Social representations of the teachers about the portuguese language in school

Abstract

The current production consists in a work that seeks to value the teaching profession that happens at the first years of elementary school from the identification and comprehension of the teachers’ social representations about the process of teaching and learning of the portuguese language. Concomitantly, this paper demands on understanding about knowledge and social representations which guide the educational practice through a light of constructions of the areas of knowledge in training teachers, language and Theory of Social Representation (TSR). This study searched to show how the teachers mean their work; what they know about teaching and learning the portuguese language at school; how possibly direct their behavior; and where the teachers anchor these understandings. Two techniques were used to collect textual materials, free evocations and interviews. The speeches were recorded, transcribed, and thus, were organized with the supporting of two computer programs, EVOC for the free evocation and ALCESTE for the interviews done. Either the materials collected were analyzed with the contributions of the TSR and the knowledge of the areas: Formation of teachers and language. We understood that the teachers represent socially the practice of reading as an activity which provokes all the other educational processes. This representation is anchored in those social propositions that guide the human being to the literate world of knowledge of culture and of human growth, everything that differs from it is inappropriate, excluded of the social reality.