PORTUGUESE CLASS AS ENCOUNTER BETWEEN THE OTHER WORD AND THE WORD OF THE OTHER: A STUDY ABOUT ECOLOGICAL RELATIONS

ABSTRACT

This article has as its theme the event Portuguese class taken as an encounter (Ponzio, 2010a), as it pertains to the education of the students as readers and producers of text-utterances. The objective was to draw possible implications in the event Portuguese class from: a) the organizational setting of the administrative actions in the scope of the educational institution; b) the setting of the literacy events and practices in the scope of the study field groups; and c) literacy practices of the students that participated. The theoretical basis includes the Vigotskian ideology, the Bakhtin Circle and the studies in literacy. From the data gathered, I infer that there are two school cultures in the field of study, in ecological relations, which are, namely, culture of (un)ease in School 1 and culture of (re)affirmation in School 2. Thus, I support the thesis that the event Portuguese class as encounter implies ecological relations in the scope of the two school cultures coexistent in these same relationships: the (un)ease and the (re)affirmation, reiterated/feedbacked, respectively, in/by the three dimensions of the tripartite architectonics of each culture, both referenced by the other in the encounters — or lack of such encounters — of the subjects immersed in the larger ecology under study.

KEYWORDS
Portuguese class; ecology; encounter; reading; written text production

RESUMO

Este artigo tem como tema o acontecimento aula de Português tomada como encontro (Ponzio, 2010a), no que diz respeito à formação dos alunos como leitores e produtores de textos-enunciados. O objetivo foi depreender possíveis implicações no acontecimento aula de Português entre: a) configuração organizacional das ações administrativas no âmbito da instituição escolar; b) configuração dos eventos e das práticas de letramento no âmbito das turmas campo de estudo; e c) práticas de letramento dos alunos participantes. O aporte teórico inclui o ideário vigotskiano, o Círculo de Bakhtin e os estudos do Letramento. A partir dos dados gerados, infere-se haver duas culturas escolares no campo de estudo, em relações ecológicas, as quais são nomeadas como cultura da (in)quietude na Escola 1 e cultura da (re)afirmação na Escola 2. Com base nos resultados, defende-se a tese de que o acontecimento aula de Português como encontro implica relações ecológicas no âmbito das duas culturas escolares coexistentes nessas mesmas relações: a (in)quietude e a (re)afirmação, reiteradas/retroalimentadas, respectivamente, nas/pelas três dimensões da arquitetônica tripartite de cada cultura, referendadas ambas pelo outro nos encontros – ou na ausência de tais encontros – dos sujeitos imersos na ecologia maior em estudo.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE
aula de português; ecologia; encontro; leitura; produção textual escrita

Introduction

This article presents an excerpt from PhD thesis research (Irigoite, 2015) whose theme is the Portuguese class taken as a encounter between the other word and the word another (Ponzio, 2010a), with a focus on the formation of students as readers and producers of text-utterances. The motivation for this study came from the experience of my Master’s dissertation (Irigoite, 2011), in which Portuguese classes were described that do not happen as a genre of discourse — taking them as such from the conception of Matencio (2001) — by there is no engagement of a good part of the students in the interactions proposed by the teacher. The results point to a probable non-convergence between students’ literacy practices (Street, 1988) and school literacy practices. More than a non-convergence, I concluded, in that research, that many of the genres of discourse (Bakhtin, 2010b) that make up the Portuguese class correspond to proposals for literacy events (Heath, 2001 [1982]) for which students’ literacy practices are not supported. The reading and writing activities proposed by the school, therefore, do not seem to make sense to students, who, in turn, do not engage in the proposed interactions; if there is no engagement, there is no interaction between the students and the teacher; I understand, in this context, that “the Portuguese class does not happen”,¹ which leads me to infer, by implication, that there was not learning in terms of the objectives for which a class is developed. Here is an attempt to briefly recover the reality experienced:

Among the countless challenges that we mapped during our experience at school and that generated changes in the research path, the main ones were: configuration [of the literacy practices] non-convergent in interactions in the classroom, which implies indiscipline; alienation from students in relation to our interaction proposals and an exorbitant number of absences; compromise of institutional functionality, in items such as material distribution logistics, library and computer room operation, systematism in class schedules and absence of teachers and employees in fixed hours; challenges for re-signifying reading and writing practices based on the appropriation of discursive genres worked in the classroom, both in relation to teaching mediation and students engagement; teaching challenges to believe in the possibilities of changes in this context.² (Irigoite, 2011, p. 27, our translation).

However, I did not intend to end this discussion with these inferences, since the learning that derived from that study is that there are many issues involved in such a complex reality, of a different nature, that were not covered in Irigoite (2011). So, in my understanding, there are no isolated implications for “not happening” classes (based on Geraldi, 2010a). The discussion certainly contemplates, but transcends: a) methodological options — my intervention,³ theoretically planned and epistemologically based, did not generate the expected results —; b) teaching commitment — there was a personal disposition of the teacher participating in that study to learn about new work possibilities despite facing every day, in years of profession, challenges of all kinds —; c) students’ enchantment — most of them came from socioeconomically underprivileged environments, many of whom were obliged to attend school, doing activities in the classroom aiming at grades, and not sharing experiences with the written modality as part of their cultural appropriation —; d) school organization — the field institution of that research, despite the efforts of its managers, faces common challenges in public institutions in Brazil, such as difficulties with the management of teaching material, physical structure and qualified professionals, among others.

After this painful experience in Portuguese classes that, in my interpretation, do not happen, experienced in Irigoite (2011), the study described here was born from the desire to know classes in which I could find this event — now, taking the class as “encounter” (Ponzio, 2010a) —, trying again to deal with this pool of implications in a new and different reality — seeks to verticalize the study of the Portuguese class event. To this end, I returned to the school that was Dissertation research field — which I will call School 1 here — but I also undertook an immersion in a new public school — called School 2 —, located in a nearby neighborhood and which my experiences indicate as being legitimized by the community as a space of excellence. Thus, I set out to experience the daily life of these two realities, in the search to understand, in both, the Portuguese class event as an encounter (Ponzio, 2010a).

Starting from the conceptions of language and subject adopted in this study, I decided to expand my look beyond the walls of the school, in the search to consider, as much as possible, other intersubjective relations that students establish outside this sphere. And, when it comes to teaching Portuguese, it is worth remembering that the school is just a privileged place for reading and writing practices. Thus, in my understanding, at least two instances should also be considered because they affect, as much or perhaps even more significantly, the formation of the student as reader and producer of text-utterances — that is, in the “Portuguese class event” —, because they institute other intersubjective relationships in his life: the family, which refers to significant implications when it comes to the concept of literacy practices; and what we can consider as surroundings of the school, that is, the community in which the school is inserted and in which the students’ daily life takes place.

Seeking, therefore, a wider spectrum of the universe under study, I kept the research theme of Irigoite (2011), that is Portuguese classes, however, now focusing on three developments, with regard to the formation of students as readers and producers of text-utterances: a) school configuration related to administrative actions; b) school configuration related to didactic-pedagogical actions; and c) family literacy practices. The first two implications, therefore, turned my attention to the school sphere; the third development led me to look at the family sphere of the students participating in the research. Based on this object and the three approaches mentioned, the following research question was outlined: Focusing on the ways of organizing the teaching and learning of reading and written text production in different genres of discourse in socioeconomic and historical-cultural Portuguese classes situated, which implications can be inferred between a) organizational configuration of administrative actions within the school institution; b) configuration of literacy events and practices within the classes field of study; and c) literacy practices of students participating in these same Portuguese classes? The importance of this study is justified by the fact of envisioning the complexity of the class event, which suffers implications of different dimensions, thus, there is not a single agent or fact of blame for its not happening.

To answer this research question in each of its developments, an ethnographic case study was developed, with a qualitative approach. It took approximately 18 months of simultaneous immersion in the two schools, in addition to more than six months of subsequent contact with students and their families. In each school a class of 8th grade was selected, in which I attended a set of Portuguese classes during one semester. During this experience, I did field notes, interviews, conversation circles and visits to families, in addition to documentary research.

The theoretical basis is the conceptual symposium proposed in Cerutti-Rizzatti, Mossmann and Irigoite (2013, 2016), which is outlined based on the Vigotskian ideology — in the field of psychology of language —, on the Bakhtin Circle – in the field of philosophy of language — and on the studies in literacy — in the field of anthropology of language. Admitting that these are distinct theoretical constructions, belonging to different fields, I venture to propose such an encounter because I understand that the three constructs are based on epistemological bases of historical-cultural foundation and, therefore, come close in good measure in what concerns refers to concepts of language and subject adopted here. I tried to highlight convergences between these views from the point of view of this same epistemological understanding and its implications in the discussions about belonging and identity — here, in what such belonging implies in the case of reverberations in the Portuguese class event.

The article follows the classic composition of the genre: the first section presents the epistemologically converging theoretical axes that underpinned the research, also bringing definitions of basic concepts for the discussion undertaken, such as the Portuguese class as encounter; then, I briefly describe the research path, presenting the field and the participants; and, finally, in the third and last section, I bring the analysis of the data generated, seeking to answer the three developments of the guiding question.

The Portuguese class as encounter between the other word and the word of the other: theoretical-epistemological bases

Firstly, it is necessary to conceptualize the object of study of this article — the Portuguese class —, clarifying what I understand as implications of what the class is like as an event. Such conception, which is anchored in the fundamental engagement between teacher and students, and them with the knowledge, is fundamental in the proposed interactions — as proposed by Matencio (2001) and Geraldi (2010a) —, implies such interactions to institute a teaching process and a learning process — in this specific case, on the Portuguese language, with a focus on the reading and the production of text-utterances in different genres of discourse. The teaching process is undertaken by the teacher, understood as the most experienced interlocutor in the light of Vigotskian ideas; the learning process, on the other hand, implies the appropriation of knowledge by a singular subject, who becomes historicized in the relationship with the other and who, thus, would undergo intrapsychic modifications, in the sense of transcending the condition of not knowing something to the condition of knowing it – the appropriation of the culture referred to in the Vigotskian historical-cultural approach.

Thus, in the proposed interaction with the teaching purposes, specificities of methodology are implied, as well as questions related to the institutional organization so that such methodological strategies can be implemented — here, implications of the school organization. When it comes to learning, experiences and historicities are organized from which the meanings for the interactional proposals are outlined — here, implications of literacy practices (Street, 1988) from relatives. Therefore, these are processes that happen or not in the class genre.

Starting from the conceptions of language and subject that underlie this study, I propose to conceive the Portuguese class as encounter between these historicized subjects that happens in/through language, encounter based on the conception of Ponzio (2010a, p. 31) in his considerations about philosophy of language:

The encounter, the meeting, are not all together, together in one place, but each one is out of place; the encounter is where we are, it is the possibility in which each one encounters each one in its unrepeatable, irreplaceable singularity, outside the role and outside the identity, and each one says something in which the word is outside the discourse of its common places.⁴

I take this concept to define the class, understanding it as an encounter between subjects (teacher and students) who carry with them their experiences, their values, their constitutivity in otherness; and, in this encounter with the other, they agentively affect him and allow himself to be affected by otherness, in the historicity that they carried them there, in the unique and unrepeatable event that is each encounter in itself. In doing so, however, I strive to reframe that author, who conceives the encounter as implying non functional relationships.

From this perspective, the encounter focuses on the subjects, because they constitute them in the interaction with the other whose difference is relevant in this/for this constitution process. In the light of the Bakhtinian ideal, our opinions and views of the world are constituted, altered, elaborated in the social relationships, when opposed to the views of other subjects and, based on the Vigotskian ideal, we appropriate culture in relation to the other: interpsychic processes are re-elaborated into intrapsychic processes (Vigotski⁵, 2008 [1968]), which occurs in intersubjectivity. If there is no sharing of experiences, values, there was no encounter that constitutes a class, in this conception, even if the interactants are physically present in the same space and at the same time. This was the reality experienced in Irigoite (2011): teacher and students occupying the same physical space, for a significant time throughout the year and with pedagogical materials in circulation in that same space, without, however, having intersubjectivity constituting in the encounter, in a way to establish minimal possibilities of actually modifying/expanding/reframing/enriching the experiences of those involved in the uses of writing — and certainly so many other approaches that escaped my gaze.

In this sense, learning is constantly constituting oneself as a subject, expanding the interpretations of the natural and social reality (Volochinov, 2013 [1930]), which only seems possible when the encounter actually takes place and, for that, there must be approaches in the ways how the interactants operate with this same reality, as well as mutually constitutive and sensitivity to the exotopia possible in the otherness (Bakhtin, 2010b). Finally, in this conception, the Portuguese class event implies the encounter between the other word and the word of the other (Ponzio, 2010a), an encounter situated in a historical time, in the social space and in the culture that characterizes both immersion in daily life and immersion in history.

In order to study and understand this Portuguese class event as an encounter, this article proposes to put into dialogue the already mentioned three theoretical bases, whose epistemological substrates, although marked by substantive specificities, I understand to converge, to some extent. This is the proposal for a conceptual symposium based on what I understand to be a historical-cultural basis on which concepts of language as social practice and of subjects as historically and culturally situated would converge (presented in Cerutti-Rizzatti; Mossmann; Irigoite, 2013, 2016)⁶ Let us see, then, epistemological concepts converging, in my understanding, between such theories.

Rescuing Geraldi (2010a, 2010b), the conceptions of language and of subject imply focusing on the verbal interaction as the place of the production of language and of the subjects that, in this process, constitute interpersonal relationships mediated by that same language, in the mentioned encounters. For this author, the subjects are constituted as such as they interact with others, that is why the subject is social — constitutivity occurs through and in the interaction (Faraco, 2001) —, since the interactions not happen outside a broader social and historical context, becoming possible as singular events, inside and within the limits of a given social formation (Geraldi, 2010a, 2010b).

Therefore, starting from a socio-historical approach, with readings of Bakhtin (2010a [1920/24]), Geraldi (2010a, 2010b), Faraco (2001, 2007), Ponzio (2010a, 2010b) and Heller (2014 [1970]), I define the concept of subject⁷ as constituted — and not instituted — in the otherness, in the encounter between the self and the other, between the other word and the word of the other; it is a question of conceiving the subject as pressed by historical conditions, but not determined by them. Here, it is interesting to look at the subject always in the relationship to the other, not from the perspective of individuality, but from the singularity that is outlined in the relationships established with his social group in terms of history and culture. It is also interesting to see the subject in the tension between that same singularity and the condition of broader social and cultural insertion of the singular subjects, which refers to the Vigotskian discussions on microgenesis and sociogenesis, as much as to the considerations of Heller (2014 [1970]) on the human generic in the overlap between daily life and history.

In addition, following the Geraldi’s reading (2010b), we can find the following characterizations of this subject in the Bakhtinian architecture: social; corporeal, socio-historically situated; responsive/respondent (enunciation in and for the universal symposium, according to Faraco, 2007); responsible/singular (“principle of non-alibi in being” by Bakhtin, 2010a [1920/24]); conscious (with social awareness); incomplete (in a founding incompleteness); and protagonist (who refracts). Thereby, we have a singular, unique, irreplaceable, non-interchangeable subject, which is constituted in the relation of indifferent difference, in an absolute otherness — in opposition to the relative otherness (Ponzio, 2010a, 2010b, 2014) —, having no alibi to exist and that exists on the plane of the history and the culture. In this relationship, the difference makes sharing possible — unlike the inequality that generates social differences, as it implies the denial of the other, refusal to share – because it is from the identification in relation to this difference between the self and the other that we allow to interact in the encounter, to constitute our subjectivity from the other (Geraldi, 2010b).

And such a constitution is always done through language. In the historical-cultural perspective, the whole of this relationship would be the mediation — the encounter implies/is mediation —, which occurs in/through language. As defined by Geraldi (2010b, p. 106, our translation):

[...] conception of language as constitutive activity both of the subjects’ consciousness, and therefore of the formation of subjectivity through the processes of internalization of signs in social interactions, and of the language itself, understood as an open systematization of expressive resources [...].⁸

It is the language as a social object that, in addition to constituting the subject, provides the institution of interpersonal relationships: “[...] a constitutive, social and dialogically produced activity.”⁹ (Geraldi, 2010a, p. 49, our translation).

In this perspective, we have the Vygotskian definition of language as a psychological instrument of symbolic mediation, consisting of signs (Vigotsky, 2008 [1968]). Bakhtin’s Circle also brings these reflections when conceiving language as a historicized social activity, which constitutes interaction. This discussion leads to the concept of dialogism, central to Bakhtinian thought, which designates the great conceptual metaphor that organizes his philosophy, “[...] is the name for the universal symposium that defines the human existence.”¹⁰ (Faraco, 2007, p. 44, our translation). And that dialogue, or rather, the interaction, is constituted in/by language. For Bakhtin (2010b), the words are divided into personal words and words of the other — the other word and the word of the other, just as in Ponzio (2010a) —; and, in the fluctuating boundaries between these categories, the dialogical clash is fought. Both are apprehended in the verbal communication chain, but based on particular value judgments, which reflect the way of apprehending the world of each subject. What matters in these statements, for Bakhtin (2010b), is the character of responsiveness, that is, the reflection in the structure of the utterance itself, and not the psychological aspect of the relationship with the utterance (and of its understanding).

Based on such epistemological bases, the theoretical constructs of the symposium referred to here were adopted. Believing that the role of the school is to provide appropriations of what was objectified as culture by the generic human in tension with what is also characteristic of everyday relationships (Heller, 2014 [1970]), it is interesting, in Vigotskian theorizations, discussions about the relations between thought and language and the internalization process of culture — produced by the human work — from the intersubjective relationships with a more experienced interlocutor, with whom the subject establishes relationships of “heteronomy” — from the Immediate Development Zone (ZDI) — or “autonomy” — from the Real Development Zone (ZDR) —; when these relationships derive new outlines in the ZDI, we have learning generating development, a movement in which the formation of so-called scientific concepts is implicated in the dialectical tension with everyday concepts. These are theoretical views that are based on interpersonal relationships, on the encounters undertaken, which relate society, history and culture. The time is conceived not in itself — the present, the past and the future —, but in what is built between the yesterday and the today, between the today and the tomorrow; in short, they are historizations that arise from intersubjective relations engendered through language.

Also focusing on the class as encounter, the Bakhtin Circle’s theorizations have elements that constitute this event/act, namely: the concepts of exotopia and excess of vision — referring to the other in relation to the subject — involved in the concept of otherness in relation to subjectivity; the dialogism as universal symposium of human existence (Bakhtin, 2010b; Faraco, 2007); the word as ideological sign; the semiotic and ideological character of the consciousness; the ideologies managed/appropriated by the subjects at the encounter; and, above all, the genres of discourse that involve each encounter, as there is no interlocution/interaction/encounter outside the genres.

Finally, the article theoretically draws on literacy studies to discuss written culture, since the concept of subject presented here still has implications with the concept of culture that emanates from the foundations already registered; thus, working with the concept of subject with a focus on the relationship with the other — from the encounters — implies historical-social developments. Starting from a diverse range of studies on the subject of literacy — understood, in certain aspects, as dissonant —, I approach the headline, in Brazil, by Ângela Kleiman, from a more anthropological perspective that refers to authors such as Brian Street, David Barton and Shirley Brice Heath, and their concepts of interest for this study: literacy models (Street, 1984); literacy practices (Street, 1988) and literacy events (Heath, 2001 [1982] – taken in the ecological relationship proposed by Barton (2007 [1994]) —; dominant and vernacular literacies. Theorizations of these authors, based on seminal discussion of Street (1984), have contributed to transcend a conception of literacy as an individual attribute, taking it as a result of a complex relationship — ecological (Barton, 2007 [1994]) — between practices and events, an overlapping relationship in which the practices serve as a basis for events — iceberg metaphor (Hamilton, 2000). Like the Vigotskian ideology, the ecology metaphor also deals with the dialectical movement between the social universe and the psychological plane, considering, as a starting point, the interaction between individuals and their environments, according to Barton (2007).

Starting from all these theoretical discussions, it is worth, therefore, to close this section by reiterating the conception of the Portuguese class — as encounter between singular and historicized subjects, mediated by language — and the conditions for its effective happening: that there be teaching and learning in this encounter, when one interlocutor focuses on the other’s ZDI, generating intrapsychic movements, in a process of learning the new, or, in the words of Ponzio (2010b), based on Bakhtin (2010a [1920/24]), “taking a step”. Therefore, in the case of schooling processes, in which the written culture has an especially important space, the constitution of students as historical subjects gives them specificities when it comes to representations of the world about the uses of the written language. Thus, “The language, as a process of constituting subjectivity, marks the individual trajectories of subjects who become social also through the language they share.”¹¹ (Geraldi, 2010b, p. 123, our translation).

Methodological procedures: seeking immersion in the complexity under study

As already mentioned, this research is configured as an ethnographic case study, with a qualitative interpretative approach. The case study implies an exhaustive and descriptive study of a unit, be it a school, a teacher, a student or a classroom — in the case of educational research —, with an emphasis on knowledge of the individual (André, 1995). The researcher’s interest is to understand such a chosen unit, keeping “[...] attentive to its context, and to its interrelations as an organic whole, and to its dynamics as a process, a unit in action.”¹² (André, 1995, p. 31, our translation). In the focus of this research, of an ethnographic type, “[...] we take the experience in the field as a whole, to find local meanings or even to identify underlying processes.”¹³(Rockwell, 2011, p. 77, our translation). Thus, even in the case of two schools, it still represents a case study because it constitutes the study of the Portuguese class event in two public schools, two centers in close relationship. The aim is to understand the implications that affect this event under study.

The operationalization of the research, as mentioned in the introduction, included my insertion, for about two years, in two public schools in a city in the eastern region of the state of Santa Catarina (SC): what I call here School 1 (state) and School 2 (municipal). 14 students were also selected (seven from each class) to be interviewed, and of these, eight had their family members interviewed at home. In compliance with the coding standards of research participants of the Research Ethics Committee with Human Beings, I kept initial acronyms of the names of the school professionals and created fictitious names for the students, followed by the indicative number of the school in question (number 1 for School 1; 2 for School 2). The chart below shows the nomenclatures for all the research participants, so that the references in the excerpts analyzed in a later section are understood:

Chart 1
– Field and research participants

	School 1	School 2
Professionals	Principal: TCA.1	Principal: LAS.2
	Secretary: ARG.1	Secretary: ARF.2
	Assistant: MHS.1	Assistant: DTM.2
	Teacher: RNC.1	Teacher: MPB.2
Students	Bruna.1	Cíntia.2
	Diogo.1	Gisele.2
	Felipe.1	Graziela.2
	João.1	Júlio.2
	Letícia.1	Laura.2
	Renata.1	Leonardo.2
	Wilson.1	Marisa.2
Relatives	Mother of Bruna.1	Mother and stepfather of Laura.2
	Mother and stepfather of Letícia.1	Mother and stepfather of Cíntia.2
	Mother of Felipe.1	Mother of Gisele.2
	Mother of João.1	Mother of Graziela.2

Source:Irigoite, 2015

According to the research typification, to live with the subjects participating in this study and seek to interpret this complex reality, the data generation process included the use of the following instruments: semi-standardized interviews, based on Mason (1996), Flick (2004), Olabuénaga and Ispizua (1989) — with 23 students from School 1 and 17 from School 2, in addition to principals, pedagogical coordinators, secretaries, Portuguese teachers and some family members; documentary research (Yin, 2005) — documents for registration at the secretariat, diaries and reports of the participating teachers, photocopies and textual productions of the observed classes —; participant observations of Portuguese classes in the classes involved in the study, with generation of field notes, based on Mason (1996), Flick (2004), Olabuénaga and Ispizua (1989) and Rockwell (2011) — total of 48 lessons at the School 1 and 104 at School 2¹⁴ —; in addition to conversation circles with 12 students, based on focus group strategies (Gatti, 2005; De Antoni et al, 2001). These are data generated in the coexistence with the study participants, as it implies a research with ethnographic contours, whose wealth comes from these encounters, many of which occur without prior planning (Rockwell, 2011).

Therefore, a methodology was adopted that embraces a diverse range of data generation instruments, with the objective of encompassing a certain complex reality — the Portuguese class event —, in order to study, as deeply as possible, intersubjective relationships that take place in the research field. It was my intention, through these generated data, to experience appropriation of knowledge there historicized in relation to the written modality by these students — in the Portuguese class —, in specific contexts and situations — in the school context —, as well as to interpret their reflection about such experiences and learning — which would imply (non) engagement in class.

Implications for the (non) happening Portuguese class: inference of two school cultures in ecological relations

When searching for the answers to the question that guided this study, from my experiences in each school field of research, I inferred that there are two school cultures,¹⁵ two different ways with regard to how the subjects place themselves for the encounters they have/expect that they take place in these particular spheres — and whether these encounters happen or not.

As in Irigoite (2011) — and also because of that same study —, I reiterate the understanding that the nodal issue is not in direct implications of each approach studied that could be taken as objective causal relationships, even because the operationalization of a research interpretative base does not move me to that. By extending the look beyond the classroom, I understand the possibility of understanding an ecological set of implications (based on Barton, 2007 [1994]) that, in theory, contribute to the design and maintenance of these two cultures inferred in each studied institution, in a complex network of reciprocal relations. In this way, I take these two cultures, interpretively, as a great ecological movement, within which they interact with each other, in the Bakhtinian perspective of dialogism, according to which syntheses are not sought from contradictions, but the integration of these same contradictions (based on Bakhtin, 2010). Such cultures dialogue, in the Bakhtinian sense of the concept, because they integrate, circulate, coexist in the same larger ecology that is drawn there. It is not a juxtaposed coexistence, but an ecological coexistence, because I do not take them as dichotomous, as contradictions that would require a dialectical synthesis, but dialogically, with the tensions that constitute them. I understand that this ecology is drawn there not due to the specificities of the school institution in itself, but to a set of elements that articulate themselves in a very complex way.

My interpretive look, therefore, inferred in School 1 what I understood to be capable of referring to as a culture of (un)ease, as I understand that the Portuguese classes that I experienced there do not actually happen, similarly to the classes in which I became involved in Irigoite (2011), whose research, I repeat, took place at the same school, but with different interactants — class and Portuguese teacher participating in the research. In the conception of the class adopted here, I understand that encounters of the subjects involved are not instituted (Ponzio, 2010a; 2010b; 2014), bearing in mind that the interpersonal relationships that I was given to experience there do not seem to affect effectively the immediate development zone (ZDI) of apprentices (Vigotsky, 2008 [1968]), to the point of providing significant changes in their psyche, resulting in appropriations of culture/knowledge objectified by humanity — in the Vigotskian sense of these objectification and appropriation (Vygotski, 2000 [1931]) —, as well as in its subjective constitution (Geraldi, 2010a).

Many interpersonal relationships established in this particular space, in my understanding, are not enough to constitute intersubjective relationships from the Vigotskian perspective, putting the concept of encounter in check — in this context, the subjects leave indifferent from these relationships. I also interpret a posture that I risk referring to as giving up on the part of the subjects involved — which tribute as a possible exacerbation of this culture of (un)ease — in view of the possibilities that they foresee to modify this reality in which, in theory, the classes do not happen as a encounter. Here is an example, in my interpretation, of that not happening:

RNC.1 asks the students to open the textbook, in which they will work with the short story genre. /.../. (...) RNC.1 raises his voice to ask for silence and starts the reading aloud about the definition of the short story genre. During the reading, she sometimes raises his voice to expect silence from the students, who continue to talk about subjects dissociated from the class. (...) RNC.1 starts reading the first story, stopping frequently to see who is talking. (...) she vents that she is tired due to their lack of attention, RNC.1 restarts the reading of the story aloud. While she reads, I observe four students lying on the desk, one visibly asleep; students in the fund talk about various subjects; Letícia.1 listens to music with headphones. At the end of the reading, RNC.1 begins to ask questions of explicit information retrieval, to which no one answers. Only Diogo.1 comments that he did not understand anything about the text. When the teacher questions the class, nobody confirms that they understood. The teacher, then, undertakes a discussion about the theme dealt with in the text read, but only with the students seated in front of the room — the students in the background continue with parallel conversations, apparently unaware of the discussions of RNC.1. I see about five students sleeping on the desk. (...) Again, the teacher takes the tone of voice and interrupts the reading frequently to expect silence. Until she gives up reading and begins to copy the entire story on the board, (...). RNC.1 doesn’t even look at the class anymore and continues writing on the board. (...) At the end of the class, the teacher writes on the board a request for textual production: “write a mini-story with the subject you prefer”. (Notes n. 235-245, field notes, ALP22, School 1, 2014).

This long excerpt characterizes the ecology of this space in which I immersed myself. We have, in the class presented, the teacher RNC.1 as one of the interactants, and the act of enunciating, in the way it is being said — reading stories in the textbook —, in this sphere and in this particular chronotope; the act has as its question the appropriation of the content that is being themed — the short story genre. With this, I understand, first, the reiteration of some characterizations in the work undertaken by RNC.1 with the genres of discourse taken as teaching objects, such as reading and textual production of genres dissociated from the support and the sphere of human activity — remission what Halté (2008 [1998]) calls constitutive artificialism, inherent to the school sphere —; and use of didactic sequence (based on Schneuwly; Dolz, 2004) that included, respectively, definition of the genre to be worked on, reading texts in that genre and text production in that genre. Here, we see the gender being worked in the school sphere under an ontological dimension (Geraldi, 2010a) that does not maintain the interactional purposes and other issues that characterize it, denying, above all, the social dimension.

For it to be a literacy event, however, it is a sine qua non condition that the subjects assume the condition of interactants. What we have in this excerpt is a small portion of the class assuming to be interacting with the event in question, while the vast majority do not. Both groups respond, in the Bakhtinian sense of the term, to the teacher, but the configuration of that response makes the minority as interacting in the event. In the case of specificities of the chronotope, a visible spatial division was established between the students at the front of the room, interacting in the event — albeit in a striking variability in the scope of engagement around the act of enunciating in the genre —, and these students of the fund, non-interacting, in a position of indifferent difference, taken under a well-known categorical “diving suit” (Ponzio, 2014). In this case, it seems that assuming them within the scope of this indifferent difference — they do differ from the students at the front, and this difference is tangential — is expected when it comes to the exacerbation of the culture of (un)ease, the withdrawal mentioned above. In this perspective, it is an event only for the few students who assume the position of interactants; the rest of the class does not participate in this event — and the interactive term is put in check here —; therefore, there does not seem to be a encounter constituting the Portuguese class, neither teaching and learning of cultural objects themed in the act of enunciating.

Still in this excerpt, we found several forms of response from these students, through behaviors and postures evaluated as not converging with the classroom environment, such as: talking about subjects dissociated from the focused theme, listening to music on the cell phone, doing other activities not referring to the discipline in question and even sleeping in the desk. A relevant issue here is the interpretation that the majority of non-interactants of the current literacy event are also not interacting in other parallel events, such as those who let themselves be swept away by sleep; or if they interact in events within the scope of vernacular literacies, those in which the writing does not win the big time (Bakhtin, 2010b), like students who operate their cell phones for electronic games or music. Thus, it seems quite clear that the classes with this configuration will not constitute interactional spaces for the subjects to transcend the immediate daily life in dialogue with what is from the plane of history, from the human generic (Heller, 2014 [1970]), placing itself in check the role of the school there.

At School 2, I understood another referenced culture, from my interpretive perspective, as a culture of (re)affirmation, since I consider that the Portuguese classes that I experienced happen as an encounter, given the understanding that the mentioned intersubjectivity establishes itself there. It is yet another complex universe, in which several subjects act in the encounters undertaken, and there is also a feeling of belief in the possibilities of the study to modify adverse realities, as well as in a student posture that converges to this learning. I inferred this movement in some of the research participants, such as students, teachers and other professionals of the school institution in question. As I understand that these actions take place with a view to social adaptation — responses to demands external to the school sphere —, I do not take them as an indeed protagonism, but as (re)affirmation of these demands arising from other instances. Below is an excerpt from a class that exemplifies the culture inferred in School 2, a class that happens as encounter between the interactants involved:

The teacher MPB.2 arrives in the classroom and is well received by the class. (...) MPB.2 begins a discussion, recalling a subject from the previous semester: differences between the short story and the chronicle genres. The students participate, trying to answer the teacher’s questions. I notice some two or three students unaware of the theme focused on in the class, with parallel conversations. The rest of the class seems to pay attention to the teacher’s statements. After the discussion, MPB.2 delivers photocopies of a text interpretation activity, the source of which is not identified. Asks to sit in pairs to answer the questions, for which the students take time, making a lot of noise to adjust. (...) During the activity, about three groups talk very loudly, but discuss the activity. (...) I realize how much the students are able to answer the grammatical questions asked by the teacher. Upon hitting the signal, MPB.2 makes the call silently, without saying the names out loud. Then she questions some students who missed the last classes and asks who was missing from this class. To start the correction, the teacher asks five volunteers to read the text aloud, referring to each character in the text, to which many students readily offer themselves. There is silence in the room while reading aloud, with only one group talking to each other in a low voice. The teacher then asks several questions about the text, to which many students answer in their own words, including those who were talking to each other. Then, the teacher begins the correction, asking one student at a time to read aloud each answer, in which the whole class actively participates, sometimes answering, sometimes questioning the teacher about their doubts. (...) After the signal, some students go to the teacher to ask questions about the requested task. (Notes n. 1-36, field notes, ALP1 and 2, School 2, 2014).

This excerpt describes an ecology visibly different from the one I experienced at School 1. Here, we have a literacy event that has the majority of subjects assuming their position as interactants — practically most of the class meets the expectations of the teacher, actively participating in the interaction. Thus, the encounter happens because such an event, although designed for purposes of social accommodation in meeting external demands — focus on grammatical topics, aiming competitions and exams of a different nature —, it has all its constituents, with interaction, with visible engagement of the interactants. With the interaction happening, the event lends itself to the purpose for which it exists in this sphere, which is teaching and learning what is being cultural object of the act of enunciating.

When it comes to the act of enunciating, with regard to the teachers, even though this act materializes under very similar strategies — both excel in reporting the word in reading aloud and/or in the transcription on the board —, it implies substantially different configurations. At School 1, it is instituted within the scope of the diving suit that keeps the teaching alibis and reiterates the indifferent difference when it comes to students; at School 2, on the other hand, I inferred an interlacing, a search for escape in the diving suit, a look that rehearses the non-alibi and focuses on the non-indifferent difference: who are these students, how do they learn, when they come or not to school and specificities the like. In the excerpt in question, MPB.2 questions the students’ absenteeism, talking to those who have been showing frequent absences, in a movement that prompts them to go beyond their teaching profession. In the ecology of School 2, the enunciation is shared between teacher and students; the reading aloud is also done by students, accompanied by silent reading, in which the protagonist is necessarily a student, which tends to favor the understanding of the texts before being read aloud in the class.

Anyway, even with the cultural objects that focus on the act of enunciating and the strategies of saying converging with the so-called traditional education (based on Duarte, 2011 [2000]), there is engagement on the part of the students, there is a favorable response to the invitations of interaction made by the teacher — the students carry out the activity with commitment and even discuss about, answer the questions made during the class and raise different doubts about the topics covered, demonstrating an exercise of reflection on, besides a possible listening position in the moments when, more than being silent, they seem shut up (Ponzio; Calefato; Petrilli, 2007). Therefore, the encounter-class happens, there is teaching and learning of the cultural objects through the acts of enunciating.

Seeking to interpret these two realities, in which I understand that there are Portuguese classes that don’t happen — School 1 — and Portuguese classes that happen — School 2 —, the analysis conveys my look at this complexity — to immerse myself in the field was the challenge of this study. In my experiences there, I found implications/developments/aspects entangled in the interpersonal and/or intersubjective relationships of the interacting research participants, which contribute to the design and the maintenance of each of these school cultures, regarding the school institution – including managers, staff educational institution, as well as the maintaining institution —, the student and the student’s family.

If I am interested, therefore, in looking at the subject always in relation to the other, I consider several relationships within the scope of each of the two school cultures understood here, such as, for example: between the school institution and the respective maintaining institution — belonging to School 1 the state network, and School 2, the municipal network —; between the school institution and its teachers; between the teachers and their students — with possible reverberations in the families of these students; between the school institution and the students’ families. Anyway, here is the complexity of relationships in which I tried to immerse myself. From this complexity, I highlight three major movements for analysis, within the scope of these two spheres, two distinct institutions — school and family —, in a structure that I take as tripartite: a) the organizational configuration of administrative actions within the school institution — management actions —; b) the actions of the direct interactants of the Portuguese class, in this case, teacher and students participating in research — literacy events and practices —; and c) the literacy practices of these students and their families. The first two instances constitute an unfolding of the first focus of the research question, referred to as the school’s organizational action. These are three widely focuses, whose scope was limited in the analytical process with the object of study, the Portuguese class, as a criterion for controlling this breadth. I tried to outline this complex network of relationships in the diagram below, which materializes my interpretation of the two cultures understood and how they are placed in the ecology designed there:

Figure 1
– Diagram of the school cultures in dialogical relationships

In this Diagram, the larger group, marked with the acronym E0, names the ecology that includes the two schools, referring to the aspects that I consider to be broad in scope; within this ecology, the two school cultures object of analysis are placed, referred to as E1 — culture of (un)ease in School 1 — and E2 — culture of (re)affirmation in School 2; and, finally, within each minor ecology, it would have the tripartite structure that I mentioned, formed by the three major focus movements of analysis: the school institution, with regard to management actions — referred to by the letter G —; the school institution, with regard to literacy events and practices within the scope of the Portuguese class — letter EP —; and the students’ relatives — letter F —; each followed by the numbering referring to the respective culture — number 1 for the aspects of E1; number 2 for aspects of E2. The highlighted intersections of these three smaller sets in each culture would be the object of study, the Portuguese class. And at the intersection between the two cultures E1 and E2, there would be the difference between the class that happens as an encounter and the one that doesn’t.

Returning to the support question regarding the implications of school actions in the happening of the encounter-class — What implications can be inferred between the organizational configuration of administrative actions in the context of the school institution and the happening of Portuguese as an encounter? —, represented by the dimensions G1 and G2, socioeconomic and geographical characterizations of each school field of study were raised — within the scope of the strict scope —; characterizations of the school sphere — within the broad scope, referring to constraints arising from the reality of public schools in Brazil —; responses from the interactants to these constraints of broad scope; and valuations of each school in question, by the surrounding communities.

Synthesizing the data, with regard to socioeconomic and geographic characteristics, I did not deduce significant differences between the two schools, because both serve a very heterogeneous public, with a predominance of insertion in contexts of economic fragility and low education, and are located in close neighborhoods, surrounded by regions of high social vulnerability. The difference would be in the valuations attributed to each institution, which attract a set of families to a specific school, and another set to another school. In this sense, the notes made by professionals from each school, in the interviews, indicated that at School 1 there are families coming from regions closer to the neighborhood, with a predominance of these neighborhoods of high social vulnerability; while at School 2 there are families from distant neighborhoods, who invest in school transport to enroll their children in a favorably valued institution.

Regarding the contingencies of the reality of Brazilian public schools — historically pressing issues, seen in both ecologies —, I also did not infer significant differences in the provision of basic infrastructure resources, since, in both schools, I realized the high incidence of no, denoting the absence of, in the speech of the interviewed professionals. Among these prototypical issues, converging in the field under study, I highlight issues related to infrastructure and available resources — characterized by scarcity/precariousness —; the role of the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP) — taken as a dead letter, without signing the act, istina without pravda (Bakhtin, 2010a [1920/24]) —; and the conditions of the teachers’ employment — with the prevalence of professors Admitted on a Temporary Basis (ACT) and the consequent turnover in the teaching staff. These limitations tend to impair possibilities of establishing encounters of subjects immersed in these cultures, which requires significant time and engagement from the interlocutors.

Given the similarities inferred in relation to these prototypical issues in the historization of the school sphere, what seems to be divergent is the way in which interactants respond to them, in their responsible act (Bakhtin, 2010a [1920/24]). Thus, I interpreted a quieting posture on the part of the interactants of School 1, in face of the elements of the broad scope, constitutive of this culture of (un)ease — the expectation for objective conditions that do not materialize ends up limiting the work of a large part of the team pedagogical, as well as the condition more for outsiders (Kramsch, 2008 [1998]) of the substitute teachers present there. They are aspects of school actions, especially management, that contribute, in my understanding, to the projection of the memory of the future (Bakhtin, 2010b) that I learned in this specific school culture, with implications, therefore, in the event of the encounter-class. The exacerbation of the culture of (un)ease would occur in giving up before these challenges were raised. And the students, in turn, seem to notice this dropout and respond to it, through resistance, by not engaging in the literacy events proposed in the classroom.

At School 2, I interpreted a coping posture to these limitations imposed by contingent situations of broad scope. Here I observed school actions mentioned with apparent pride by the professionals interviewed, such as: literary exchange-exchange project, weekly reading classes in the Portuguese discipline and student participation in the Portuguese Olympics and in the school’s cultural exhibition. Safeguarding the problematizations about the nature of the motivations underlying these actions — if they are the result of a de facto role or of merely adapting to external demands —, I understand that the culture of (re)affirmation, here, implies memory of the future (Bakhtin, 2010b), a favorable teaching prospect in relation to the students’ future, the confidence in their possibilities for horizontalizing their own literacy practices — thus, I interpret such actions from School 2 as incentives for students to continue their studies, with a chance to stand out in tests that feed official indicators — such as Brazil Tasting —, as well as selective ones for schools whose places are subject to fierce competition and, later, in universities, in the continuation of their studies, having success in life. The students, in turn, respond to these incentives with apparent approval in relation to these school actions, implying an engaged attitude in the Portuguese classes.

I understand, therefore, that the answer is not in the actions themselves, since no implication is unidirectional in the ecology under study — it is necessary, I reiterate, to consider the tripartite structure outlined in the Diagram. It is the relationship of this dimension in question — G1 and G2 — with the other dimensions that allows or not such an event. Summarizing the data collected in this first analytical movement, I conclude that, at School 1, contingencies arising from the broad scope — E0 — end up limiting the actions of G1, which, in turn, do not receive reverberations from F1 — negative image built on historicity from this institution — and from EP1 — the teachers give up in the face of such constraints, and the students respond by resisting the events proposed in class —; thus, there is a withdrawal and a silence on both sides. In this way, the Portuguese class does not happen as an encounter between the other word and the word of the other — it is a cycle that feeds back. The G2 dimension of School 2 — immersed in the same larger ecology E0 and, therefore, at the mercy of the same constraints — is characterized by actions to encourage students and which are carried out to face these contingencies — even if they do not escape the prototype of the sphere, and can be conceived merely as responses to the demands of the supporting institution. Anyway, here the class happens because there is a favorable response on the part of F2 — the families strive to keep their children studying in a school with a praiseworthy value in the surroundings — and EP2 — teachers and students engaged in classes, in theory satisfied by the work undertaken there.

Regarding the second support question, with a focus also on the school institution, however, within the scope of the field of study classes — What implications can be inferred between the configuration of the literacy events and practices within the scope of the field of study classes and the happenings of the class as encounter? —, my gaze turned to the dimensions EP1 and EP2 in the Diagram, always taken in ecological relations with the other dimensions. Again, I inferred similarities in the literacy events that I experienced in each field of study: events belonging to the school sphere; with chronotopes — referring to classes 82 (School 1) and 801 (School 2) — marked by a high technobureaucracy that meets external evaluation indicators and instruments —; and acts of enunciating that happen with a view to the purposes of the sphere, which is to undertake teaching processes in order to provide students with the learning of cultural objects as they are designed in these spaces. Thereby, in relation to the cultural objects outlined in each class, I interpreted a very similar programmatic organization, in convergence with what is understood to be prototypical of the so-called traditional school as conceived by Saviani (2012 [1983]): in most of these classes, I found both prescriptive topics of the so-called normative grammar, and discourse genres worked in the ontological dimension (Geraldi, 2010a) from an objectified treatment. I understand that such objects are part of the larger ecology (E0) because they tend to compose tests and exams that feed official indicators and selection processes at the national level — demands from spheres outside the school.

The distinction between the two school cultures would be, once again, in the reverberations on the part of the other dimensions and, by implication, in the teaching and learning processes of these objects, as it happens in each school space. Thus, at School 2, I understand that the reasons for choosing such cultural objects are clearly visible, which would be to meet these external demands. This justification is verbalized by school professionals to students; which, in turn, revolves such understandings, appropriating representations/valuations in relation to these objects and to the Portuguese discipline itself. In this ecology, I found social adaptation as the main axis of the Portuguese classes program, which still seems to me to be endorsed by the interactants of the other developments with which they maintain the outlined ecological relationships: school management (G2) — whether in the speeches of incentive that I witnessed in the classroom, as well as in the material and immaterial conditions made available to teachers — and students’ families (F2) — whose goals with the schooling of children tend to converge with those of the institution, with a view to social adaptation.

The implications of these reverberations in the other dimensions, in my understanding, would be favorable to the happening of the encounter-class: teacher and students minimally satisfied and engaged, assuming the position of interacting with the literacy events carried out in the classroom. In these conditions — EP2 launches proposals for encounters with responses endorsed by G2 and F2 —, it would be possible to dispense with coercive strategies as a guide for pedagogical action; thus, MPB.2 manages to escape in part from the limitations of the diving suit (Ponzio, 2014) in the relationships established with its students, giving up the textbook as an artifact (Hamilton, 2000) prevailing, using electronic devices as mediatizing instruments and playful activities in the teaching and learning process of these cultural objects. I understand that, here, the encounter happens in the sense that the interpersonal relationships of these subjects seem to affect effectively the learners’ ZDI (Vigotski, 2008 [1968]), to the point of providing significant changes in their psyche, resulting in appropriations of culture/knowledge objectified by humanity, as well as in its subjective constitution (Geraldi, 2010a). The result of these interrelations would therefore be the learning of such cultural objects by the students, but with the aim of meeting external demands, coming from other spheres, now the functionalist design of the technobureaucratic society.

At School 1, on the other hand, the reasons for choosing the cultural objects discussed in the Portuguese classes that I experienced are not visible, which would imply pedagogical actions limited to the reiteration of prototypical activities (Halté, 2008 [1998]) given in the school tradition, within the scope of imitation — of what has always been done — without appropriation; as mere action, not act (based on Bakhtin, 2010a [1920/24]); therefore, not making sense, both for the teacher and for the students. Here I understand that there is no reverberation of the pedagogical work undertaken by the other dimensions of the Diagram, which I infer from what I witnessed and heard in the interviews in relation to: material and immaterial conditions made available to teachers, as well as a high incidence of external interruptions observed in classes in question — implications of G1 —; fragile ties established with students’ families — implications of F1. With this ecology put there, in relation to the interactants of EP1, I understand that there is a withdrawal of the participants, materialized in teaching actions such as copying material on the board and reading aloud — by RNC.1 —, and in the various forms of student resistance in large part of the study group — such as talking about different subjects from the theme focused on in class, listening to music on cell phones, doing other activities not related to the subject in question —, which prevent them from assuming themselves as interacting with events undertaken in class. If there are no interactants, there is no actual event, nor any encounter of these subjects; therefore, I problematize learning about the cultural objects discussed in these classes. Thus, I inferred that there is a reframing only of the practices of that small group that participates as an interactor of the events that happen there, but reframing from an insularized perspective at school, since there are no relations between the cultural objects that occupy the literacy events in the school sphere and the how such objects are placed outside school, in other spheres of human activity.

The answer to this second support question, therefore, implies once again these interrelationships in the ecologies of the Diagram — it is not a unidirectional relationship, because it is encountered. For such events and practices to result in teaching and learning — in the Vygotskian sense of the terms — whether from the cultural objects selected there or from other approaches more convergent with the current literature in the area, it is necessary that they be endorsed/reverberated/feedback by the other developments of ecology, in the encounters that should constitute a class.

Finally, the third support question — What implications is it possible to infer between the literacy practices of the students participating in this research and the happening of the class as an encounter? — sought subsidies in the families of students participating in the research. In order to understand these possible implications of the third dimension — F1 and F2 of the Diagram —, I surveyed the characteristics of the interviewed family members, referring to their respective experiences with schooling and literacy practices, which are understandable by the references to literacy events that were informed to me as prevalent in their daily lives of the subjects; I also understood the possible interrelationships of these characterizations with the schools of study, in the possibilities of projections — or not — of memory of the future and horizons of possibilities (Bakhtin, 2010b), as well as possible feedbacks between the studied ecologies, from a dialogical perspective between the two spheres in question — family and school.

Regarding the set of families corresponding to School 1, the following characteristics were raised: insertion in contexts of economic fragility; predominance of matriarchal structure; low parental education; literacy practices of the prevalence of vernacular literacies (Barton; Hamilton, 1998); and rarefaction of artifacts (Hamilton, 2000) at home. With these characteristics, I understand that these family members do not seem to have effectively axiological capital in relation to schooling (Lahire, 2008 [1995]) to share with their children, neither a projection of a memory of the future (Bakhtin, 2010b) for these subjects different from the ones they feed and fed in relation to themselves. Similarly to the results of Irigoite (2011), I understand that, in this chronotope, the literacy practices found in these families probably do not support the proposals for literacy events in the school sphere. I understand that there is a silence here both in relation to themselves and their lives, in the current conditions in which they find themselves, and with regard to the education of their children —, reverberating/feedback, thus, the culture of (un)ease installed in the School 1.

This behavior of (un)ease present in these family members, as well as the experiences and valuations in relation to school studies — objects of appropriation in the historicity of each subject —, affect the interrelations established with the School 1, from which I infer that there are some regularities, for example: focus on environment and material resources; satisfaction with the school institution based, above all, on results given by the school itself – such as grades and pass rates —; silencing before the institution — they allow themselves to be challenged by, do not assume the challenge; few investments in relation to his son’s studies. These, then, would be the possible implications of the literacy practices of students and their families in the happening of the encounter-class: the parents would share with their children such representations/valuations/expectations in relation to the school sphere; the children, in turn, would appropriate this axiological capital (Lahire, 2008 [1995]) and would respond through the posture of non-interacting in the events undertaken in the school sphere. Thus, there would be insularization of both the school sphere in itself and the family sphere in itself.

Regarding the characterizations of the family members corresponding to School 2, I realized: families in conditions of less socioeconomic social vulnerability, with different levels of schooling and different values regarding school education; greater participation of stepfathers during the interviews; more diverse literacy events in relation to ordinary activities, giving rise to broader literacy practices; conception about the implications of studies beyond narrow pragmatism; predominance of various artifacts at home. With these characteristics, I infer a more horizontal social insertion regarding the experiences with the written culture by these subjects, who are also inserted in a continuum, now between minor and major (re)affirmation.

These valuations and experiences with schooling, as well as the literacy practices of family members, also imply a projection of memory of the future (Bakhtin, 2010b) in relation to the education of children, focusing on the interrelations established with the School 2. With this, I also inferred some regularities in the case of these parents in relation to the institution in question, such as: commitment to choosing the school for the child and obtaining a place in School 2; attention to what is immaterial, focusing on the teaching that takes place there; satisfaction with the institution. Once again, I understand that such representations and expectations in relation to School 2 by these relatives would be shared with their children, endorsing these projections so that students invest/engage as interactants of the events that take place in the school sphere — these are the possible implications of the family sphere in the happening of the encounter-class: students appropriating the cultural objects that are the focus of the acts of enunciating there, having access to the prevailing variables prevalent in this context, through/in the interaction between the subjects.

Conclusion

In closing, I reiterate the thesis presented at the beginning of the analysis: the Portuguese class event derives from a set of elements, ecologically placed, interpreted from a tripartite point of view, as outlined in the Diagram: the school institution, in its internal management, in relations with the maintaining management; the school institution, in its internal management, in its relations with teachers; these teachers in the encounter with the students, the locus that reverberates such ecology in a second sphere, the familiar. In this way, I understand that the two school cultures that I infer to have in the research field coexist due to/in these ecological interrelationships that I tried to outline here: the (un)ease and the (re)affirmation are reiterated/feedback, respectively, in/by three dimensions of the tripartite architecture of each culture; in other words, they are endorsed by the other in the encounters – or in the absence of encounters – of the subjects immersed in the big ecology under study. I also inferred that giving up moves the culture of (un)ease, while social adaptation moves the culture of (re)affirmation.

Therefore, efforts from just one of these three dimensions would not be enough for the encounter-class to happen. In other words, such happening does not depend only/exclusively on the school institution — significant investments by the sponsoring bodies are not enough, nor is the quality of the resources available in school institutions and in the formation of professionals —; neither of the teachers in the classroom — it is not enough to be satisfied and engaged with the material and immaterial working conditions that are accessible to them, and with excellence on a solid theoretical and epistemological basis that underlies their pedagogical actions —; neither of the students’ relatives — it is not enough to make efforts to choose a good school for the children and follow the schooling process of these young people. Obviously, I do not deny the importance of these conditions, which are so necessary to the reality in which the Brazilian schools are found, especially in public schools; but I insist on the thesis that such actions need reiterative responses on the part of other instances in ecologically reciprocal relations, with mutual reverberations — and, probably, there would still be other dimensions not considered here, such as a future and necessary more effective attention to nature distinct from the maintainers: the state network and the municipal networks in the specificities that affect the results of this study.

Lastly, I point out the need, still, to carry out research with/in the school sphere in Brazil, since none of the school cultures here revealed converges minimally with the emancipatory purposes addressed to the school sphere by the historical-cultural ideology: no ecology seems to contribute for the pedagogical proposal involved in the conception of the class as encounter, aimed at the omnilateral formation of the subject, in the sense of citizenship, of being critical in relation to the world and the humanization process (Vygotski, 2000 [1931]) — development of a highly complex psychism by the cultural appropriation (Duarte; Martins, 2013).

Acknowledgments

To all the participants involved, without them this research would not happen – the two Portuguese teachers, the professionals from each school, the students, and their respective families –; and to the person largely responsible for this study, the main interlocutor in my formation and eternal mentor, to whom I owe everything I have learned, Professor Mary Elizabeth Cerutti-Rizzatti.

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• 1
  The expression “the class(es) does not happen” refers to Geraldi (2010a), who understands the class as an event, but also refers to Matencio (2001), who conceives the class as a genre of discourse. In a particular reading of these two authors, when I state that the class(es) do not happen(s), I want to refer to the absence of an interactional process in which there are participants engaged around the same axis of discussion, in a given space of time and in a specific locus and with specific purposes.
• 2
  Original: “Dentre os inúmeros desafios que mapeamos durante nossa vivência na escola e que geraram mudanças no percurso da pesquisa, os principais foram: configuração [das práticas de letramento] não convergente nas interações em sala de aula, o que implica indisciplina; alheamento dos alunos em relação a nossas propostas de interação e um número exorbitante de faltas; comprometimento da funcionalidade institucional, em itens como logística da distribuição de material, operacionalidade da biblioteca e da sala de informática, sistematicidade nos horários de aulas e ausência de professores e funcionários em horários firmados; desafios para ressignificação das práticas de leitura e escrita a partir da apropriação de gêneros discursivos trabalhados em sala de aula, tanto em relação à mediação docente quanto ao engajamento dos alunos; desafios docentes para crer nas possibilidades de mudanças nesse quadro.” (Irigoite, 2011, p. 27).
• 3
  There was my incidence in the participant field, in classes I taught, because it was an action research, with ethnographic anchoring.
• 4
  Original: “O encontro, a reunião, não são todos juntos, juntos em um lugar, mas é cada um fora do lugar; o encontro é ali onde estamos, é a possibilidade na qual cada um encontra cada um na sua singularidade irrepetível, insubstituível, fora do papel e fora da identidade, e cada um diz algo no qual a palavra está fora do discurso dos seus lugares comuns.”
• 5
  The spelling of this author’s last name varies throughout this article according to the translation of the work cited – sometimes written with i, sometimes with y.
• 6
  Understanding that these theoretical axes are not constructs originally occupied with teaching and learning issues; I consider them, however, fruitful to interpret such processes in their well-known complexity, thus offering input for research activities that have schooling as a motto, especially with regard to the overlap between written culture and schooling processes.
• 7
  I am aware of the important contributions of the French Discourse Analysis, for which this concept (subject) is dear to it. I do not resort to this theoretical basis, however, because I have other objectives and because I make use of the definition presented here, which fully meets the purposes (theoretical and methodological) of the research developed.
• 8
  Original: “[...] concepção de linguagem como atividade constitutiva tanto da consciência dos sujeitos, e portanto da formação da subjetividade pelos processos de internalização dos signos nas interações sociais, quanto da própria língua, entendida esta como uma sistematização em aberto de recursos expressivos [...].” (Geraldi, 2010b, p. 106).
• 9
  Original: “[...] uma atividade constitutiva, social e dialogicamente produzida.” (Geraldi, 2010b, p. 106).
• 10
  Original: “[...] é o nome para o simpósio universal que define o existir humano.” (Faraco, 2007, p. 44).
• 11
  Original: “A linguagem, enquanto processo de constituição da subjetividade, marca as trajetórias individuais de sujeitos que se fazem sociais também pela língua que compartilham.” (Geraldi, 2010b, p. 123).
• 12
  Original: “[...] atento ao seu contexto, e às suas inter-relações como um todo orgânico, e à sua dinâmica como um processo, uma unidade em ação.” (André, 1995, p. 31).
• 13
  Original: “tomamos la experiencia en el campo como un todo, para encontrar significados locales o incluso identificar procesos de fondo.” (Rockwell, 2011, p. 77).
• 14
  The significant difference in the number of classes was also subject to analysis, a consequence, above all, of administrative issues of each institution.
• 15
  Culture is understood here as the creation of human activity; in other words, as a generic human heritage, a universe of objectifications made available to enrich human activity (based on Gačev, 2011; Duarte; Martins, 2013).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 May 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  10 Oct 2022
• Accepted
  24 Apr 2023