LEARNING FROM THE SUBALTERN: WHAT DOES MARIA LINDALVA TEACH US ABOUT HEGEMONIC-COMMON-SENSE-IDEOLOGY AND TEXT SELECTION FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING MATERIALS?

Lesliê Vieira Mulico

doi:10.1590/010318135865425912020

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the scope of vocational critical language teaching materials, designing lessons that meet professional requirements at public technical high schools committed with the agenda of critical education for citizenship is something that deserves attention. If, on the one hand, the Critical Literacy framework substantiates practices that engage us with social changes (LUKE; FREEBODY, 1997), promote opportunities for developing critical views over dominant ideologies, cultures, economies, institutions and political systems (TILIO, 2013, 2017), and examine our loci of enunciation in order that we unlearn our privileges and learn from the subaltern (ANDREOTTI, 2007); on the other, the lesson materials available for technical high-school courses seem not to take these premises into account, especially the latter. In order to bridge this gap, I designed a lesson unit (Society Matters?), aimed at technical high-school 3rd graders, wherein Maria Lindalva’s autobiography, a subaltern ex-landless activist, creates opportunities for discussions over the ideals of work, effort and success that challenge hegemonic-common-sense ideology. Resorting to constructivist bricolage (DENZIN; LINCOLN, 2005) involving her video-autobiography, the language teaching unit, the memories of my pedagogic encounters with learners from 2015 to 2018, and two different lines of interpretation that were recurrently raised throughout, I examined to what extent the interpretations over Maria Lindalva’s narrative reflect and refract neoliberal capitalist ideologies, thus contributing to developing critical posture, as well as to the selection of texts for critical language teaching materials. The results showed the analysis that validates Maria Lindalva’s achievements may be confronted by the viewpoint of her relationship with scarcity (SANTOS, 2017), which favored learners’ developing critical posture; and, finally, that it was possible to take her narrative a step further showing what Maria Lindalva teaches us about selecting texts for critical language teaching materials.

Highlights

How to design English language teaching materials that meet the requirements of high school vocational courses committed with the agenda of critical education for citizenship? I have been trying to answer this question by means of the lesson units I have produced since 2010, when I became a language teacher, materials designer and researcher of a public federal institute of technical education
The critical literacy agenda impels me to engage with social change (LUKE; FREEBODY, 1997), to examine my locus of enunciation and the connections between language, power and knowledge while unlearning my privileges in order to learn from the subaltern (ANDREOTTI, 2007), and to design materials that promote opportunities for developing critical views over dominant ideologies, cultures, economies, institutions and political systems (TILIO, 2017) so that learners are able to question and resignify naturalized ideological power relations (TILIO, 2013, 2017)
The analyses I propose result from bricolating pieces taken from Maria Lindalva’s narrative of her own biography, the language teaching unit I designed, the memories of my pedagogic encounters with learners, and two different lines of interpretation on the ex-landless narrative recurrently raised throughout these encounters

Summary

INTRODUCTION

After four years (from 2015 to 2018) teaching English through Maria Lindalva’s autobiography with different learners of the same age group (16-18 yearolds) attending the Environmental and Livestock-Agricultural courses I mentioned before, I intend to discuss three aspects that I observed throughout: a) how her narrative challenges hegemonic-common-sense ideology without relinquishing its network capillarity; b) what lines of interpretation on her narrative my students and I had and exchanged during our encounters; and c) how these lines of interpretation may help other material designers to select texts for their critical language teaching materials. I agree with the epistemological idea that every knowledge is political and situated (MOITA LOPES, 2006; PENNYCOOK, 2001), as well as with Rojo’s (2006) and Adreotti’s (2007) views that AL contemporary research ought to be ethically engaged with people who undergo deprivation of basic human rights in society

BRICOLATING THE “QUILT” OF THIS STUDY

HEGEMONIC COMMON-SENSE IDEOLOGY

DIFFERENT LINES OF INTERPRETATION ON MARIA LINDALVA’S NARRATIVE