Influências do ProfLetras nas práticas profissionais: reflexões docentes sobre o seu trabalho com a oralidade

Abstract

This research theme is teacher training focused on orality in the teaching of Portuguese Language, concentrated on continuing education of teachers as part of the national network program: Professional Master’s Degree (ProfLetras). Based on the theoretical-methodological framework of Socio-discursive Interactionism (ISD in Portuguese), especially on studies approaching teacher training and orality, the main objective is to understand the influence of ProfLetras training on work of developing orality at school. The specific objectives sought to recognize teaching skills developed at ProfLetras towards working with orality at school, which were identified during interviews with three egress students, and to understand the contributions of ProfLetras training to the identity of the teacher and researcher. Exploratory research was carried out for achieving those objectives, based on the analysis of data that emerged from semistructured interviews conducted with three egress students of the program, who attended ProfLetras in different regions of Brazil (Southeast, North and Center-West) and developed their applied oral genre-based research. Thematic Orientation Segments (SOT in Portuguese) and Thematic Treatment Segments (STT in Portuguese) based on Bulea (2010) were used to analyse interview data. The categories of analysis concerning the first specific objective were generated from the comparison of knowledge and teaching skills proposed by Pontara and Cristóvão (2018) directed to continuing education of English language teachers matching with teaching skills proposed by Magalhães and Mattos (2021) for the initial education of Portuguese language teachers, as well as the presentation of new skills based on this research. The categories of analysis regarding the contributions of ProfLetras training to the identity of the teacher and researcher were generated from the relationship between the recurring themes in the interviews (listed in SOT-STT) and the theoretical aspects of ISD. Following the results, the main research question was answered: what are the contributions of ProfLetras training to issues related to orality at school, according to three egress students of the program? Evidence emerging from data analysis indicates that the outcomes of participants’ interventions, based on reflective stance and the relationship between theoretical references and teaching practice within the scope of ProfLetras, promoted improvements of skills to approach orality connected to different types of knowledge, with an emphasis on some aspects on the basis of teachers’ interviews such as the skills related to contextual knowledge, autonomous learning and the ability of self-assessment as well. The interviews also revealed that ProfLetras enabled the three egress students to construct a new identity as a teacher, which also embraces teachers' perspective as researchers of their own practice. Besides these objectives, this study showed that speaking and writing are not valued equally in the program since the body of literature on oral genres reviewed for this thesis is not very substantial compared to the total number of studies carried out in the same period. Furthermore, the absence of mandatory subjects related to orality is emphasized. Therefore, the results showed that ProfLetras has a great potential to train teacher-researchers who are able to think critically on language teaching and reframe their teaching practices, however, in order to make orality-based training more comprehensive to reach a larger number of teachers, it is necessary to consider some gaps, such as the lack of subjects approaching the study of oral genres and the apparent lack of motivation for the development of research on orality