Innovating Teacher Education in Brazil: Enhancing Access in the Era of Distributed Learning

Colloquium
Helena Andrade Mendonca,  Walkyria Monte Mór,  Rodrigo Abrantes da Silva,  Elaine Reis  

This colloquium discusses a collaborative research and development project between The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, designed by Monte Mor, Menezes de Souza, Mendonça, Reis and Abrantes da Silva (USP), Cope and Kalantzis (UIUC). The project aims at investigating the affordances of a ubiquitous e-learning platform to upgrade public school English, Spanish, Portuguese teachers’ skills in Brazil, in collaboration with universities from different Brazilian regions. The project stems on the premise that the large Brazilian territory demands innovations in teacher education, considering the difficulty of access to many in-service teachers to theories and practices that have been reinvigorated in the last decades, such as the freirian concepts on education and Literacies (Multiliteracies, Digital and Critical Literacies, for instance). The purpose of the colloquium is, then, to share the ongoing experience and discuss some of its outcomes: the project potentiality to enhance access in favor of updated continuing education in the area of languages in huge Brazil; the rethinking of teaching and learning processes in a Digital Society; the engagement do social transformations in relation to critique, agency, design, ubiquity, multimodality, language and cultural pluralities, active citizenship and the like. It is expected that the presentations of the experience and outcomes will be followed by participants’ commentary and/or group discussion, as a way to enhance collaborative knowledge cultures and possible future academic exchange.