Vygotsky, Marilena Chauí, Paul Ricöeur and Walter Benjamim, without neglecting what we consider indispensable to scientific research, the production of relevant knowledge and prudent, in view of a decent life. The initial inflections reflect the subject of the Memoirs and its education/training, to then place the Memoir subject in the literary context, scientific, historical and Brazilian poetic (1972-2010), bringing great interpreters and discussing the rationale used by the Narrator that we defend stand closer to the cosmopolitan, showing the formation of narratives whose presence insert itself beforehand to modernist verve, linked to the discursive array against the literature as domination space, disseminated in Brazil in the early twentieth century. So, it articulate with those in which the concerns adjust the construction of the social formation of Brazil as a national heritage through literary narrative that focuses on a historical principle that becomes the past empowering, allowing his rereading, whose converge to memory, the lifestyles, the plurality of language and Brazilian culture, formed by several people, converging into a design not of culture but multiculturalism in Brazil. The memory issue was addressed in the space-time of experiences of being that narrates, shaped by a destabilizing subjectivity that sought to order the testimony of a time, a history and society, retelling them by creative imagination, almost fictional, to make circulate his knowledge about Brazil attached to his medical knowledge, as well as other subjects in his living group and other groups with whom they maintained contact. Thus, he portrayed both tangible and intangible cultural assets of the country as a form of preservation, giving them meanings and sense. It approaches, therefore, from the perspective of sociology of absences, the expansion of the present and by the logic inherent in his narratives of self and Brazil

Corpo e escrita: linhas e entrelinhas da produção de conhecimento em sala de aula

Body and writing: Lines and between-lines of production of knowledge in the classroom it is an ethnographic research, longitudinal character, based on experience while experienced educator of the Escola Municipal Professor Amadeu Araújo, located in the city of Natal-RN, from which are made reflections about texts written by students who have distorted age/education level, in the process of literacy. Here as initial goal: to discuss the production of students writing as a process body, considering the record of experiences and the impressions they have made during the teaching process. We initially by a conception of phenomenological body, by understanding it in its complexity, a phenomenon that is made from its relationship with the world and with the Other. The records examined were produced between the year 2000 and 2005 involving writings of 106 students, constituting a universe of 136 texts, from which, delimited a corpus of 27 texts. The relevance with respect to the theme and recurrence in which they were detected, were up to elements that allowed a systematization methodology, defining the following units of analysis: Body, written in everyday; body, written and sexuality; body, written and enjoyment poetics; body, writing and other stories. We used the techniques of search, participant observation, based on the actions and interactions body expressed during the experiment and the analysis of documents that consisted of students in the texts and secondary sources, among them, the records of daily class, reports and projects developed, as well as reports of my pedagogical practice, as a researcher inserted in the investigative process. The experience developed, showed a writing school able to express nuances of human complexity, showing that learning is made in the action body, crossed by various forms of language and pointing to the relevance of a pedagogical work able to articulate the dialogue between the written and registrations body of the students, as subjects of learning

A configuração da educação física no Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciencia e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte IFRN: contexto e perspectivas atuais.

Over time the Physical Education on IFRN has considered the sport as the only possibility of pedagogical action. In the purpose of investigating the aspects that determine this condition, this study aimed the context of physical education within the institutional framework and its current perspectives in the process of institutional transformation. In this sense, were addressed the following study questions: What political pedagogical aspects that influenced the context of Physical Education on IFRN and how the pedagogical experience on Mossoro s campus incorporated the perspectives of curricular proposals transformation for the High School and the theoretical changes of the Brazilian Physical Education. Methodologically the work was based on a qualitative approach characterized as a descriptive- comparative research. The technique of discourse analysis was employed in the speech of research collaborators having as categories of analysis the professional activities time in the institution; The ratio of official use of the assumptions to the pedagogical practice of Physical Education in IFRN; The sport in the education process of students and The Prospects of Physical Education in the current configuration of IFRN. The data analysis allowed us to infer that the theoretical methodology of pedagogical practice of Physical Education in IFRN need to be reformulated and that it is necessary a contextualization with the curricular principles of the political institutional pedagogical project and with the Curriculum Guidelines for Secondary Education. The teaching experience developed in the Mossoro s Campus was contextualized with the national curriculum guidelines for secondary education and the theoretical changes of the Brazilian Physical Education. We conclude that it is necessary a collective action of the group of teachers to transform the educational profile of Physical Education of IFRN, beyond the institutional support to be able to consolidate the physical education curriculum component in the current dimensions of society, human being, education, science, technology and work, proposed by the philosophical principles and epistemological political project of IFRN educational

Política de formação continuada de professores :cenários, diretrizes e práticas

Politics of Continued Formation of Tachers: settings, directives and pratices is constituted in a study from politics of continued formation of teachers materialized for the actual government. It has for purpose to analyse aspects of experience of continued formation in techers service that work at initial levels of fundamental education desenvolved in Natal through Program Management of School Learning (GESTAR) at the period from 2002 to 2005. The empiric field of study privileged the experience of formation in service developed by GESTAR in a school located at the procedures that materialized the search, we can point out: bibliographic review of literature that analyses the new demands for education in view of occurred transformations at the word setting and studies about the thematic continued formation of teachers; documentary search about the politics of continue formation of teachers and the GESTAR program from municipal net of study of Natal, four teachers and pedagogic coordinater of searched school. The study established a positive evaluation by the teachers that took part at the program in Natal and they pointed out that politics strategy of continued formation in service made possible the study of contents of Portuguese Language and Mathernatics associated to a new form for working them in the classroom, understanding of certain contents that they had difficulties before, understanding that activitus realized should have meaning for the student, favouring the understanding of subject studied. Among some limits noticed, we can point out: absence of reading of the material by the teachers, difficulty of the teachers in reconcile the diary activities wiht the individual studies at distance, no realization of a systematic following of the pedagogic practical of teachers use the exam how the only instrument of evaluation used by the teachers and difficulties of them in going on with the pedagogic proposal of GESTAR after the end of this program

Notas sobre o problema da explicação e da experiência no ensino da Filosofia

Apesar do esforço dos defensores do ensino da Filosofia para que essa disciplina volte a fazer parte do Ensino Médio, observamos, atualmente, seu abandono nos cursos universitários. Notamos que hoje, na sociedade normalizada e no espaço educacional, não é mais valorizado o desenvolvimento integral do pensamento, mas a transmissão de uma série de conteúdos que, supostamente, dão condições para a integração do estudante no quadro do progresso tecnológico e proporcionam sua entrada no mercado de trabalho. Circunscrevendo-se nesse contexto, neste texto pretende-se investigar o espaço em que o ensino da Filosofia se desenvolve na atualidade. Delineando os contornos de um problema que emerge nos espaços institucionais universitários onde o ensino da Filosofia ainda persiste, procurou-se evidenciar em que bases a Filosofia é ensinada. Procurou-se, ainda, compreender quais consequências os modos de compreender o ensino da Filosofia trazem para o aprendizado do filosofar. Uma consideração a que se pode chegar, a partir deste estudo, é a de que o ensino da Filosofia além de não privilegiar, e muitas vezes negar, a experiência de pensamento que o aluno pode fazer e ter com o texto filosófico, contribui para o empobrecimento dessa mesma experiência do e com o filosofar.

Currículo e deficiência: análise de publicações brasileiras no cenário da educação inclusiva

A educação inclusiva envolve dimensões político-administrativas e pedagógicas. O currículo é umas dessas dimensões, e as adequações curriculares aparecem como uma estratégia para que sejam atendidos os princípios de uma escola para todos. Este estudo objetiva caracterizar o campo de estudos da educação inclusiva, por meio de uma revisão da literatura publicada entre os anos 2000 e 2010, em periódicos da área de educação, disponíveis no banco de dados Scielo. As palavras-chave utilizadas foram curricular, currículo, deficiência, educação especial e necessidades especiais. Os resultados demonstram que as produções na área são escassas no que diz respeito às estratégias para efetivação da educação inclusiva, limitando-se, prioritariamente, a reflexões e discussões teóricas que envolvem os princípios e políticas educacionais, pouco retratando experiências didático-pedagógicas que promovam ajustes curriculares e/ou formas de flexibilização do ensino.

Análise das disciplinas de LIBRAS nos cursos de formação inicial em Pedagogia da UNESP

Pós-graduação em Educação - FCT

Estudo das dificuldades de leitura e interpretação de textos matemáticos em enunciados de problemas por alunos do ensino médio

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)