Literacy in elementary school: reading Dom Quixote de la Mancha

Abstract

This paper discusses a literacy practice focusing on the way that  teacher and  students interact with a literary text. The most important questions in this research are: How does a Brazilian elementary school teacher functions as mediator in the context of literary education? How a literacy practice is constructed through interactions with the book Dom Quixote de La Mancha ? As a theoretical and methodological perspective, this analysis was based on the concept of literacy as a social practice proposed by New Literacy Studies (NLS) carried out by Heath (1983), Street (1984, 1995, 2003) and Barton, Hamilton and Ivanic (2000). I have taken an ideological view on language that is carried out by Bakhtin (1981) and Volochinov (1995). The classroom data were collected through an interview, video-recordings and field notes in a second year elementary public school attended by working class students in  São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais. Data analysis indicates a wider use of literary texts in this classroom, since the teacher posed open questions not only related to the story itself, but questions that allowed the students to talk about their past experiences with literary books, expressing their voice in the teaching-learning process.