National Literacy Policy: a contextual analysis of adherence to the policy in Montes Claros/MGABSTRACT
The National Literacy Policy (PNA) is presented as an alternative to "solve the problems" of illiteracy in Brazil. The objective is to discuss adherence to the PNA at a micro level, in the municipality of Montes Claros, identifying dialogues with the economic, historical, political and social elements that served as a backdrop for the reception of this policy. The methodology is qualitative and is based on the Policy Cycle. Interviews and analysis of decree No. 9,765 of 2019 were used as instruments. The PNA guidelines, especially the phonic proposition for literacy, are not alien to school culture in municipal schools, since, since the 2000s, through public-private partnerships, the management of municipal education had already imposed the use of the phonic method, which interfered with the teachers’ knowledge and actions. This fact reveals the historical mobility, of influences, interests in relation to the reception of the PNA and its adherence at a micro level in 2019.
Keywords:
National Literacy Policy; Acceptance of the National Literacy Policy; Montes Claros municipal education system; Literacy; Phonic method
RESUMO
A Política Nacional de Alfabetização (PNA) é apresentada como alternativa para "solucionar os problemas" do analfabetismo no Brasil. O objetivo é discutir a adesão à PNA em nível micro, no município de Montes Claros, identificando diálogos com os elementos econômicos, históricos, políticos e sociais que serviram de pano de fundo para a recepção desta política. A metodologia é qualitativa e se fundamentou no Ciclo de Políticas. Como instrumentos, foram utilizados entrevista e análise do decreto n. 9.765, de 2019. As orientações da PNA, sobretudo a proposição fônica para alfabetização, não são alheias à cultura escolar em escolas municipais, posto que, desde os anos 2000, pela via das parcerias público-privadas, a gestão da educação municipal já havia imposto o uso do método fônico, que interferiu nos saberes e fazeres das professoras. Esse fato revela a mobilidade histórica, de influências e interesses com relação à recepção da PNA e sua adesão em âmbito micro em 2019.
Palavras-chave:
Política Nacional de Alfabetização; Acolhimento da Política Nacional de Alfabetização; Sistema municipal de ensino de Montes Claros; Alfabetização; Método fônico
RESUMEN
La Política Nacional de Alfabetización (PNA) se presenta como una alternativa para "resolver los problemas" del analfabetismo en Brasil. El objetivo es discutir la adhesión a la ANP a nivel micro, en el municipio de Montes Claros, identificando diálogos con los elementos económicos, históricos, políticos y sociales que sirvieron de telón de fondo para la recepción de esa política. La metodología es cualitativa y se basa en el Ciclo de Políticas. Se utilizaron como instrumentos entrevistas y análisis del decreto n. 9.765 de 2019. Los lineamientos de la PNA, especialmente la propuesta fónica para la alfabetización, no son ajenos a la cultura escolar en las escuelas municipales, ya que, desde los años 2000, a través de alianzas público-privadas, las. La gestión de la Educación Municipal ya había impuesto el uso del método fónico, lo que interfería en los conocimientos y acciones de los docentes. Este hecho revela la movilidad histórica, de influencias, de intereses con relación a la recepción de la ANP y su adhesión a nivel micro en 2019
Palabras clave:
Política Nacional de Alfabetización; Aceptación de la Política Nacional de Alfabetización; Sistema educativo municipal de Montes Claros; Alfabetización; Método fonético
INTRODUCTION
Literacy is a complex, multifaceted, and thought-provoking process, one of the most pressing social and educational issues. It has been and continues to be the subject of numerous studies and discussions, which have not been exhausted over time. Given the centrality of reading and writing, a great deal of knowledge and research has been produced regarding pedagogical concepts and practices, teaching methods, the cognitive processes of learners, and their uses and functions in various publications, including: Ferreiro (1985; 2011); Ferreiro and Teberosky (1985); Soares (1985; 1990; 2003; 2004a; 2023a); Mortatti (2000); Morais (2006; 2012; 2023); Smolka (2013). These studies seek to offer explanations and proposals to address the difficulties in the processes of teaching and initial learning of reading and writing.
In this context, which constitutes a historic challenge to be addressed by governments and society through public policies that genuinely consider the needs of the population across different Brazilian regions, the Federal Government proposed the National Literacy Policy (Política Nacional de Alfabetização — PNA). The policy was presented as an alternative to "solve the problems" related to illiteracy, with the phonics method presented as the only one capable of effectively teaching literacy. This state policy was established by Decree No. 9,765 (Brasil, 2019a), with teacher training as its cornerstone, and the Time to Learn Program as its main initiative, sanctioned by Ordinance No. 280 of February 19, 2020 (Brasil, 2020).
The text of the PNA was drafted by various senior management bodies — the Secretariat of Literacy (Sealf), the Secretariat of Basic Education (SEB), the Secretariat of Specialized Education Modalities, the Executive Secretariat, the Office of the Minister of Education, the Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP), the Coordination for the Advancement of Higher Education (CAPES), and the National Fund for Educational Development (FNDE). In addition to these agencies, multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank, and the private sector played a role in the policy's design — through advisory services and reports from other countries, such as the United States and France, which demonstrated the success of basing their literacy policies on scientific evidence. The text of the PNA explicitly reflects this influence of foreign experiences in its recommendation to use the phonics method for literacy:
In 2011, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences published the document Early Childhood Learning: An Approach from Neuroscience, Economics, and Cognitive Psychology. In Part III, titled Literacy Methods, reference is made to countries that have modified their public literacy policies based on the most recent scientific evidence, such as England, Australia, Israel, and Finland. France, for example, created the National Reading Observatory in 1997, which reformulated literacy practices by incorporating recommendations for phonics instruction (Observatoire National de la Lecture, 2007). In all these countries, there has been significant progress in reading and writing acquisition (Brazilian Academy of Sciences, 2011) (Nadalim, 2019, p. 17).
By using international experiences as a reference for policy development, the Ministry of Education (MEC) excluded institutions and individuals who research and discuss literacy in Brazil, such as public universities that train teachers for basic education, associations of scholars researching literacy, and literacy teachers, such as the Brazilian Literacy Association (Abalf), who implement and experience public policies in practice.
That said, this article is divided into four sections. Section 1 provides a conceptual overview of the Policy Cycle and its theoretical-analytical framework as a potential approach for educational research. In Section 2, we discuss the Context of Influence, focusing on the dialogues surrounding the PNA at the micro level, including economic, historical, political, pedagogical, and cultural aspects that served as the backdrop for the implementation of this policy in Montes Claros. The Context of Strategy will also be explored in this section, as it is interrelated with this context. In Section 3, we will analyze the Context of Text Production and its proposal for continuing education, discussing the fundamental points of the PNA Guidance Booklet, grounded in the work of Brazilian authors and researchers in the field of literacy. In Section 4, we will discuss the Context of Practice, specifically how the PNA guidelines — particularly the phonics-based approach to literacy — are not alien to the school culture in municipal schools in Montes Claros. In the final section, we will present our concluding remarks.
THE POLICY CYCLE AS A TOOL FOR ANALYZING THE NATIONAL LITERACY POLICY
As a theoretical-methodological tool for analyzing the PNA, we utilize the Policy Cycle Approach. This approach was originally proposed by Bowe, Ball, and Gold (1992) and subsequently expanded by Ball (1994). This theoretical-methodological tool is presented in the work Reforming Education and Changing Schools in Policy Sociology (Bowe, Ball and Gold, 1992; Ball, 1994). The authors proposed the Policy Cycle Approach across five contexts: Influence, Policy Strategy, Text Production, Practice, and Results (Effects). This conception is a reformulation of the previous theorization, carried out in 1994 by the author and collaborators, given the rigidity of the contexts initially formulated. In 1994, following extensive criticism of the approach in the book Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach, Ball expanded the discussions of the Policy Cycle by adding two further contexts to the original cycle — the Context of Outcomes (effects) and Political Strategy (Mainardes, 2018).
To understand the context in which we will analyze the PNA — Montes Claros, Minas Gerais — it is important to note that this was one of the 5,160 Brazilian municipalities that joined the policy and, consequently, its pilot program: the Time to Learn Program (Ordinance No. 280, February 19, 2020). The municipality of Montes Claros is considered a hub for university, urban, commercial, industrial, and service development in the region, exerting influence over other cities in northern Minas Gerais.
With the objective of understanding Contexts of Influence, Text Production, and Policy Strategy, we conducted a reading and analysis of Decree No. 9,765 (Brasil, 2019b), which establishes the PNA, and the guiding manual released by the MEC through the Sealf (Brasil, 2019a). While the decree acts as the legal instrument establishing the policy, the manual functions as an official pedagogical guidance document. We also analyzed the Final Report of the working group titled "Child Literacy: New Pathways," organized under the coordination of João Batista de Araújo Oliveira and presented to the Education and Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies (Brasil, 2003, 2007, 2019b). This report is relevant for understanding the Context of Influence, given that, within the scope of the PNA, it was reclaimed by the government as a discursive and historical landmark in defense of the phonic method in Brazil.
Another technique used for data collection and analysis of the reality was the interview. To obtain specific information and deepen the analysis, a semi-structured interview was conducted with a retired teacher from a school in the Municipal Education System.
In this stage, a literacy teacher from the Municipal Education System (SME) was selected, identified in this article as (P) to protect her identity. The teacher, who recently retired, has a long career in municipal schools and experienced the use of the phonics method in Mayor Jairo Athayde Vieira's second term (2001–2004) in the administration of the municipality of Montes Claros.
The interviewee was selected through a survey of teachers with the longest tenure in the municipality. An email was sent to four teachers who fit this profile. Only one responded. After receiving the email and while still active as a teacher in the SME, the teacher accepted our invitation, and the interview took place nearly two months later. This instrument aims to understand the Context of Practice and foster a dialogue with historical, political, cultural, and pedagogical processes, discussing an environment (un)favorable to a possible (re)introduction of the phonetic method, in line with the PNA proposal.
CONTEXT OF INFLUENCE AT THE MACRO LEVEL: PROPOSAL FOR A NATIONAL LITERACY PROGRAM
In this section, we will discuss the Context of Influence at the macro level — in the development of the PNA by the MEC and its collaborators — as well as the Context of Political Strategy, which is an integral part of it, a development of the context of influence. According to Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2016), the Context of Influence generally concerns the origins of public policy; that is, it is when the first discourses linked to the interests of political groups, parties, social networks, and governments emerge with the aim of influencing the formulation and definition of policy. The Political Strategy Context belongs to the Context of Influence because it becomes an integral part of the process by which policy is or is not changed. Ball (2009 apud Mainardes and Marcondes, 2009) explains the integration of the two contexts, noting that "thinking about policies and policy discourse can be changed by political action. Thus, they can be subsumed and integrated into the Context of Influence" (Ball, 2009 apud Mainardes and Marcondes, 2009, p. 306).
In the neoliberal capitalist context in Brazil, according to Adrião et al. (2016), it was expected that the increased state participation in the provision of compulsory education in recent decades would reduce the market's scope. However, this is not what occurred, given that business groups "and economic conglomerates have sought other ways to profit from education — not exclusively through the provision of instruction, […] based on the view of students as commodities" (Adrião et al., 2016, p. 90). As a consequence of this capitalist reorganization, there is a growing influence of the business sector on "the implementation of public policies for public basic education in Brazil" (Carvalho and Peroni, 2019, p. 59).
In the current historical context, "the processes of privatization of the public sector have been reinforced, among other factors, by the neoliberal diagnosis, shared by the third way, "that the state is the root cause of the crisis" (Carvalho and Peroni, 2019, p. 59). According to the authors, this restructuring of the state required several reforms in the 1990s, driven by privatization, downsizing of the state, liberalization, and market-oriented reforms (Carvalho and Peroni, 2019).
In this context, in the field of educational policies, new actors have emerged, such as entrepreneurs, private companies (both for-profit and nonprofit), foundations, and institutes, assuming roles in implementation, coordination, and partnership. For the authors, there are three movements associated with this trend:
The business movement Todos pela Educação, the Group of Institutes, Foundations, and Companies (Rede Gife), and the Colabora Movement also exemplify this policy in which business leaders seek to assume a decisive role, systematically intervening in social issues (Carvalho and Peroni, 2019, p. 63).
In this way, the private sector defines the content of education, where "ownership remains public, but the direction of educational policy content is transferred to the private sector" (Carvalho and Peroni, 2019, p. 10). In analyzing the role of the Todos pela Educação (TPE) movement and its stance regarding the definition of public policy parameters, Martins and Krawczyk (2018) infer that TPE members are guided by the logic of business rationality in defining quality education, assigning teachers and education professionals a subordinate role. It is up to education professionals to implement and comply with recommendations, as they are primarily responsible for changes in education. Another important sector is the state departments of education, which must create "an efficient mechanism for supervising schools, with a focus on results, […] the TPE's guidelines regarding the responsibilities of school administrators and the Department of Education are guided by results-based management" (Martins and Krawczyk, 2018, p. 9-10).
The consulting/advisory services provided to countries, states, and municipalities by business leaders and international organizations, through reports, have very clear political, economic, and ideological interests:
Consulting employs different strategies of action. It builds a network of relationships linking governments, third-sector institutions, and private companies, involving business and social projects in management issues, framing all problems within this framework, and always proposing that its desired outcomes can be achieved. To this end, it supports initiatives that are often individual or focused on organized civil society (Bittencourt and Oliveira 2013, p. 181).
Based on this logic and within this context of influence — marked by the private sector's penetration into public education —, educational policies were proposed, including the PNA, which was created in 2019 with the aim of addressing the country's illiteracy problems. As a political strategy, the MEC, as the proponent of the PNA, should have taken civil society into account, listening to universities, research associations, public schools, teachers, researchers, and educators in the field of education in Brazil, but this is not what happened in practice. On the contrary, the PNA was created through a decree devised "top-down" by the MEC and its collaborators, based on reports and advice from business leaders, international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Inter-American Development Bank.
These reports present and disseminate successful practices in the field of public literacy policies from countries such as France and the United States, based on scientific evidence using the phonics method. And, driven by economic interests, business leaders and local organizations promote these discourses and practices, which supposedly represent the path to be adopted in Brazil. Regarding literacy, criticism of practices in public schools and the dissemination of proposals for their standardization reached a turning point in 2003, when the final report, "Child Literacy: New Paths", by the Chamber of Deputies’ Committee on Education and Culture was published, later reissued in 2007 and 2019. The text of the PNA treats this report as a historical and normative milestone and highlights the severe criticisms leveled at literacy and teacher training (Brasil, 2019b).
Thus, we consider this report to be one of the political influences/strategies behind the legal text of the PNA, which uses the year 2003 as a temporal reference and, since that time, has been guided by the interests of business groups seeking to influence the direction of public education, finding, in 2019, a favorable political-ideological landscape for its definition and implementation:
The document found favorable conditions for implementation in 2019, within a new political-partisan context in which Brazilian educational policy began to adopt a subordinate stance and colonized, neglecting national research on literacy in favor of imported concepts (Castro, Nogueira and Ferreira, 2023, p. 20).
In this report, a working group composed of scientists, experts in the field of cognitive science of reading, international and national researchers, business leaders, and international organizations such as the World Bank provided advisory services to the Chamber of Deputies to analyze the Brazilian reality and develop public policies, advocating the use of the phonics method. This guiding document confirms the participation of business leaders by noting that "most of the authors also participated in activities not directly linked to academic production in their respective countries, such as evaluation, public policy debates, and the production of materials to teach children to read and write" (Brasil, 2019b).
The report's authors presented conclusions that its organizers considered important, the main one being that literacy policies and practices in the country — including the training of literacy teachers — have not kept pace with the scientific and methodological progress that occurred in the field of reading and writing instruction and learning during the last decades of the 20th century:
The report highlights two chronic problems in Brazilian education. The first is the problem of children's literacy. Brazil has not been able to adequately teach its children to read and write — as evidenced by student performance in later grades. Inadequate literacy compromises students’ academic success and irreversibly affects the educational trajectory of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who constitute the majority of the school-going population. The second problem concerns the country's difficulty in using scientific knowledge and assessment data to improve the quality of education (Brasil, 2019b, p. 15).
Thus, the report "Early Literacy: New Pathways," presented under the guise of "neutrality," seeks to assess the Brazilian educational reality at the macro- and microeconomic levels and, as a generalized solution, presents scientific evidence produced in first-world countries using the phonics method. Ball and Olmedo (2013) emphasize that a key characteristic of the approach taken by these actors (advisory providers) in global educational agendas — characterized by the authors as "new philanthropists" — is the use of "magic formulas," centered on generic and scalable solutions designed to be implemented regardless of the context in which they are presented. These reports reinforce the ideology that "business methods and social entrepreneurship initiatives are seen as the most effective ways to provide broader access to education and a higher quality of education" (Ball and Olmedo, 2013, p. 46).
The working group for the PNA's precursor report includes, in addition to the business community, the World Bank, and researchers in the field of psychology, among them Cláudia Cardoso-Martins (Ph.D. in psychology); Fernando Capovilla (Ph.D. in experimental psychology, producer of educational materials and textbooks using the phonics methodology in Brazil); Jean-Emile Gombert (Ph.D. in genetic psychology); Marilyn Jaeger Adarns (Ph.D. in cognitive psychology); Roger Beard (Ph.D. in psychology); and Alessandra Gotuzo Seabra (holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from the Universidade de São Paulo, as well as a master's, Ph.D., and postdoctoral degree in experimental psychology from the Universidade de São Paulo).
The coordinator and author of the report is João Batista de Araújo e Oliveira — a businessman and president of the Alfa and Beto Institute (IAB). Through the non-governmental organization — NGO IAB, João Batista de Araújo e Oliveira has distinguished himself as an advocate of a scientific approach to literacy, voicing fierce criticism of constructivism through the publication of scientific articles and reports in Brazil since the 2000s. He argues that the major problem of illiteracy in Brazil stems from the practices promoted by this approach, as enshrined in the National Curriculum Parameters (PCN) (Brasil, 1997). The IAB, as an NGO, works on the production of teaching materials using the phonics method, participates in and helps develop literacy policies, provides advisory services to municipal and state governments on teacher training, and sells workbooks based on the phonics method. João Batista de Araújo e Oliveira also worked for the World Bank on strategic issues and assisted the Ayrton Senna Institute in proposing the programs Escola Campeã, Se Liga, and Acelera Brasil (Instituto Alfa e Beto, 2023).
It is important to remember that, in Brazil, the PCN (Brasil, 1997) were proposed as a framework for teachers’ work, to support pedagogical discussions in schools. The PCN criticize a form of literacy that proceeds through an additive logic in which: "one is taught to combine syllables (or letters) [or phonemes] to form words, to combine words to form sentences, and to combine sentences to form texts" (Brasil, 1997, p. 28). This is because such units, "taken out of context, have little to do with discursive competence, which is the central issue" (Brasil, 1997, p. 29) of the process of learning to read and write. By guiding pedagogical practices in this way, the PCN propose an expanded conception of literacy, which, combined with studies undertaken by various authors, contributed to disseminating a new concept and new processes of literacy.
By disregarding and criticizing the PCN, and proposing teacher education and "training" for the use of a literacy method, the PNA was conceived, assigning to the teacher and the school the primary responsibility in the educational process. In this way, the implementation of a single pedagogical practice using the phonics method was expected, the mastery of which would be achieved through the parameters of an online continuing education program. This training prescribes/teaches, step by step, a formula for how educators should teach literacy to all children in an efficient manner, grounded in scientific evidence, which is treated as unique, homogeneous, and irrefutable.
Unlike the PNA, the National Pact for Literacy at the Right Age (PNAIC) — a teacher training initiative proposed by the MEC — took into account research conducted in Brazil and was managed in partnership with Brazilian public universities, the National Union of Municipal Education Directors (Undime), and the National Council of Education Secretaries (Consed), all of which participated in the program's design. The universities were also responsible for training initiatives in different Brazilian regions and for developing reference materials for teachers to study — which included accounts of experiences and lesson plans developed by literacy instructors from Brazilian public schools. This program proposed an approach to literacy grounded in constructivist influences and focused on literacy development.
We conclude that the mechanistic learning perspective proposed by the PNA — one that conceives of literacy solely through the lens of a field of knowledge and a method, proposing a simplistic form of literacy based on the mental representation of different consonants and vowels to identify their syllabic combinations in an explicit and systematic manner — has implications for the democratization of education. This is because such literacy, limited to technical and cognitive skills for deciphering words without ensuring comprehension or the social use of reading/writing in their heterogeneous contexts, will result in the formation of more docile and uncritical individuals, easy "prey" for manipulation. A narrowly defined concept of literacy will not ensure that the working classes have access to the cultural artifacts and goods embedded in the context of literate culture, thereby highlighting the neoliberal perspective.
In the next section, we examine the context of Text Production, analyzing the concepts and proposals of the PNA (Nadalim, 2019) guidance booklet, which treat the language acquisition as a code and distort the concept of literacy.
CONTEXT OF TEXT PRODUCTION: NATIONAL LITERACY PROGRAM AND THE PROPOSAL FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
In this section, we will discuss the Text Production component of the PNA (Brasil, 2019a; 2019b) and its proposal for continuing education, one of the pillars of the Time to Learn Program.
The context of Text Production, according to Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2016), refers to the outcomes and political agreements established to enable the formulation of public policy. These are discourses materialized linguistically through legal and official texts, political texts, formal or informal comments, and official statements, among others, which reveal the interplay of interests among the various agents (formulators).
The PNA was established by Decree No. 9,765 (Brasil, 2019a), accompanied by a guidance booklet published by Sealf (Brasil, 2019b). As part of its "implementation," the Time to Learn Program was proposed (Ordinance No. 280, February 19, 2020). The program was established with the aim of improving the quality of literacy in all public schools in Brazil and addressing the main causes of reading and writing difficulties based on the cognitive science of reading (Brasil, 2020).
Following the guidelines of the National Literacy Policy, Time to Learn (Brasil, 2020), in Article 2, proposes actions structured around four pillars:
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continuing education for literacy professionals;
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pedagogical support for literacy;
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improvement of literacy assessments;
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recognition of literacy professionals.
The program's target audience consists of early childhood education teachers (last year of preschool) and literacy instructors (1st and 2nd grades).
Regarding teacher training, the Time to Learn Program aims to provide educators with knowledge and strategies related to learning to read and write in a systematic and organic manner, with the goal of improving student performance in the literacy cycle. Articles 13 and 14 of Decree No. 280, dated February 19, 2020, which establish the Time to Learn Program, regulate the guidelines and provide guidance on Axis 1, continuing education:
Art. 13. The online continuing education for literacy teachers will be conducted through the Ministry of Education's Virtual Learning Environment (Avamec).
Art. 14. The online course will consist of texts, videos, quizzes, and activities.
§ 1 Upon completing the course, the teacher will take an online test to assess the knowledge acquired.
§ 2 Teachers who achieve the minimum performance level established by the MEC will be entitled to a certificate of course completion.
Art. 15. With the exception of the final assessment, teachers will have free access to all available training content, with no limits on navigation within the learning environment, the number of video views, or the time required to complete the course (Brasil, 2020, p. 8-9).
Developed under the auspices of the Sealf, the Science-Based Literacy (ABC) course is one of ten initiatives of the Time to Learn Program and is part of the continuing education track for literacy professionals. The course draws on literacy experiences from Portugal, where the materials combine theory and practice. This online course is the result of an international cooperation agreement between Brazil and Portugal. Offered as a continuing education program, the course's materials are edited by Professor Rui A. Alves (Universidade do Porto) and Professor Isabel Leite (Universidade de Évora). In addition to the editors, the course benefits from the cooperation of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the Universidade do Porto (Fpceup), the Capes, and the Universidade Aberta de Portugal (UAb), the latter of which is responsible for recording and editing the video lessons. In presenting the ABC course, the MEC secretary for literacy, Carlos Francisco de Paula Nadalim, highlights the leading role of Portuguese professionals and their results in external assessments:
One of the countries that has stood out in recent years in international assessments is Portugal, whose results have improved significantly in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings, as well as in those of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), to the point of surpassing Finland in 2015 in the assessment of fourth-grade students’ performance in mathematics. In the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), one of the leading international studies assessing reading literacy, Portugal's score is significantly higher than the midpoint of the scale (500) (Nadalim, 2019).
In the ABC course offered by the Time to Learn program, we see the prominent role played by Portuguese universities and researchers, while Brazilian realities and studies on education and literacy are largely overlooked. Designed for self-study, the course has a total of 180 hours, featuring videos, reading materials, and study assignments developed in accordance with the cognitive science of reading, divided into seven modules:
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Module 1: Introduction;
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Module 2: Learning to listen;
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Module 3: Literacy knowledge;
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Module 4: Oral reading fluency;
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Module 5: Vocabulary development;
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Module 6: Text comprehension;
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Module 7: Writing production.
At the end of each module, a questionnaire is provided to assess the learning of the teacher taking the course.
The course, in partnership with Portugal, promotes that country's successful experiences and overlooks Brazil's. In this way, it disregards the differences between the initiatives developed in Portugal, a small European country, and Brazil, a continental nation characterized by challenges of various kinds, as diverse as the regional, social, cultural, and economic differences within this vast territory. By narrowing the concept and practices of literacy, the ABC course emphasizes children's entry into the "fantastic world of letters and their sounds," in contrast to the approach advocated in Brazil, which is the integration of children into the universe of written culture and texts of the most varied genres, as proposed by Soares (1998; 2008; 2022) and official Brazilian documents (1998; 2013).
The ABC course is aligned with the text of the PNA, Decree No. 9765, and the guidance booklet published by Sealf (Brasil, 2019a; Nadalim, 2019), in which the concept of literacy is related to the decoding of a code, and learning progresses as the child becomes able to isolate phonemes and associate them with a corresponding grapheme:
When a child or an illiterate adult realizes that letters are not merely graphic symbols, but that, individually or in groups, they represent the sounds of speech (or the phonemes of the language, to be more precise), we say that this person has grasped the alphabetic principle.
The learner must be guided gradually through the process of learning these grapheme-phoneme relationships. This is not a process that occurs spontaneously through mere exposure to written material. When learning the first rules of grapheme-phoneme/phoneme-grapheme correspondence, the person begins to decode — that is, to extract the phonological form (or pronunciation) from a sequence of written letters — and to encode — that is, to combine the sounds produced in speech into graphic signs (letters or graphemes). In other words, they begin to read and write (Brasil, 2019b, p. 18).
PNA also disregards the learner, particularly in terms of their social, cultural, and even cognitive reality. Even though it draws on the cognitive sciences of reading, by focusing solely on neuroscience, PNA does not take into account all of the child's cognitive processes, such as those identified by Ferreiro and Teberosky (1985).
This adult-centered view, which disregards the child and teaches reading as the distinction between decoding and writing as encoding has been discussed and debated in Brazil since the 1980s, largely influenced by the dissemination of studies on the psychogenesis of written language by Emília Ferreiro and Ana Teberosky (1985). The authors demonstrated that literacy is not achieved letter by letter as a form of ciphering, but rather through the learning of a system of representation in which signs (graphemes) represent — rather than encode — the sounds of speech (phonemes).
The PNA rejects the discussion on the uses of writing (letramento) in Brazil and replaces it with literacia, a term imported from Portugal and commonly used in educational documents in that country. The word literacia, imported from the Portuguese curriculum into the PNA as a state policy, does not align with discussions regarding the concept of literacy in Brazil. This is because the term, in the PNA, is used to refer to a skill, "the teaching and learning of reading and writing, regardless of the writing system used, ranging from the basic level (emerging literacy) to the advanced level" (Nadalim, 2019, p. 12). It is thus presented as:
Literacy is the set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to reading and writing, as well as the productive use of these skills. It can encompass various levels: from the most basic, such as emerging literacy, to the most advanced, in which a person who is already capable of reading and writing makes productive, efficient, and frequent use of these skills, employing them in the acquisition, transmission, and, at times, production of knowledge (Morais, 2014). The concept of literacy has been spreading since the 1980s and holds particular importance in public policy as a factor for the full exercise of citizenship. It is a term commonly used in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries, equivalent to "literacy" in English and "littératie" in French. The decision to use it offers several advantages, as it aligns with internationally established scientific terminology (Nadalim, 2019, p. 21).
Literacia is associated with speed, fluency in oral reading, and text comprehension. In the simplest sense, literacy is achieved gradually and "measured" as the individual progresses through subsequent grade levels. However, the term letramento as used in Brazil is a complex and diverse concept that cannot be measured; there are numerous and heterogeneous cultural artifacts involving writing in different situations both inside and outside the school environment — in the family, at work, during leisure, at church, on social media, for example.
Thus, letramento is the result of the process of teaching and learning social practices, "the adoption of reading and writing by an individual or social group, as a ‘consequence of having appropriated writing and its social practices, alters their condition in psychological, cultural, political, linguistic, and even economic aspects" (Soares, 2009, p. 18). As explained, there are several Brazilian studies, such as those by Soares (1998; 2004b; 2023b), Morais (2006; 2023), Brandão and Leal (2010), Brandão and Rosa (2011), Araújo (2017), that highlight literacy and literacy development as distinct, yet inseparable processes. These studies also emphasize the importance of working with both processes starting in early childhood education, through situations and activities that foster reflection and contextualized learning, amidst social practices and cultural artifacts.
At the micro level, and in the context of practice, we found that the Montes Claros Municipal Education Network had already been establishing these public-private partnerships for more than 20 years to promote education and literacy. In a study conducted by Lélis (2007), the author noted the presence of private-sector logic in the management of public schools through partnerships between non-state institutions and the Municipal Department of Education. This public-private partnership took place with the "implementation" of the Champion School Program between 2001 and 2004, during the administration of mayor Jairo Athayde Vieira and municipal secretary of education Silvina Fonseca Corrêa. This collaboration took place with the Ayrton Senna Institute in the implementation of the Champion School Program, which […] advocated the adoption of an educational management model that would ensure quality education for children and youth through the optimization of public education management" (Lélis, 2007, p. 16). In this public-private management model, market concepts are transposed onto the school within an undemocratic management framework based on the principles of efficiency, effectiveness, and optimization of results, where the school implements predefined projects and proposals (Peroni, 2016).
According to Lélis (2007), the Champion School Program impacted the school culture of local management, including its democratic principles. The author noted the wide reach of this management model, which interferes with the network's pedagogical practices, in which "the Municipal Department of Education often ceased to function as an established state organization, becoming instead a worker" (Lélis, 2007, p. 24). The Municipal Department of Education also developed the Acelera Brasil and Se Liga programs, in partnership with the Ayrton Senna Institute, aiming to correct the school flow and the age/grade mismatch among children in grades 1 through 5 of elementary school. The creator of these school progression acceleration programs was João Batista de Araújo Oliveira, currently president of the Alfa e Beto Institute, who worked as an employee of the World Bank and the International Labour Organization, and served as secretary of the Ministry of Education in 1995. João Batista de Araújo Oliveira advocates for a rational approach to educational policies, arguing that what works in education is based on scientific evidence, which should form the basis of educational policies in Brazil (Instituto Alfa e Beto, 2023).
Another program developed by the municipality of Montes Claros in the 2000s for school-age children in the literacy phase was the Alfa e Beto Program. The creator of the program and its educational materials is João Batista de Araújo Oliveira. The Alfa and Beto Literacy Program is the flagship initiative of the IAB, as this institution's priority is for educational networks and systems to acquire the workbook-based teaching materials, with the aim of "promoting effective literacy among children based on scientific evidence" (Instituto Alfa e Beto, 2023), derived from the cognitive science of reading.
In our study, by highlighting the development of these programs within the municipal schools of Montes Claros, we aim to demonstrate that the pedagogical processes and practices present today engage with the past and reveal the school culture that has been taking shape for at least two decades. This implies that the use of the phonics-based literacy method, proposed by the PNA, is not foreign to teachers and the SME. For the professional we interviewed, who worked (in the 2000s) as a literacy teacher in the SME, the adoption of the Alfa e Beto Literacy Program occurred during Mayor Jairo Athayde Vieira's second term (2001–2004). This program proposed intervention materials using the phonics method; it was not optional, but rather mandatory for teachers to use in practice, meaning that teachers had to adapt to the format imposed by the program:
The project to work with the phonics method was "implemented" by "Dr. João" during the administration of Walfrido Mares Guia. Dr. João was the "mentor" of this project, traveling to Montes Claros to train the teachers. This project was a package purchased by the Municipal Department of Education; it contained a whole set of materials to be followed, including poor-quality literary books such as: "Seu Ferreiro tem um burro e assim vamos trabalhar o RR" (Mr. Blacksmith has a donkey, and so we will work on the RR). We were "forced" to work with the phonics method, including this material (P. Interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2023).
According to the teacher's memoir, the materials used — based on the phonics methodology — began to influence the teachers’ professional development by guiding their pedagogical practices through training and the implementation of a specific literacy method. When asked whether, prior to the program's implementation, the teachers were familiar with the phonics method and whether it was already part of their school culture, the teacher reports that "there was no specific method used; we [teachers] worked as we thought was correct" (P. Interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2023).
Regarding the materials used in the Alfa and Beto Program, the teacher is emphatic in stating that they were "poor," with extremely limited activities, consisting of artificial sentences such as: "Ivo viu a uva" (P. Interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2023). There were monthly "training sessions" for the teachers, teaching them how to teach the classes and manage the materials and textbooks, and:
All the children had a motor skills workbook for tracing dotted lines. Then there were the dotted words for them to trace with a pencil and copy into the worksheet below. Students had a calligraphy workbook with dotted lines for practicing cursive and block letters, which is now prohibited. There was also the teacher's guide with the steps that should be followed (P. Interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2023).
The literacy instructors relied too heavily on manuals and textbooks that dictated the steps they were supposed to follow with the children. Thus, "unlike textbooks, ‘workbook-style’ materials are distinguished by their imposition of stricter controls over content and instructional time" (Adrião et al. 2022, p. 154).
The interpretation and observation of the interviewed teacher, who recalls and describes pedagogical practices using the phonics method, corroborates Morais’ (2006) research in the inference that teaching materials based on phonics-based literacy methodologies generally provide learning based on artificial and limited texts, and consequently lead to distorted text writing and reading. The first step is to ensure decoding, followed by instruction that leads to reading and text production. Despite the materials based on the "package" of the Alfa and Beto Program, Sousa (2014) criticizes the conditioning through drill and repetition that characterized this material, acquired in many states and municipalities starting in the 2000s:
In a world marked by paradigm shifts in learning methods, we are presented with the blatant offer of: LUMA IS THE MOTHER. SHE IS THE MOTHER OF MILA AND MALU. LUMA LOVES MILA AND MALU. MALU IS BREASTFEEDING. MILA DOESN’T BREASTFEED. MILA ALREADY READS – DOES SHE ALREADY READ? YES, SHE READS1. This is what the Alfa and Beto package offers children, based on supposed scientific evidence […] it amounts to intellectual disrespect toward children, an offense to the intelligence of literacy teachers (Sousa, 2014, p. 17).
The text above highlights the artificial nature of an approach to literacy based on decoding and grounded in pseudo-texts. There is no real or relevant meaning in the proposed text, which is not intended to circulate socially nor to prompt the student to take a stance. The aim is simply to have the learner memorize a syllabic pattern. The teacher from Montes Claros whom we interviewed also criticizes the artificiality of the texts and activities that made up the "Alfa and Beto" primers, in which, during lessons, it was the teacher who "dosed" the phonemes, in a sequence ranging from the easiest to the most difficult for students:
The materials, I remember well, dictated that if we were working on, for example, the phoneme /C/, there were no words in the activities with other sounds like /qu/ and /k/, and words with the /C/ phoneme could only follow the vowels a, o, u, so as not to confuse the child by having other letters with the same sound as the phoneme being worked on (Teacher, Interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2023).
According to the teacher from Montes Claros, at the local level, teachers were selected to implement the phonics methodology based on their "profile," as this method was difficult to demonstrate and execute, requiring the teacher to pronounce the sounds "clearly" so that the children could understand them. Regarding her experience and the students’ learning with the phonics method, the teacher states:
Some children learned, while others did not. The biggest challenge I noticed when working with the phonics method was that it took the children a long time to read fluently. We spent a lot of time working with materials for fine motor skills, worksheets for syllables, the letters of the alphabet, and syllables, until we reached words and then texts. The phonics method requires a lot of tongue and mouth movements for the child to perceive the sound. I noticed that with the phonics method, the child becomes "syllabic" very quickly, but with extremely poor reading skills. So, when you work on reading, exploring nursery rhymes, songs, diverse text genres, and short poems from the very beginning of literacy, starting with the text, the child reads and understands more easily (Teacher, Interview conducted on Aug. 21, 2023).
It is possible to identify in the teacher's experience, through the use of the phonics method, the meaning of literacy from the associationist-empiricist perspective, which was developed within the Municipal Education Network — a perspective that, in 2019, was revived with the PNA, which the MEC proposed and began to advocate.
From this perspective, literacy is viewed as a decoding technique, based on activities that focus on analysis (the ability to break words down into syllables and letters into phonemes) and synthesis (the ability to combine phonemes or letters to form syllables or words). The interviewed teacher emphasizes how the phonics methodology separates reading from comprehension, which aligns with arguments emphasized in the PNA and by its proponents — that "reading and comprehension" are two distinct activities (Nadalim, 2019). This perspective denies that literacy and literacy skills are distinct yet inseparable processes, in which literacy is the mastery of writing technology and literacy skills involve introducing the child to the uses of reading and writing in social practices (Soares, 2023b).
Another aspect addressed by the teacher from Montes Claros, and taken up by the PNA, is reading linked to speed and the number of words read per minute. "We had to constantly assess the children's reading. Sometimes, they got lost and so did we in that count; it was very tense and we were pressured by the supervisors. Students were expected to read a certain number of words per minute" (P. Interview conducted on 08/21/2023). The approach described by the teacher, which incorporated the principles and guidelines of the Alfa and Beto Program, is presented in the PNA in 2019 as the average number of words read per minute for each grade level, as shown in the Chart 1.
Analyzing the table above, we highlight that reading in the PNA is linked to speed, fluency, and prosody, as outlined in the Guidance Booklet (Brasil, 2019b). Regarding the materials proposed by the Alfa and Beto Program, we refer to Ferreiro (2011), who explains that writing can be viewed in two different ways and that, depending on how it is understood, the pedagogical consequences change drastically. This is because, when it is not considered a representation of language (as conceived by the PNA and the phonics method), the elements and relationships are predetermined.
In this way, inequalities in access to and retention in school are accentuated, highlighting a learning of skills focused on "know-how," according to neoliberal logic, of a learning "that works," a responsibility of "everyone," especially teachers, who must learn to use the phonics method appropriately. According to the PNA's logic, this method is the most effective in first-world countries, where families — even if they lack access to written culture — must foster their children's literacy.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
In light of the above, within the PNA's Contexts of Influence and Political Strategy, we identify the prominent presence of the neoliberal scenario, characterized by the diminishing role of the State and the expanding influence of financial groups seeking to exercise power by dictating the direction of public policies.
In 2019, conditions were ideal for the proposal in the 2003 report to be adopted, according to the initiative in effect at the time, given that the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022) intensified the participation of business leaders and their proposals in public policy, with discourses criticizing constructivism, the contributions of Paulo Freire and Magda Soares, and promoting homeschooling and civic-military schools.
In the analysis and production of data, we were able to reflect on the connections and dialogues between the PNA at the micro level and economic, historical, political, pedagogical, and cultural aspects, which served as the backdrop for the adoption of this policy in Montes Claros. At the local level, within the Montes Claros Municipal Department of Education, we identified that the phonics method has been part of the school culture in children's literacy practices through public-private partnerships with the Alfa and Beto Program for over two decades.
At that time, participation in the program compromised school autonomy and the work of teachers. The teachers were presented with a specific pedagogical proposal that included the phonics method, curriculum plans, and teaching materials, whereby the pedagogical team of the SME at the time controlled student learning and teacher training according to the guidelines imposed by the Intervention Program. Teachers were expected to assume a passive role, that of mere replicators, which runs counter to democratic educational management and teacher autonomy, since pedagogical actions are not based on finished projects, but rather on autonomy, the exchange of experiences among peers, and reflections on practice, in the construction of autonomy, knowledge, that is, school culture.
We found that the Acelera Brasil, Se Liga, and Escola Campeã programs, developed through a private partnership with the Ayrton Senna Institute, were also adopted in the 2000s by the Municipal Department of Education, which influenced school culture and the management of teachers’ classroom practices. In this context, we conclude that the PNA guidelines, particularly the phonics-based approach to literacy, are not foreign to the school culture in municipal schools in Montes Claros, given that, since the 2000s, through public-private partnerships, the municipal education administration had already mandated the use of the phonics method, which influenced teachers’ knowledge and practices. This fact reveals the historical dynamics of influences and interests regarding the reception of the PNA and its adoption at the micro level in 2019.
Funding:
1
Data availability statement:
The research data are available in the body of the article.
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SOARES, Magda. Letramento e alfabetização: as muitas facetas. Revista Brasileira de Educação, Rio de Janeiro, n. 25, p. 5-17, abr. 2004b. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1413-24782004000100002
» https://doi.org/10.1590/S1413-24782004000100002 - SOARES, Magda. Alfabetização e letramento 5. ed. São Paulo: Contexto, 2008.
- SOARES, Magda. Letramento: um tema em três gêneros. 3. ed. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009.
- SOARES, Magda. Alfabetização: a questão dos métodos. São Paulo: Contexto, 2022.
- SOARES, Magda Becker. Alfabetização e letramentos na perspectiva de Magda Soares: diálogos em movimentos. Revista Brasileira de Alfabetização, n. 20, p. 1-10, 2023a.
- SOARES, Magda. Alfaletrar: toda criança pode aprender a ler e escrever. São Paulo: Contexto, 2023b.
- SOUSA, Sandra Novais. O cenário educativo em Mato Grosso do Sul: as cores e o tom da alfabetização com os programas Alfa e Beto e Pnaic, 2014. Dissertação (Mestrado Profissional em Educação) – Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, 2014.
