Letramentos’s Updates

TransformACTION: attitudes beyond new tecnologies...

During my PhD investigation, which aimed at rethinking the English language classroom at a teacher education program in accordance with postmodern demands, I found myself quite frustrated at first when I realized that my investigated context was way too far from a more digitalized scenario, which then led me to think of transformation less attached to new technologies and more closely connected to conceptual, philosophical changes. Thus, among the dimensions presented in this Chapter, I favored the epistemological one during my studies by focusing on critical literacy practices that would help undergraduate students learn the social construction of reality and consequently recognize the limitations of their authoritative textbooks. Such critically oriented and postmodern practice would then happen in those “gaps” that used to emerge either from students’ ways of thinking and seeing or from the underlying concepts presented in the “plastic” world of EFL textbooks (Prodromou, 1988). Whenever we found such fruitful gaps (which I called "brechas" in Portuguese, Duboc, 2012), we would promote critical reflection, which then would inevitably bring discomfort and disruption by presenting a way of teaching based on epistemological relativism (Kalantzis, Cope, 2008). I personally see the notion of a transformative pedagogy more engaged in interrupting (cf. Biesta, 2010) certain assumptions or worldviews, which might and should occur even in the absence of digital media. New technologies in the classroom do not ensure the necessary transformative pedagogy in these more recent times; in my viewpoint, the very meaning of such “transformation” relies on the teacher’s attitude/agengy by cultivating a pluralistic epistemology as a precondition to a more active, critical and ethical education.

  • Livia Fortes
  • Luiz Otávio Costa Marques