Contingências do trabalho docente na escola pública: ensinar a ler e a escrever num contexto de mudança

Abstract

The problem that gave rise to this investigation was the conflict resulting from the dissonance between theoretical conscious options and the teaching practice that we have actually managed to implement when we took over the Portuguese Language classes for Cycle II groups of Brazilian Middle School at a state public school, soon after completing the Masters Degree in Education. Aimed at prioritizing practices that would favor the education of text readers and producers, not just copyists and decoders, we verified the interference of many aspects that had a negative impact on our practice. Thus, starting from the premise that the development of such skills requires a deliberate and continuous teaching during the whole basic education by teachers of different subjects, we have proposed to look after the answers for the following questions: what is the nature of the difficulties faced by teachers when trying to promote their students learning? Which contingencies related to teach reading and writing, deliberate or not, are present in the work of public school teachers, making the teaching and learning processes easy or difficult? To answer such questions, we undertook a study within the paradigm of the qualitative research in education, using, in some steps, procedures inspired in the educational ethnography (Ezpeleta and Rockwell, 1986; Fonseca, 1998; Erickson, 1989). The data analysis was grounded on essentially semantic criteria, in the light of content analysis parameters (Bardin, 1978). The works of Tiramonti (2005), Azanha (1990, 2004), Souza (2002, 2006) and Lapo (2005), among other authors, gave theoretical support to our investigation, insofar they propose to consider aspects of the broader context where teachers act, focusing on concrete situations from which sources of teachers uneasiness and easiness emerge that intervene in their practices. Data indicated that the classroom context is often not proper for the everyday work focused on the practices of reading and producing texts, in view of many factors: high number of students, difficulty of individualized follow-up of these students by teachers; need of managing the groups individual and collective demands; difficulties inherent to maintaining a certain order that allows performing complex and meaningful activities in classroom; divergent and often conflicting personal interests; sometimes scarce or precarious material resources; having to rush to manage multiple everyday tasks that eventually take large amount of class time in issues not directly related to teaching and learning of contents, among a multitude of other factors. Besides questions of objective order, aspects of subjective order do also interfere with concrete classroom situations, which involve knowledge and personal characteristics of teachers, their values, beliefs, needs and desires, which determine very peculiar ways of evaluating the context, acting and reacting to everyday contingencies. All these elements must be considered when improvement actions in public education are proposed. Thus, it is necessary to frame the expectations as to the role of school and teachers, which seem to be overestimated in the set of actions that the society must implement so that there is significant improvement in the teaching quality.