“Mas daí você trabalha também o „I like‟, o „I don’t like‟?”: ensino crítico de inglês e ressignificação de conhecimentos locais em um curso de formação continuada

Abstract

This work is the result of an ethnographic research developed in a continuing education course offered to English teachers in Basic Education by a technical and technological education institution. In this study, the reactions of English language teachers to the problematizations of the continuing education course guided by critical literacy were investigated, enabling re-significations of local knowledge (CANAGARAJAH, 2004) with the following objectives in mind: a) discuss moments of cultural shocks (rich points, AGAR, 1996) that emerged from teachers in face of the themes addressed under the bias of critical literacy during the course; b) reflect on reactions regarding understandings of English teaching and learning guided by critical literacy; c) reflect on the re-signification process of local knowledge from the discussions based on critical literacy, triggered during the continuing education course. To enable these reflections, events of the course, in which I acted as a teacher educator and lived with 9 teachers and 2 English teachers from public schools in the south-central and southwestern state of Paraná, were observed and interpreted. In the light of cultural theories, the discussions focused on the reflexivity process in the participants' reactions to the problematizations, allowing the identification of local knowledge and the understanding of how the Freirean problematizing dialogue contributed to the negotiation of meanings. As the course progressed, displacement movements related to teaching methods were perceived, which triggered conflicts with the meanings of "being critical" and concerns about the place of the content and the linguistic code in critical literacy, demonstrating the presence of embodied histories (PENNYCOOK, 2004) that cannot be erased with the arrival of new learning, but re-signified, accommodated and activated when the teacher considers it convenient to their contexts of action. This finding was recurrent in the presentation of plans prepared by the participants, in which local knowledge was negotiated and re-signified considering the problematizations of the course. Based on these reflections, I argue in favor of problematizing experiences in English teachers‘ continuing education, which can generate similar movements in classroom contingencies by means of the expansion of perspectives (MONTE MÓR, 2009; 2011; 2018a) and the enlargement of teaching and learning possibilities in practices that consider plurality, diversity, heterogeneity, dissent and criticality in English classes.