Letramentos digitais: um estudo com a mediação do smartphone no estágio supervisionado de língua inglesa no ensino médio.

Abstract

The continuous search for dialogue with today's world brings to education challenges that are not always accomplished (MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2011a). Before the need to follow the social configuration and the pressure to “technologize” the learning process, the federal government along with state governments have invested in providing the necessary tools to promote an update of the school system (MATTOS, 2015b). However, the enactment of laws such as nº 8.949 on 03 November 2009 in the state of Paraíba, which prohibits the use of cell phones within the classrooms of state’s public schools, suggest that this attempt of updating public-school system by merely inserting digital technologies seems contradictory. It is so because, while the government tries to promote digital inclusion in schools, it also prohibits the use of digital technologies which already are part of the school routine: the smartphones, for instance. Considering the scenario above and based on the theoretical perspective of digital literacies, that approaches the digital technologies from a sociocultural point of view, advocating for educational innovations and not only technological ones, this research aims at answering the question: how do English teacher trainees use the smartphone in practices guided by the digital literacies perspective in the context of supervised internship at the last year of Secondary School? The general objective is to analyse the pedagogical contributions of the uses of the smartphone in the practices guided by the digital literacies perspective which were carried out by English teacher trainees in the context of supervised internship at the last year of Secondary School. As specific objectives, there are: a) to verify the digital literacies conceptions underlying the practices developed by the English teacher trainees with the smartphone in the context researched; b) to identify the teacher education conceptions underlying the practices mentioned and the digital literacies conceptions; and c) to evaluate the process of identity development of these English teacher trainees in the face of practices with the smartphone in the classes during the supervised internship. In order to accomplish such investigation, it was developed an ethnographic qualitative research (ANDRÉ, 2005; MOREIRA; CALEFFE, 2008) with ten undergraduate English teacher trainees enrolled in the discipline Estágio de Língua Inglesa: 3º ano do Ensino Médio, in a preservice English teacher education program, at the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), from April to August of 2018. Field notes generated by participant observation of the researcher in the classes of the discipline mentioned and in the classes delivered by the English teacher trainees, screen captures of WhatsApp groups, class plans and experience reports written by pairs of English teacher trainees were used as objects of analysis. By analysing them, it was possible to notice a conception of digital literacy which is legitimised merely by the insertion of the smartphone in conventional practices and another one that comes closer to the notion of a space for construction and negotiation of meanings. Additionally, it was identified a strong conception of teacher education as technical instrumentalization in relation to the use of digital technologies, since the fear of the uncertainties about the practices with the smartphone directed the undergraduates to request models that could be applied in the classrooms where they developed the supervised internship. Therefore, it can be noticed the importance and the need of continuing to invest in teacher education based on the development of identities open to uncertainties (GIMENEZ, 2011; MORAN, 2000), grounded on the digital literacies, so that it can be developed educational innovations and not only technological ones.