"Let's Talk About...": Linguistic Justice in Brazilian Public Schools

• In Event: Cultivating Equitable and Racially Just Teaching and Learning: An Imperative in Brazilian Public Schools

Abstract

Educational research into classroom discourse in Brazilian public school classrooms has shown the prevalence of teacher talk and control, which uphold racist ideologies (Foster, 1995) and reify linguistic injustice (Baker-Bell, 2020). Questions are predominantly closed or factual, students' responses often do not exceed three words, and teachers’ feedback is mainly about correctness (encasing the racism of academic language—Baker-Bell, 2020). Paradoxically, research has shown that dialogue can foster deeper learning. Since dialogue is not widely employed in Brazilian public schools, we engaged in a classroom-based intervention focused on the development of teachers’ dialogic practices facilitated by school-based teacher professional development. We documented what happened when 30 public school teachers in Santa Catarina co-inquired into their practice focusing on equity in teaching and learning over one academic year, guided by the questions: How do public school teachers conceptualize the use of dialogue in their teaching practice across time?; What happens to teachers’ practices when they engage in learning centered on dialogic teaching and learning?; What happens to public school students’ experiences (learning, participation, perception) when their teachers employ dialogic strategies informed by linguistic justice in their teaching? Interviews and artifacts produced during the formative meetings addressed the first research question. Whole-class talk from three lessons of each participating teacher (videorecorded, transcribed, coded according to categories relevant to dialogic interactions) answered the second research question. Student interviews, work samples, and analysis of dialogical actions addressed the third question. Findings shed light onto the need to engage classroom teachers in shifting their practices in ways that attend to student learning. Implications point toward the need to center talk in teacher learning.

Authors

• Juliano Camillo, Federal University of Santa Catarina

• Leonardo Lago, University of Cambridge