This document summarizes Daniel Ferraz's investigation of how a graduate language and culture course in Brazil incorporated principles of critical literacy and multiteracies. The course discussed language and culture through English and challenged monolithic views using films, online materials, and student reflections. Students' responses showed they began to question assumptions around language and culture, recognize fragmented knowledge, and expand their interpretations, such as viewing blindness as a metaphor. Ferraz concludes that problematizing foreign language education's epistemological foundations and incorporating critical approaches can better engage students and prepare them as active citizens.
1. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN THE LIGHT
OF CRITICAL LITERACY AND
MULTILITERACIES in BRAZILIAN
EDUCATION
Daniel Ferraz
Faculdade de Tecnologia – São Paulo, Brazil
PhD student, Universidade de São Paulo
8. ABSTRACT: This paper aims at investigating
language and culture in a Language and
Culture graduate course from a university in
the State of São Paulo, Brazil.
9. • Language and Culture
• Based on:
• Critical Literacy and
Multiliteracies
13. Design
Critical Literacy Language
Multiliteracies Culture
- Pedagogy - Objects of study
- Practice - Theory
14. CONTEXT: the course
• 13 students
• All of them English teachers and coordinators
of private and public schools in São Paulo,
Brazil
• Course: Language and Culture through English
15. Objetives
• Discuss language and culture through English
• Problematize / question monolithic views of
language and culture
• “expanding views” = to expand their
interpretations about language and culture
16. CLASS 1
-
Class project: For class 2:
Culture
- Post movements; OSDE – Open
spaces for
Text 1- A Tale of differences
post-modernity, post-
Culture, coloniality, post- development (Cervetti, Pardales and Damico)
structuralism and equity – Text 2 - Postmodernism, Post-
(texts: Bakhtin, Derrida, Knowledges modernity and the Post-modern
Post movements, Usher and Edwards)
and
movement (Usher and Edwards)
perspectives
Text 3 –Eu e o outro: imagens
- refletidas ( MonteMór,W.)
knowledge and background reading
perspectives, Films:
Text 4 –Culture, Class and Pedagogy
Truman Show
in Dead Poets Society”
Text 5 - Teorias do Pós-Moderno
(Jameson
17. How...?
• Theories: articles about language, and culture
• Class project: films for discussion connected
to the theories (visual literacy, critical
literacy)
• Interaction in the discipline´s Blog: videos,
youtube videos, links, images, cartoons
(multiliteracies)
• Response Papers: students wrote reflections
upon the process ( linguistic, critical literacy)
18. Students’ responses: some
interpretations
• WHEN IT COMES TO LANGUAGE AND CULTURE…
• Reproductivism
• Fragmented knowldge
• Expansion of interpretations
19. Bourdieu´s critique:
REPRODUCTIVISM
• STUDENT E2
• Response Paper - First Class
• In my opinion this first class was just great. We were a little tired of having so much theory during the previous
modules. It was really good to discuss important and interesting issues. Professor Daniel Ferraz showed the
differences between the Modernism and the post-modernism movement, making us having a whole picture in our
minds.
• Probably, I have heard in my school time these names before (Positivism, Rationalism, and (Neo) Liberalism) but
I’ve never thought about the influence it had on people and mainly on education. Positivism, Rationalism and Neo
Liberalism are part of the modernism movement which focus on society. The positivism shows us that everything
has two sides the good and the bad. The differences of cultures used to be seen as good and bad cultures and not
as different and acceptable. The Rationalism used to say that if you were not a scientist, a rational man, you were
not part of a society, you were put aside. The Neo liberalism used to say that everybody is free, everybody has the
same rights, but it made me think that this is beautiful in theory because it’s not what really happens in real life
due to the fact that some people have more freedom than others and unfortunately they have more rights than
others as well. I could understand that during the modernism, people lived in the feudal system in which people
(society) were under control the King who had the power within his domain that in fact used to follow the Pope’s
rules. God was the Center of Universe that’s why the church was the greatest power especially in Europe. The
people started to leave the castles forming societies and cities. They started to question the King and to rethink
some ideas and concepts they used to have. From that moment, the man starts to be the Center of the world. This
new man can create technology and rethink the notion of God. They established science and a new movement
“the Enlightment” that I had never thought about the meaning before that is light the world bring the light. Now
we have another movement that is the Post-modernism, which focus on language and not on society, it is more
flexible and they will question and challenge all the movements. Bahktin, Derrida and Foucault are the important
names in this movement. Bahktin, with the idea of dialogism. Derrida, with the concept of deconstruction and
Foucault with the notion of power, how to work with it and if it is possible to negotiate this power.
• This class made me think about many concepts we may have in our minds and we use them as they are universal
truths. In education, I can say that we were taught in a way and even after having a lot of information on new
things and ideas, for many reasons we keep doing the same, just repeating our teachers’ steps.
20. Response paper 1
• Student F
• During Feudalism, God was the center of the universe. Man couldn’t do
much without his help. As population grew, many people started to live farther
and farther from the kingdoms, where they were controlled by kings and religious
authorities, and began to question the idea that God was the center of the
universe.
• Modernity consists of admitting that man is the center. Due to man’s
capacity, many things that make it easier for humans to live have been invented.
As a consequence, the world has become a place where people who have a higher
level of intellectualism and greater purchasing power to buy whatever is invented
receive recognition, while those who aren’t talented or don’t have money are
often put aside.
• Post-modernity comes to combat structuralism (emphasis on structures),
which has been viewed as the way to achieve success. Applying this in education,
teachers are supposed to stop giving importance only to the structures of their
disciplines. They also need to call their students’ attention to the role of the latter
in society as agents of transformation. Besides that, it’s essential for students to
know what the contents they are learning are for.
• So, the first class of this course helped me reflect on my responsibility, as an
educator, to form active citizens for society. By doing so, I will be making a
contribution to my students’ lives which will be as important as the contents I may
help them learn.
22. Expansion of Interpretations
• Final Paper – Group B interpreting the movie
BLINDNESS:
• Therefore, this essay on “Blindness” is an attempt to
express how the movie echoed with our thoughts
and our reality as we believe the blindness in this
case is not a matter of being visually impaired but
the ignorance to comprehend the world around us.
24. Expansion of Interpretations
• CULTURE
• GROUP D
• Since talking about culture is talking about ourselves,
our group couldn’t help but come up with examples
from our everyday life in Brazil: our own version on
how multiculturalism works. Have we been
promoting multiculturalism ? Or have we just been
trying to pour our cultural backgrounds in a pot and
spread the word that we’ve been living happily ever
after?
25. To conclude...
• This kind of course design MAY look simple or
a taken-for-granted design, but it is something
new in Teacher education and Language
education in the contexts where I teach.
26. To conclude...
• Foreign Language Education in Brazil needs to
be problemitized at an epistemological level -
if we are to engaje with our student´s
education.
• The pedagogical assumptions and practices
we are based on when we design our courses
will contribute to this engagement (or not)
27. • How can we – Foreign Language Educators –
foster Linguistic enhancement and at the
same time prepare our students for active
citizenship?
