Abstract:

This presentation focus on an ongoing doctorate research in the area of Applied Linguistics and Education. The project (funded by The State of São Paulo Research Foundation) aims to investigate the teaching-learning processes concerning one specific module of the Online Graduate Course for Portuguese Language teachers from public schools in São Paulo/Brazil. The main purposes are to analyze the online teacher education on multiliteracies and to investigate how the teachers-in-service understand theoretical concepts related to transformative education as well as the use of technology in school. Therefore, we focused on instruction and learning processes (and their respective artifacts) to try to understand how the course operates in educating teachers (instruction processes) and how the teachers respond to it (learning processes).

The course module under investigation (LP-005 “Multiliteracies, language diversity and media”) was specifically designed to discuss new educational demands that follow rapid changes in society, especially in technology and information. Thus, the initial motivation of this research project was studying how teachers interpret, comprehend and apply concepts such as multiliteracies (language and cultural diversity), new literacies and the use of technology in education, which were key arguments during the module LP-005.

The data discussion focused on showing in which extent the teachers’ discourses in their papers, forum updates and learning modules reveal an appropriation of knowledge about a language education towards new learning, technology uses and inclusion, which comprises multicultural and multimodal concerns in practices of teaching and learning language.

We perform the analysis combining theoretical background of authors from areas of Education and Applied Linguistics, such as New London Group, Cope and Kalantzis, Lankshear and Knobel, Lemke, and others; focusing in theoretical discussions about the concepts of multiliteracies, new literacies, new learning, and transformative education. In order to analyze the discourse in the teachers’ written texts we reported to theories of discourse analysis according to the writings of Bakhtin Circle and Gee.

In this presentation, we aim to show the analysis of some learning modules that focused on themes related to language and cultural diversity and the use of technology in the classroom. We coded around two thousand learning modules, sorting them into seven categories of which three were related to language/cultural diversity and the use of new technologies. From the three categories, we selected a sample to perform further analysis.

The findings so far show that teachers can transfer the new theories into practice through classroom activities; however, they maintain some traditional worries, like teaching formal grammar even when the proposal lies on discussing multimodal aspects of language comprehension. Regarding the use of technology in the classroom, the analysis show that the teachers are still too concerned about the tool itself and not much about the new practice. This means that it is common that the use of technology described in the learning modules turns to be more traditional and less innovative. Other examples found in the data lead reflections upon the transition of traditional practices into new learning practices and that may bring valuable insights to the area of teachers’ professional development programs.

Keywords:

Teachers education, multiliteracies, learning modules, online education, portuguese, Brazil.