ABSTRACT
The present article provides part of results recorded in a doctoral research (Cruz, 2019) carried out by one of the present authors. The aim of the research was to understand and analyze what mobilizes teachers in their teaching practices when it comes to working with reading and writing from Early Childhood Education to the first year of Elementary School. The current article discusses contradictions and tensions linked to SME-Rio’s discipline matrix propositions, since it aims at guiding the pedagogical work associated with orality, reading and writing in pre-school and in the 1st year of Elementary School. The study followed the qualitative research approach and was carried out in two pre-school classes and in one class of the first year of Elementary School. The study was substantiated by Mikhail Bakhtin’s work, which supported the research design and the field-material analysis. The research highlighted gaps and discrepancies in discipline matrix propositions at the assessed education stages. Literacy, and Reading and Writing learning, are herein understood as inseparable, but they appear separately in different documents, with little emphasis on discursive issues. Pedagogical falsettos are among the ways teachers take to face tensions and contradictions when they point out the compliances and mismatches in discipline matrix guidelines.
Keywords:
Reading and Writing Learning; Discipline Matrix; Teachers’ Practices; Pedagogical Falsettos
RESUMO
Este artigo apresenta parte dos resultados de pesquisa de doutorado de uma das autoras que teve como objetivo conhecer e analisar o que mobiliza professores em suas práticas docentes, em relação ao trabalho com a leitura e a escrita, da Educação Infantil ao primeiro ano do Ensino Fundamental. Nele, são discutidas as contradições e tensões que envolvem as propostas curriculares da SME-Rio, que objetivam encaminhar o trabalho pedagógico da pré-escola e do 1º ano do Ensino Fundamental, em relação à oralidade, leitura e escrita. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, desenvolvida em duas turmas de pré-escola e uma de 1o. ano do ensino fundamental, que contou com os estudos de Mikhail Bakhtin para sustentar a concepção de pesquisa e as análises do material de campo. A pesquisa evidenciou compassos e descompassos entre as propostas curriculares das duas etapas educacionais. Alfabetização e letramento são entendidos como indissociáveis, mas nos documentos aparecem de forma separada, dando pouca ênfase às questões discursivas. Observou-se que uma das formas encontradas pelos professores frente aos tensionamentos, ao apontarem as consonâncias e dissonâncias contidas nas orientações curriculares, foram os falsetes pedagógicos, formas próprias de enfrentarem as contradições.
Palavras-chave:
Alfabetização, Leitura e Escrita; Currículo; Práticas Docentes; Falsetes Pedagógicos
Introduction
Your voice when it sings
Reminds me of a bird but
Not a singing bird:
It recalls a flying bird.
Ferreira Gullar (2010GULLAR, Ferreira. Toda poesia. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 2010, p.179).
Gullar’s poem discloses the opposition to the obvious… it perceives a voice that does not recall the song of a bird, but its flight. Perhaps, this feeling is typical, not just to the poem, but to the researcher, as well. Listening to research subjects’ voices requires displacements, listening to what they say; and, sometimes, their voices oppose each other, or they do not say a word. In any case, it is important listening even to their silence. It is demanding but, sometimes, it escapes the researcher. Listening means looking beyond, the attempt to observe the subtleness of a flight and, thus, perceiving its singing.
The present article provides results from Doctoral research (Cruz, 2019) carried out by one of its authors, which was carried out between 2016 and 2019. The aim of the current study was to get to now and analyze what mobilizes teachers in their teaching practices when it comes to their reading and writing-teaching work in Early Childhood Education and in the first year of Elementary School. The study questions the elements encouraging teachers in Rio de Janeiro City’s municipal education network to choose to work with certain practices and knowledge types. It followed the qualitative approach, which met the following methodological procedures: i) analyzing the Discipline Matrix Guidelines of Rio de Janeiro Municipal Education Secretariat, also known as SME-Rio (These guidelines were elaborated in 2010 and put in place for Early Childhood Education and Elementary School at the time the present study was in course); ii) participatory observation based on field-journal notes (observations encompassed 3 classes - 2 pre-school classes and one class of the first year of Elementary School); iii) one-on-one chats and interviews; and iv) group interviews with three teachers (Mateus, Nina and Alice). Interviews were recorded and transcribed.
The three teachers joining the research were Nina, Mateus (who are pre-school teachers in an exclusive Early Childhood Education unit) and Alice (Elementary School 1st year teacher). Children in their respective classrooms were also included in the sample. The analysis of the produced material was based on Bakhtin’s enunciation theory. According to him, “the object of the human sciences is expressive and speaking is inexhaustible in its meaning and signification” (Bakhtin, 2003, p. 395).
From this perspective, all produced material comprises texts to be interpreted as “thought over somebody else’s thoughts” (Bakhtin, 2003BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Os gêneros do discurso. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. 2003., p. 308) - this is the exotopy of the place. The researcher aesthetically organized her text and polished it by hearing the research subjects’ discourses, i.e., “comprehension as view of sense” (Bakhtin, 2003, p. 396).
The present text addresses the conditions and tensions in SME-Rio discipline matrix propositions aimed at guiding the pedagogical work in pre-school and in the first year of Elementary School. Tension points were identified and they highlighted dispute concepts between the two herein assessed education stages, which echoed on reading and writing pedagogical practices.
The article was organized as follows: the first section introduces the research questions. The second one is a brief analysis of discipline matrix guidelines for Early Childhood Education and for the initial years of SME-Rio’s Elementary School when it comes to orality, reading and writing. The third section highlights the voices of the three assessed teachers and how they respond to discipline matrix guidelines’ compliances and mismatches. These voices were interpreted as pedagogical falsettos (Cruz, 2019), a metaphor to the concept of falsetto observed in music. The final considerations about the possibility of developing discipline matrices from the discursive perspective are shown in the last section. This perspective can grant teachers with the authorship of their own work.
Research as process echoing teachers’ practices
Teachers Nina, Mateus and Alice guided the research, since their utterances were used to set the theoretical fundamentals of the discourse profile. Care with the research was the researcher’s light to understand these three teachers’ teaching practices, without imposing a unique meaning to their speeches, but by giving continuous meaning to their utterances.
Ethnography assumptions substantiated the research based on the alterity observed in participatory observation. Chats and informal interviews featured the research as process involving subjects who are changed by, and in, relationships. This perspective breaks with the sense of object closed in itself, because “relating what is experienced to the other is a mandatory condition for effective commitment and awareness of either ethical or aesthetic knowledge” (Bakhtin, 2003BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Os gêneros do discurso. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. 2003., p. 24). This process opened room for events - happenings and teachers’ utterances - standing out in interactions’ flows based on the need of understanding the concepts supporting the teaching practices.
According to the Bakhtinian concept, ‘word’ is and comprises interactions, because “every word works as expression of a subject in comparison to others” (Bakhtin 2009, p. 117). A human being defines itself in comparison to others through the word, i.e., after all, in comparing itself to collectivity. Thus, the present research was featured as bridge built among researcher, participants and the contexts where experiences were lived. Either one-on-one or group interviews were interlocution spaces between the researcher and the assessed teachers. The group interview, in its turn, became relevant for allowing the voices of each individual to circulate in the conversations. This process was enabled by the encounter, which gave birth to the specific meanings given to the pedagogical practices of each teacher and to their understanding of both Early Childhood Education and education in the first years of Elementary School, based on the mismatches and compliances observed in a transitory process stressed by disagreements. This tension was observed either in the practices or in the conditions found in Rio de Janeiro City’s pedagogical guidelines regarding these two education stages. Thus, being close to the teachers, talking to them about their practices, listening and embodying their meanings, was an important step towards research development.
Cruz (2014CRUZ, Letícia Santos da. Escrita docente: monografias do curso de especialização saberes e práticas - Alfabetização, leitura e escrita em foco. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2014.) points out the concept of reverberation as principle to understand the practice as ‘round trip’ process formed by positions focused on feasible experiences for the teaching/learning process. The acoustic concept of reverberation in music is featured as effect taking place when sound waves are propagated, although keeping a small time-difference from each other when they move. Sound waves have impact on the reflecting surface; they move backwards, at different times, and fulfill the environment with several reproductions of the originally emitted sound. Analog to this musical concept, the present author understands that the voices circulating in the school environment (propagated sound waves) are emitted from different points. They bring along the meanings built from several experiences that, by meeting the peculiarities of the context (reflecting surface), produce meanings that are changed by contact (return). The teacher produces a discourse in its practice, and it reflects the different discourses produced by students, managers, policies, community, among others. What is said is, after all, the response to these discourses. From the perspective of the present research, teachers’ discourse is the echo - return - of discourses that have reached them. Multiple voices join the dialogues of these teachers throughout their lives; yet, the goal of the researcher was to understand part of these discourses and to seek to match them to the observed practices.
It is essential providing Bakhtin’s concept of voice, which matches the sense of reverberation by Cruz (2014CRUZ, Letícia Santos da. Escrita docente: monografias do curso de especialização saberes e práticas - Alfabetização, leitura e escrita em foco. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2014.), since the ‘voice’, in the Bakhtinean concept, is polyphonic, made out of many voices at the time to build the produced meanings, rather than from a single element. The speaking subject, by saying something, shapes its signifying form of language to highlight the likely response from the other. The utterance of this speaking subject is marked by this otherness-oriented element that bets on the response from the other. However, it is important observing the historical profile of this subject’s utterance, according to its past, because it produces this individuals’ own word in the space/time. This utterance is stuck in previous random/own words that have preceded and constituted it. The subject’s voice is made of times and spaces that are marked by the otherness forming it. This process opens room for an individual to be aware of these voices’ reverberations.
Compliances and mismatches in discipline matrix propositions
Nina, Mateus and Alice stated that concepts guiding their practices were provided by the Discipline Matrix of Rio de Janeiro City’s Municipal Education Network. This information was disclosed when they were asked about the concepts guiding their reading and writing work, in their daily routines with their students.
During the interview, teacher Mateus pointed out that the Discipline Matrix Guidelines provide an overview of all specificities. However, they do not make the line of work to be developed clear - there is no clear theoretical position. When he was asked to give his opinion about how the network’s pedagogical propositions are understood and about how they contribute to organize the Early Childhood Education pedagogical work, he stated:
Mateus: I think they, at some point in the document... they are... at some point in the document... (Professor Nina, in the background speaks questioning/suggesting to Mateus: Don’t they talk?!!!) Mateus goes on: They are great, in short, they have been helpful in guiding us, but they don’t let us, what’s the name? So, it’s not clear what the line is. Because they go there and define it like this... the axis is to play and interact, ok! This works as an organization, they specify, in Early Childhood Education these, and such skills will be developed. As an organization, they work, they are excellent, but, in general, the document is good, I say again, (he makes a comment saying that he is even scared because he is part of the Network) they are good, but for me, there is still something missing, thus, it leaves something behind in terms of positioning (Collective interview - 05/04/19).
From the same question, Nina answers: “I think the documents...So, I will speak for myself, for my unit. According to the documents we have in the Discipline Matrix Guidelines, we are supposed to take it from there by reading, understanding and practicing” (Group interview - 05/04/19).
Nina makes it clear that the document represents the expectation about the way to be taken by teachers to add it to their practices. Mateus felt free to criticize, unlike Nina, who used to follow the Discipline Matrix Guidelines for OCEI-Early Childhood Education, without any further issues. Alice answered to this same question, as follows:
Alice: I say from our 1st year group at our school, we see the skills and abilities relevant to those two months, when the child has to acquire, and we try to base our work focused on that. Oh, the child has to go out, it has to acquire knowledge of syllables within these two months, so we will try to base ourselves on our concepts (she sighs), what type of activity we will provide to the children in order to make them achieve that goal within these two months. So, I think, that’s it, our concepts are brought into our daily lives, seeing within the guidelines, within these rules, in quotation marks, these are the objectives that we have to work with in the classroom (Group Interview - 05/04/19).
Alice sees the Discipline Matrix Guidelines as the very basis supporting her work; her teachers’ discourse is filled by the understanding of the matrix as a prescriptive document guiding the pedagogical actions. This perspective opposes the Discipline Matrix concept as possibility for kids to experience events as processes. It would demand a pedagogical intention linked to elaborations deriving from relationships so that the learning process could be the response to the events, themselves.
The document called Guidelines for Pre-School I and II Teachers provides a chart, which was extracted from the Early Childhood Education Discipline Matrix Guidelines. It highlights the goals and skills to work with Oral and Written language in pre-school, as follows:
It is possible observing that either the goals or the skills are quite wide, except for item “identifying and recognizing letters, words, small familiar sentences: names, toys, daily tasks, materials, among others”. Litteracy and reading are words that seem intertwined. However, the document separates skills referring to literacy and to those linked to reading, as shown in Chart 2. It is done to set the aims and purposes of literacy and reading. This process must make the development of propositions aimed at children easier. These elements are supported by contributions from Magda Soares (2012), according to whom, this separation results from “didactic issues and from didactic actions’ planned by teachers” (Soares, 2012 apud SME-Rio, 2013, p. 10).
According to such a statement, which is substantiated by the relevance of research on literacy, this document reinforces literacy’s place in pre-school. It is based on the proposition to develop systematized situations for children to perceive and to be aware of the language sounds, texts, sentences, words, syllables and phonemes. This systematizing process is on teachers’ hands and it is based on elaborated assignments. Children must “transfer” what they hear and speak to writing. Assumingly, i) literacy starts in pre-school and it is based on the transmissible perspective of contents children have to learn, ii) the emphasis given on literacy lies on “perception about” and “awareness of” the sound-language agenda. These assumptions shine light on the language structure/experience of language as discourse entanglement.
The goal disclosed in the “Pre-School I and II Teachers’ Guidelines” sets the will to work with both literacy and reading, in separate. It allows offering “daily and systematically planned propositions to appropriate skills specific of each one of these concepts” (SME-Rio, 2013, p. 10). One of the document’s sections stands out for showing the need of understanding that “it is by speaking and expressing themselves that children, actually, learn how to use the language and become capable of organizing and expressing their thoughts through their speech to, later on, do it through writing” (SME-Rio, 2013, p. 11). This document also states that this is not an easy task for children, since they first hold the semantic correspondence of language as ‘meaning to’, then, they associate this semantics to the features and attributes of the objects it names.
The aforementioned document highlights the need of planning assignments “that emphasize the development of phonological awareness” (SME-Rio 2013, p.11) in order to make children aware of the sound-dimension of language. Yet, it is possible observing that ‘speech’ is ‘sound’ and that it can be identified by children due to their ability to perceive and connect parts, such as words, syllables, rhymes and alliteration. Therefore, this document heads towards understanding that children start by setting the semantic correspondence to, later on, move towards sound correspondences, as shown in Chart 3, below:
Even by acknowledging interactions and playfulness as the axes connecting the pedagogical work in Early Childhood Education, this document highlights words’ sound correspondence by making an epistemological cut focused on literacy in Early Childhood Education. According to Magda Soares (2012), sound perception and awareness are based on situations leading to the observation of the language sound agenda. The goal is to make children experience different processes to get prepared to perceive the smallest parts of the sound language, and to transfer what they hear and/or say to what they write (Soares, 2012 apud SME-Rio, 2013, p. 12). Let us observe teachers’ position regarding this discipline matrix.
Nina stated, in the one-on-one interview, that “there’s fun, but there’s always direction” when she talked about her practice’s organization in pre-school, based on the Early Childhood Education axes - interactions and games. Yet, although the matrix provides room for playing, she is worried with the necessary contents to be worked in order to help children acquire the reading and writing skills necessary to go to the 1st year of Elementary School ready to follow the literacy contents.
The teacher gave the researcher the notebook of a child during the participatory observation, so she could see the assignments proposed to the class. It was surprising seeing that the teacher did not propose any activity for class-conviviality times, as shown in Figures 1 and 2, below.
Nina stated that she is aware that Early Childhood Education does not require these propositions, but she tries to make children learn how to write their names, to get to know some words and their parts. She does so, by applying copy assignments and the texts these words come up from.
Mateus, who is also a pre-school teacher in the same unit Nina works at, focuses on significant reading and writing learning. He breaks up with the “linear view of Written Language Psychogenesis by Ferreiro, who focuses on and favors knowing the cognitive skills interacting [to each other] within this construction process” (Abaurre; Fiad; Mayrink-Sabinson, 1997ABAURRE, Maria Bernadete Marques; FIAD, Raquel Salek; MAYRINK-SABINSON, Maria Laura. Cenas de aquisição da escrita: o sujeito e o trabalho com o texto. São Paulo: Mercado das Letras, 1997., p. 17). This proposition was embodied by schools a little too soon ‘and, sometimes, [it was] irresponsible to turn the results of a serious academic research into a teaching method” (Abaurre; Fiad; Mayrink-Sabinson, 1997, p. 17). Children often participated in all reading and writing assignments throughout our time together in the participatory observation. Only few times, Mateus was the one writing the texts, he always encouraged the children to write and to read freely, to choose the books they would like to read - or the books they would like him to read for them -, and to draw or write down their perception about the reading. The whole process would happen through clear negotiations and goals were set along with the kids.
Mateus gave a different meaning to what was expressed in the Early Childhood Education Discipline Matrix Guidelines by turning children into the ones in charge of organizing his practice, according to which, writing and reading are approached based on the sense that “language is a system of objective [and] fixed rules” (Bakhtin 2009BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Língua, Fala e Enunciação. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Marxismo e Filosofia da Linguagem: problemas fundamentais do método sociológico da Linguagem. 13. ed. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2009., p. 95). Mateus allowed the kids to register events based on situations that show them the need of writing - as observed in the picture of the written material produced by his students (Figure 3).
Aspects related to using language, phonemes and graphemes, to how to write, to what letter to use at the time to write, to how many parts are need to set a writing, to text orientation, to the reason for writing, among others, were added to the teacher/students relationship flows. Mateus attributes this process to his personal investment in studies that give him the conditions to criticize and question the Early Childhood Education Discipline Matrix Guidelines.
Teacher Alice - Elementary School teacher - uses the Discipline Matrix Guidelines as the very basis of her work with reading and writing in the first year of Elementary School. These guidelines are available in “Discipline Matrix Guidelines for Portuguese Language Teaching” applied to Elementary School. This proposition points out ‘discourse’ as an engine for the literacy work, subject valuing, interactions, processes and produced meanings, based on relationships with language itself. However, this document emphasizes the language’s linguistic and grammar system, and disregards the literacy process, according to which, each utterance is unique and starts from the endless flow of speech - the linguistic system does not end, it is stuck in phonemic and grammar associations.
Alice states that her work is centered in both codefying and decodefying: “the child must read and write, be a reader and a writer, period” (Groups interview - 04/05/2019).
Not mentioning that her work is bond to meanings given by children, based on their relationship with the text. Thus, she produces these principles in her daily practices, during reading and writing assignments. Although she does not want to reproduce repetitive and out-of-context processes, she makes it clear that her work is organized based on SME’s pedagogical material. She tries to find things that make sense for the children, and for her, as well, in order to develop a pedagogical practice supported by interactions and exchanges. Besides SME’s pedagogical material, Alice states that she uses tests from previous years as parameter to elaborate pedagogical assignments to the kids. She does so to prepare them for the Network’s evaluation times.
Although the Discipline Matrix Guidelines for the first years of Elementary School take into account the text, and text production, as starting and final points of the language appropriation process, it is important highlighting the skills centered on “identifying, recognizing, knowing and valuing”, which do not say much about reading and writing in the meaning-production dimension. This document reinforces a teaching profile stuck in text’s micro and macro structure analysis, so children can develop skills based on procedures that point toward language-flow partitioning. The partitioning process is over when the child gets to transmit knowledge through the acquired skills. This approach opposes the discursive one, which focuses on ‘meaning flow”:
In every speech, what matters, from the language evolution viewpoint, is not the stable, effective and common grammar to all other language enunciations in question, but the stylistic deeds and the modification of the abstract forms of language, which have individual character and only regard this very enunciation (Bakhtin, 2010BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Problema da Poética de Dostoiévski. 5. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Dorense Universitária, 2010., p. 78).
The element bond to teachers’ feeling about the need of broadening their knowledge was observed throughout the research. Alice talked about having the fundamentals to argue some situations, rather than to silence to them. Nina wanted to have the theoretical subsidies to better understand the path to be taken, and Mateus sought to connect his practices to questions linked to the theories he was studying. This move got clearer when they were asked about their knowledge about the Discipline Matrix Guidelines set for other school stages during the group interview. Mateus and Nina said that they do not know the Discipline Matrix Guidelines of the 1st year of Elementary school and Alice did not know those of Early Childhood Education.
Nina: I know it superficially, now that I’m looking at the proof.
Alice: No, I don’t know.
Mateus: I don’t know either.
Alice: I have never read the document. I understand it through experience, through practice, through my daily life, through my years in the Network, through conversations with other teachers, through the courses and everything else. So, I understand this from what you said, but I haven’t read it at some point (Collective Interview - 05/04/2019).
Discipline Matrix Guidelines focus on the work oriented to phonemes, letters and syllables, which must be taught as requirement for units-of-meaning reading and writing. They emphasize phonetics, spelling and vocabulary to develop phonological awareness based on the idea that everything that is said can be written. The social and cultural context is on the second position, given the urgent need of having children reading and writing, in order to meet internal and external evaluation targets.
Children’s impoverished written language in popular classes was observed, since language issues did not seem to be part of these children’s enquiries and to lead to questions about how to use and amplify their written language. Thus, “any pedagogical approach that sees language as system turns into an anti-productive literacy practice” (Andrade, 2010ANDRADE, Ludmila Thomé de. O professor alfabetizador imantado entre propostas teóricas: o letramento e a metodologia do fônico. In: SIHELE - SEMINÁRIO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE HISTÓRIA DO ENSINO DE LEITURA E ESCRITA: A constituição do campo da história da alfabetização no Brasil, 1., 2010. Caderno de Resumos... Marília, 2010., p. 11). It takes utterance about child genres to the second position. Teachers see themselves in the conflict between working based on interlocutions and the prescriptive work, according to which, children must be conducted to perform, show, identify and use their reading and writing skills.
Falsetto voices as response to tensions
The discourse by Nina, Mateus and Alice made it clear that the way pointed out by SME-Rio is not clear enough for them. It is so, because they lead to different interpretations that do not help their authorial teaching practices linked to reading and writing in Early Childhood Education and in the first year of Elementary Education. The research has pointed out that i) Discipline Matrix Guidelines are not good enough when it comes to theoretical references, because they do not clarify the best way to be taken; ii) they reinforce a teaching system stuck in the analysis of texts’ macro and micro structures, without providing teachers’ with the elements to relate text to life; iii) even if the text is introduced as core assignment element, emphasis is given on linguistic/grammar system; iv) there is no broader discussion about how children can learn about the language based on significant relationships and creative experiences; v) the proposed assignments do not relate reading to writing, as children’s discursive context; vi) the combination of work as process does not find support on the document due to lack of knowledge about the peculiarities of each education stage; vii) there is no room in school environment for teachers to talk to each other and to point out collective solutions, or to produce knowledge about their working demands; and viii) there are only few possibilities for teachers to look at the specificities of children’s education process in the current structure.
As the guidelines are little consistent, they open room for a process marked by teachers’ fluctuations, since they tend to, sometimes, conduct procedural practices. These practices are full of mechanical, repetitive, training and preparatory assignments. Sometimes, teachers tend to start their practices from talking to the children and from listening to their knowledge.
The author of the aforementioned thesis (Cruz, 2019) defined the pedagogical falsetto phenomenon by seeking analogies to the concept of falsetto in music. Falsetto - false tone -, in music, is a resource used to reach acoustic records outside the vocal nature of those who are emitting the sound. It is done to reach the necessary acoustic outcome, given the specificity of the song and its aesthetics, or performance, in order not to compromise the expected result. This process is featured by a controlled way to reach higher or lower sounds, in comparison to natural vocal records (texture). This technique is used by singers in their singing based on their knowledge on the song’s context. Thus, they use their falsetto voices, or not, depending on their need.
Teachers Nina, Mateus and Alice performed falsetto pedagogical practices, as shown by the analysis of their discourses. It was expressed by the tension they pointed out about the compliances and mismatches in Discipline Matrix Guidelines. There was conflict between the official discourse and that observed at men’s formation ideological level, which intends to define attitudes and behaviors, such as the case of discourse in Discipline Matrix Guidelines. “Word” comes up in two ways: authoritarian (dogmatic, monosemic, without replication possibility) or persuasive (dialogical, contemporary, unfinished, open, polysemic) word.
Pedagogical falsetto (Cruz, 2019) is featured by several modes through which teachers escape tensions posed by this conflict and make their voice flow in their daily routines with the children. It sometimes happens through the authoritarian word and, sometimes, through the persuasive one. Falsetto is the voice used as response to the authoritarian word. The falsetto voice hides the real word - the persuasive word -, which is the one we are willing to know, because it opens room for discourses about what really happens in the practice.
Nina has a falsetto voice because she embodies the preparatory practice in Early Childhood Education, given the need of feeling safe to do her work. It is so, because of all pedagogical uncertainties and of their foundations on the way taken to conduct the reading and writing teaching/learning process. Thus, she would blindly follow the Discipline Matrix Guidelines, a fact that would stop her from observing the potential of her work for the children. She keeps her falsetto voice as teacher due to the authoritarian word that “demands us to acknowledge and embody, it imposes itself on us, regardless of its interior persuasion degree towards our business; we have already found it bond to authority” (Bakhtin, 2014BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Questões de Literatura e estética. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2014., p. 143).
Alice, in the 1st year of Elementary School, seeks to escape the tension by searching for propositions that connect to the children and to their reading and writing issues. She tries to find a zone to transform literacy practice meanings, but she follows the propositions’ flow given the impossibility of finding an authorial way. However, she is aware of the need of working in such a fashion to break up with children’s limitations. This dynamics makes her unable to listen to what children bring along with their daily routines at school. Therefore, she is beaten by the authoritarian discourse and tends to follow the conventions.
Mateus, in his turn, embodies a teaching practice that makes him closer to the persuasive word.
This word is determining for the ideological transformation of individual awareness: in order to achieve an independent ideological life, the consciousness wakens a world where words form the others surrounding it and where they do not stand out at first; the distinction between our words and those of others, between our thoughts and those of others, takes place relatively late. When the work of thinking starts, independent, experimental and selective, there is the separation of the persuasive word from the imposed authoritarian word, from the disregarded words that do not reach us (Bakhtin, 2014BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Questões de Literatura e estética. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2014., p. 145).
Mateus escapes the tension, feels free to argue and does not allow himself to reproduce concepts that do not meet the contexts of Early Childhood Education specificities. He is substantiated by processes capable of ensuring reading and writing experiences related to children’s real needs. This is an entangled process, because of his personal investment in broadening his knowledge on what he does. Mateus understands that there are guidelines to be followed, but he also knows that these guidelines cannot be apart from the subjects, since it would lead students to a monophonic voice.
According to Bakhtin (2014BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Questões de Literatura e estética. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2014.), the ideological formation process is featured by divergences between authoritarian words, which need the persuasive word to become conscious. It is so, because awareness cannot be subjected to any authoritarian discourse type: “The conflict and the dialogical interrelations of these two word categories often set the history of individual ideological awareness” (Bakhtin, 2014, p. 143).
The pedagogical falsetto becomes the way to survive within a system that has its own ideological consciousness. The singer cannot perform a song in falsetto mode within the music context given the very physiological specificity of its texture, since it would cause mid and long-term damage to the singer. This is not possible in the education context. Using permanent pedagogical falsettos seems to translate that teachers do not have enough knowledge about the features of their own teaching voices, of their practices and knowledge, of their authorial process; in other words, of their identity.
It is almost impossible to do not use falsettos within a reality crossed by political propositions covered by several interests and impacts. However, awareness about the used falsettos and about the reasons for using them makes teachers acknowledge themselves and embody the principles guiding their convictions and the non-neutrality of their teaching practice, when it comes to the specificities of their work. Different from the music context, where falsetto is the false voice allowing singers to be part of the whole, falsetto voices show the real voices behind them when they are well-performed in pedagogical falsetto. This dimension enables understanding the principles substantiating the practices and the reasons of each action in children’s teaching/learning process.
Final considerations
The phoneme and grapheme association emerged throughout the research in teachers’ speech, both in Early Childhood Education and Elementary School, as the most important factor for reading and writing development; mainly in the 1st year of Elementary School, when there is stronger demand for it, given the expectation that children will be fully literate by the end of the school year. These demands end up slipping in Early Childhood Education, which finds itself under pressure to anticipate children’s literacy process. This literacy will happen by developing the child’s phonological awareness, as soon as possible.
The teachers’ speech about their practices brought to light the importance of strengthening the discursive concept to work with reading and writing, since Early Childhood Education. The discursive perspective allows putting into play both teaching and student practices, within alterity processes in knowledge construction, “which means that singular interactions are always unique, and become plural; the imponderable of each enunciation can be analyzed, although and precisely, because it is always unpredictable” (Andrade 2017ANDRADE, Ludmila Thomé de. Alfabetização numa perspectiva discursiva: só o plural pode ser singular. Revista Contemporânea de Educação, v. 12, n. 25, 2017. https://doi.org/10.20500/rce.v12i25.13531
https://doi.org/10.20500/rce.v12i25.1353...
, p. 524). The dialogue between Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education becomes essential, so that the transitional process is featured as time and space to elaborate meanings through ‘otherness’ processes.
The experience of encountering expresses the discursive perspective dimension in its dynamic sense. The defense of this perspective to work with reading and writing, from Early Childhood Education to Elementary Education, does not concern pointing out procedures for reading and writing, but teachers’ appropriation of an attentive and interested listening and of a way to respond to children in order to encourage them to think and ask other questions. It is possible stating that the discursive perspective makes teachers develop pedagogical work organization in favor of children, in the school routine. Therefore, daily practices become learning how to look and listen, to exercise a responsible response to others, to be attentive and careful. In many cases, it is about doing what it already does, but reflecting on the pedagogical intentionality of doing it.
The challenge before us is related to promoting educational propositions that force teachers to use many pedagogical falsettos to guide their practices. Advocating for the discursive perspective to work with reading and writing goes against silencing contexts that demand using falsettos. It leads to expanding (and amplifying) teaching voices to mobilize new discussions and practical actions in order to resist the project to dismantle teaching and to ensure authorial teaching practices.
According to Bakhtin (2003BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Os gêneros do discurso. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. 2003.), “every speaker is itself a respondent, to a greater or lesser extent” (p.272), in this speaking/listening process, individuals are altered in their constitutions by the another speaker/listener who gives a vision of oneself, out of one’s reach, from its viewpoint, at the same time have a vision of oneself, from one’s viewpoint. The experience of encountering - with the other, with the other’s words, text, gestures - expresses the discursive perspective dimension in its dynamic sense. It is in, and through, the encounter with the other’s discourse that spaces to elaborate meanings are formed. The otherness process takes place, whereas the responsibility and responsiveness spheres involved in this dynamic are understood. The teacher, who is immersed in a reflection context regarding its practice and questioning what has been done, can move to meet, listen and respond to children.
The discursive perspective comprises interaction processes between “I” and the “other”, it concerns how subjects place themselves in the learning space by changing themselves, and their way of teaching/learning. Smolka (2017SMOLKA, Ana Luiza Bustamante. Da alfabetização como processo discursivo: os espaços de elaboração nas relações de ensino. In: GOULART, Cecília Maria Aldigueri; GONTIJO, Claudia Maria Mendes; FERREIRA, Norma Sandra de Almeida. (Orgs.) A alfabetização como processo discursivo: 30 anos de A criança na fase inicial da escrita. São Paulo: Cortez, 2017. p. 23-46.) draws attention to the fact that the discursive perspective “involves knowledge, sensitivity, understanding of the complexity and countless articulation possibilities of children” (p.35). She highlights teachers’ way of proceeding, in comparison to the way they signify the meanings produced by children and the way they produce knowledge. It must be done by emphasizing that the discursive perspective does not rule out the linguistic-cognitive aspects, but resizes them by throwing another viewpoint at them: the relationship.
Working with reading and writing allows organizing language based on the needs of utterance, which encompasses the need of organizing thoughts, feelings and gestures; the sound dimension of language expressed in its functioning; the dynamics of understanding the most varied possibilities of asking, responding, perceiving, speaking, telling, narrating, inferring, constituting new ways of teaching and learning. Teaching practices involving reading and writing bring along the practical organization dimension that takes into consideration predicting propositions that can make children think about language and problematize it. Doubts derive from these elements, and the way to search for answers is built through the child-teacher/teacher-teacher/teacher-child interaction.
Teachers must have the possibility of organizing their practices based on their realities in order to propose spaces for interactions related to orality, reading, writing and linguistic analyses circulating their contexts. Thus, they can promote other ways of speaking, reading, writing and understanding the language. The perspective from teachers guiding their practices in a discursive way implies investing in training and in time for reflections and collective exchanges, in addition to having Discipline Matrix Guidelines based on the discursive perspective to provide conditions for teachers to find their real voices to the speech about what they do, about how they do it, and what they do it for.
Voices perceived in pedagogical falsettos allowed seeing not only the mismatch and compliance notes of teachers regarding SME-Rio’s Discipline Matrix Guidelines, but the contradictions observed in the Brazilian literacy field. These contradictions are materialized in Discipline Matrix propositions that are not very consistent and that slip into different concepts of orality, reading and writing, without taking any position.
Referências
- ABAURRE, Maria Bernadete Marques; FIAD, Raquel Salek; MAYRINK-SABINSON, Maria Laura. Cenas de aquisição da escrita: o sujeito e o trabalho com o texto. São Paulo: Mercado das Letras, 1997.
- ANDRADE, Ludmila Thomé de. O professor alfabetizador imantado entre propostas teóricas: o letramento e a metodologia do fônico. In: SIHELE - SEMINÁRIO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE HISTÓRIA DO ENSINO DE LEITURA E ESCRITA: A constituição do campo da história da alfabetização no Brasil, 1., 2010. Caderno de Resumos... Marília, 2010.
- ANDRADE, Ludmila Thomé de. Alfabetização numa perspectiva discursiva: só o plural pode ser singular. Revista Contemporânea de Educação, v. 12, n. 25, 2017. https://doi.org/10.20500/rce.v12i25.13531
» https://doi.org/10.20500/rce.v12i25.13531 - BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Os gêneros do discurso. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. 2003.
- BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Língua, Fala e Enunciação. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Marxismo e Filosofia da Linguagem: problemas fundamentais do método sociológico da Linguagem. 13. ed. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2009.
- BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Problema da Poética de Dostoiévski. 5. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Dorense Universitária, 2010.
- BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Questões de Literatura e estética. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2014.
- CRUZ, Letícia Santos da. Escrita docente: monografias do curso de especialização saberes e práticas - Alfabetização, leitura e escrita em foco. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2014.
- GULLAR, Ferreira. Toda poesia. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 2010
- SME-Rio. Orientações ao Professor de Pré-escola I e II. 2013. https://www.rio.rj.gov.br/dlstatic/10112/9741077/4240508/OrientacoesProfessorPreescolaIeII2013.pdf
» https://www.rio.rj.gov.br/dlstatic/10112/9741077/4240508/OrientacoesProfessorPreescolaIeII2013.pdf - SME-Rio. Orientações Curriculares para a Educação Infantil. 2010. https://www.rio.rj.gov.br/dlstatic/10112/9741077/4240507/OrientacoesCurricularesEd.Infantil.pdf
» https://www.rio.rj.gov.br/dlstatic/10112/9741077/4240507/OrientacoesCurricularesEd.Infantil.pdf - SMOLKA, Ana Luiza Bustamante. Da alfabetização como processo discursivo: os espaços de elaboração nas relações de ensino. In: GOULART, Cecília Maria Aldigueri; GONTIJO, Claudia Maria Mendes; FERREIRA, Norma Sandra de Almeida. (Orgs.) A alfabetização como processo discursivo: 30 anos de A criança na fase inicial da escrita. São Paulo: Cortez, 2017. p. 23-46.
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SUPPORT/FINANCING
Doctoral Scholarship - CNPq. -
AVAILABILITY OF RESEARCH DATA
Not applicable.
Data availability
Not applicable.
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
26 Aug 2024 -
Date of issue
2024
History
-
Received
15 Oct 2023 -
Accepted
07 May 2024
Source: Research archives
Source: Research archives