Tecnologia educacional e letramento digital: um estudo de caso de vários contextos de uma escola pública

Abstract

This study consists of an investigation on the inclusion of digital literacy involving the use of computers and the Internet within the scope of language practices in a public secondary school. It is based on the assumption that the language disseminated on the Internet requires specific literacy not only for being predominantly hypertextual and multisemiotic, but also for having resized the processes of communication and knowledge construction. Thus, this literacy needs to be contemplated in school language practices and curricula, aiming at the development of a literacy that enables students to act and interact in the cybercultural universe in an efficient, effective, critical and ethical way. The research was grounded primarily in the new literacy studies (PAHL & ROWSELL, 2012), especially in the ideas of multiliteracies (CAZDEN et al, 1996; ROJO, 2009, 2012), literacy as a social practice (STREET, 1984, 2003; KNOBEL & LANKSHEAR, 2006, 2011) and digital literacy (MARTIN, 2008). At the methodological level, as a case study, this qualitative and interpretative investigation analyzes several contexts: the first one is the prescriptive/guiding context, which provides the necessary information for the examination of the other contexts, namely physical conditions, teacher education and practices. The inclusion of all these contexts is justified on the grounds that the understanding of literacies insertion in the school context is conditioned by several aspects. The results of this study indicate: (1) lack of harmony between the various contexts analyzed, resulting in a minimal insertion of digital literacy in the school curriculum; (2) low affinity of teachers with the physical conditions available; (3) inadequate teacher training for the development of digital literacy; (4) digital literacy practices which are still very incipient and punctual, and consider only those student social and discursive practices outside school. Therefore, language practices need to be resized within the school sphere in order to encompass digital literacy.