English language teaching and multiliteracies in a non -governmental Brazilian organization: promoting citizenship and empowerment

Abstract

The burgeoning array of texts, both verbal and non-verbal, that learners are bombarded with in the current era of information have bedevilled scholars when trying to understand how language educators have been assisting students to make meaning of the discourses available, and to tackle the cultural plurality and diversity emerging from novels, poems, videos, drawings or images that represent the different domains of our lives (KRESS, 1997; ROJO, 2009, 2013). Despite such diversity of meaning-making possibilities, other scholars (HAWKINS; NORTON, 2009; KLEIMAN, 2016) have pointed out the inefficiency of schools to cater for the need of marginalized groups, such as underprivileged students, immigrants and refugees to have equal access to language and literacy education, which may allow their full and active participation in diverse social contexts as informed and conscious citizens. Hence, this study aims at investigating how English lessons designed in light of the pedagogy of multiliteracies’ principles (COPE; KALANTZIS, 2000, 2009), used a variety of multimodal (KRESS; van LEEUWEN, 2006; ALMEIDA, 2009; NASCIMENTO; BEZERRA; HEBERLE, 2011) texts as tool to promote language learning, empowerment and active citizenship of underprivileged children in a non-governmental Brazilian organization. It is a qualitative and interpretative research (ALVES, 2014; BORTONI-RICARDO, 2008) that considered as data source two classes taught to a group of about fifteen students, from 8 to 12 years old, at Casa Pequeno Davi, an institution located in João Pessoa – Paraíba. While the first class focused on the black awareness day and the African contributions to Brazilian culture, the second one dealt with jobs in English and what is expected from youngsters in their future working lives. The data encompasses the lesson plans, the materials (handouts, slides), videos and photos taken during the classes, and students’ productions. In the analysis, we observed to what extent the phases of pedagogical action proposed by the pedagogy of multiliteracies were adopted; how learners redesigned the themes brought to discussion and what kind of meanings emerged from their productions, considering the expansion of linguistic and cultural knowledge; and how a multimodal analysis assisted in understanding how students perceived the different social realms of life approached in the lessons. The results showed that the lessons and the multimodal resources reflected the principles of the pedagogy of multiliteracies by situating locally and globally the texts presented in class, and with the teacher scaffolding a critical reading of the different modalities of language, for instance the videos, images, and advertisement campaigns. With the aid of a multimodal analysis, it was possible to see that students used some semiotic resources in their drawings, such as vectors, narrative tools (thinking bubbles) and salience (colour and size) to represent their new (de) constructed views. In sum, it was noticed that the lessons contributed to developing linguistic skills, fostering an empowered identity among the participants and encouraging the belief that they could become successful professionals in the future, and that they could learn to perform any existing job, regardless of colour, ethnic or social background.