Em busca dos tesouros de Ceará-Mirim: (re)escrevendo histórias, valorizando culturas

Abstract

This intervention project is linked to the Applied Linguistics field (MOITA LOPES, 1996, 2006, 2009) and comprises an ethnographic dimension (ANDRÉ, 1995; ERICKSON, 1989). The project was developed in a learning community (AFONSO, 2001) comprised of 9th grade students, a Portuguese language teacher, a teacher/ researcher from the Escola Estadual Monsenhor Celso Cicco state school in Ceara-Mirim (city located in the northern Brazil state of Rio Grande do Norte), as well as outside agents. The project’s objective was to study writing as a social practice that itself is developed through the study of inherited local culture. Its final product was the creation of a touristic route script mapping some of the local assets of Ceara-Mirim’s Historical and Cultural Heritage institutions, to be presented as a videobook. To achieve this final result a literacy project was developed (KLEIMAN, 1995, 2005) to serve as a didactic model (TINOCO, 2008) supported by the “writing as a social practice” tenet. The researchers also based the project on the concepts of multiliteracy (ROJO, MOURA, 2012), social literacy (STREET, 2014) and dialogic language (BAKHTIN, [1929] 2014). Starting at the student’s cultural frame of reference (CERTEAU, 2014), the researchers used familiar language, brought the inherited local culture into the classroom and developed situated language practices that aimed at mapping, under the points of view of the youngsters themselves, what was relevant enough to be added to this particular touristic route. The general objective of the project was to put into practice those concepts that allowed for the discovery and rediscovery of writing and, through that, make certain aspects of the cultural inheritance of Ceara-Mirim more noticeable and visible. To achieve this broader objective the researchers established as key the following specific and more focused objectives: i) to map, according to the points of view of the local youngsters, which cultural assets are relevant enough to be placed in a videobook; ii) to identify aspects of the writing practices developed in the project as re-significations for the teaching and learning of the mother-tongue; iii) to understand how the literacy project can serve as re-signification to the process of teaching and learning the Portuguese Language. The activity network (OLIVEIRA; SANTOS; TINOCO, 2014) developed during the entire process lead the project toward the generation of data – materialized in the form of texts, videos and photographs – that, in turn, pointed toward a new posture of the students when facing the social and economic demands of a graphocentric society. During the entire period of data generation the researchers observed that, once aware of the culture and history of their people, the students become more engaged with a feeling of belonging to the community – and also to the social problems that affect it. In face of those findings, the researchers noted how the project contributed to the re-signification of reading and writing practices outside the school context and community – and into real life. Data analysis was conducted throughout the entirety of the project and comprises the following categories: i) writing as a social practice; ii) the activity network developed; and iii) the discursive genres and their link to each of the literacy events of the project as a whole, according to the point of view of the social action (BAZERMAN, 2005) discursive genre (BAKHTIN [1953] 2011).