Problematizing the 'critical' in local pedagogical practices (FERRAZ 2016)
- 1. Problematizing the ‘critical’ in local pedagogical practices Prof. Dr. Daniel Ferraz UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, docente UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO, pós-doutorando
- 2. AGENDA According to Pennycook (2010), the "critical" has reached a level of saturation provided that many fields of knowledge have added the term (critical discourse analysis, critical literacy, critical sociolinguistics) as a way to position themselves in relation to its non-critical counterparts. This can be problematic in the sense that the binary oppositions are perpetuated in power relations where the “best” is the “critical” and the worst is the non-critical.
- 3. Should we then abandon the term or keep on problematizing it? In local contexts, is there still the need for criticality? This paper seeks to answer these questions by analyzing some activities in two disciplines of the Foreign Languages-English undegraduate course of the Federal University of Espírito Santo. At first, I analyze some possible meanings assigned to the term critical and, secondly, I discuss two pedagogical practices performed under critical perspectives.
- 4. Critical Language Education: some perspectives
- 5. How could this scene from “The Truman Show” be linked to CRITIQUE or to Critical Language Education? CRITICAL MOMENTS
- 6. CRITICAL
- 7. 3 perspectives on CRITIQUE (MONTE MÓR and RICOUER) 1. CRITIQUE as MEANING MAKING PROCESSES 2. CRITIQUE as SUSPENSION of the truth 3. CRITIQUE as “DISRUPTION/RUPTURE”
- 8. 1) …has to do with the new ways of knowledge construction, as evidenced by researchers as Morin (1998; 2000), Lankshear & Knobel (2003) 2) And it´s a term that revisits the concept of reading and interpretation, reinforcing critique – according to which “meaning is not in the head, but in social practices; and that in acquiring social practices one gets 'deep‘ meanings 'free'” (Gee 1997, p. 274) .(Monte Mór 2008) CRITIQUE as MEANING MAKING
- 10. 2. Critique as Suspicion or “suspension” of the truths Monte Mor´s / Ricoeur´ s (suspect or distrust an interpretation in order to investigate other interpretations)
- 11. Exemples: media, TVnews, newspapers, internet (dad)
- 12. Documentary: Beyond Citizen Kane
- 13. 3. Critique as… “Rupture”/ disruption process / break down paradigms:
- 15. Local Practices – the PPP of UFES The Pedagogical Project Proposal (PPP) of the Foreign Languages-English undergraduate course, some of the challenges of the course are: Definition of transdisciplinary competences as main objectives of the learning-teaching process Contextualization of contents, Integration of disciplines aiming at the development of the competences necessary to the inter and transdisciplinary work of future professionals Ensure the education of professionals with critical spirit and willingness for change.
- 16. However, in practice, this interdisciplinarity does not work, with rare exceptions, there is no dialogue among the professors and the departments involved. The curricular disciplines of qualification in English are mostly focused on language acquisition in deeper levels, which shows a predominantly structuralist perspective. The disciplines Morphosyntax, Phonetics and phonology, Prosody, Semantics, Textual genres, Academic writing, Applied linguistics (as cognition/acquisition or as pragmatics only) are some examples of this perspective. With regard to the literature disciplines, we can see the sovereign presence of American and British literatures, as well as American and British studies.
- 17. it is an excellent curriculum students start the course with a high language level and leave it even more fluent, the practices which are more educational (sociocultural and critical ones) depend tremendously on the individual work of some professors. Within this context, should the critical be problematized or should we abandon it?
- 18. Local practice 1: working within the “BRECHAS”/ gaps of the curriculum (DUBOC 2015) Acting in the gaps of the curriculum is one of Duboc’s proposal (2012, 2014a) and it may lead to disruption and meaning making processes. English Language: Writing Communication and Academic Text, PROJECT: Meaningful and Real writing: inspired by the idea that the students should not be read just by their professors, who will read the final papers and then probably shelve them until throwing them away one day.
- 19. The project... Students were invited to write an academic article in English to be published In the middle of the process, everybody presented their research projects. At the end, they all discussed the papers orally with a board of invited professors, who together with the professor/advisor, read and evaluated all the papers.
- 20. Selected papers for publication Keep calm, carry on, and let God save the Queen: Multiliteracies and British Pop Culture Female presence in the Brazilian heavy metal scene Canadians beliefs about their own cultural aspects: Canada is not (just) the backyard of the United States The importance of Language and Culture for English teachers and students Students´ realities in public schools Music, language and tradition: An analysis based on a Gaelic folk song
- 21. The students’ disruption process occurred as they got to believe that they would be able to carry out a relevant research and that this research, as I have reinforced, would not be “shelved” by the professor/advisor, but would be read by him and by other professors, besides being appreciated for publication.
- 22. It is worth pointing out that all the 16 students decided to participate and all of them carried out their research. The meaning making process took place in several ways: during the orientation process the choices and possibilities of topics were respected, the student did not have to research the professor’s topics they were all encouraged to make their own interpretations and analysis of their data or study goals.
- 23. Project 2: Pedagogy of Multiliteracies The second example refers to teacher education, thinking about our local context (Vitória city, Espírito Santo, Brazil). According to Rajagopalan’s views (2006), “the theories in global terms, i.e. without worrying about the local specifities contribute little or not at all to solve problems faced in real life.” (RAJAGOPALAN: 2006, p. 163-164).
- 24. A case study: Brazilian company Petrobrás. The company is part of the students’ real/LOCAL life in Vitória (ES), either because their relatives work there, or due to their desire to become English teachers for the staff of this renowned national company
- 25. The objectives of the activity were suspending and promoting the construction of their own meanings towards the views about Petrobrás. This activity was proposed by means of a collaborative work, local discussion, criticality and multimodality.
- 26. The students were invited to research on the company Petrobrás having in mind different viewpoints; in groups, they were divided into committees (ES government, federal government, multinational companies, Petrobrás, UFES, “capixabas”, Greenpeace) and prepared themselves to debate about oil exploration in Espírito Santo. At the end, they created a poster and presented their proposals (real ones) in an oral and visual way. For the debate, each group asked questions to the committees
- 28. Claimed the royalties for Vitória city
- 29. The multimodal aspects of this project: digitality (online research), image production (visual literacy), collective meaning making, oral presentation of ideas and visual and oral debate
- 30. I interpret this very simple activity as promoter of criticality through meaning making performed by the students, through the disruptions coming from the information brought and through the heated debates. Furthermore, the students promoted the suspicion of the discourses that ran in the mass media in relation to the events occurred in the company at that time.
- 31. Should we, therefore, abandon the term critical or keep on problematizing it? In local contexts, is there still the need for criticality? I believe these questionings impact all of us, as they make us question several of our practices, not only as English language teachers, but mainly as educators: what do our students take away when leaving the classroom? What do they actually learn? Should we seek solely for linguistic proficiency or we can teach more than that? This latter question is the core of our studies.
- 32. So, let´s hit our boats... I believe that with simple activities + a revisioning of the term critical can provide little changes, or transformations WITH/THROUGH the English language (teaching and learning)
- 33. Thanks / Obrigado Daniel Ferraz danielferrazufes@gmail.com