Autoria como saber docente complexo: perfis e percursos de professores-autores de materiais didáticos para o ensino de línguas

Abstract

In this research, I propose the thesis that the authorship of learning resources characterizes as complex teaching knowledge. In the theoretical framework, I associate the concepts of authorship (ALVES, 2021; 2013; MARTINS, 2014; 2012; FOUCAULT, 2009; BARTHES, 2004), teachers’ knowledge (TARDIF, 2014) and complex systems (BERTALANFFY, 1975; MORIN, 2016; DEBRUN, 1996; LARSEN-FREEMAN; CAMERON, 2008), weaving a dialogue between Education, Applied Linguistics and Complexity Theory (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1997; LARSENFREEMAN; CAMERON, 2008; DAVIS; SUMARA, 2006; SÁ; BEHRENS, 2019). The main argument is that the teachers’ authorship of learning resources emerges from interactions between teachers and other elements of the educational system, so that, throughout their careers, their authorship profiles and pathways are built by and from these interactions. In this sense, my main objective in this dissertation is to map a systemic organizational dynamic that structures the authorship profiles and pathways of three language teachers who work in different teaching contexts: Adore, a private English teacher; Perseu, an elementary Spanish, English and Portuguese teacher at a municipal school; Paulo Gustavo, professor in a Literature/Spanish teacher education program at a federal university. In the first phase of the research, the participants produced written texts about their authorship stories. Based on these texts, I prepared a first cycle of interviews with the aim of deepening aspects of the authorship profiles and pathways of each one. In the second phase, the teachers shared learning resources of their own authorship, which, together with the documents obtained in the previous phase, supported the design of a second cycle of interviews, focused on the daily authorial practices of these teachers. I interpreted these three types of self-narrative (COSTA, 2021; COSTA and PICCININ, 2020) in light of Discursive Textual Analysis (MORAES and GALIAZZI, 2011), a methodology that allows the creation of new understandings about a phenomenon, which emerge from the implementation of a recursive interpretative sequence in three stages: unitarization, categorization, and metatext. As a result, I identified that, in the cases of Adore, Perseu, and Paulo Gustavo, authorship as complex teachers’ knowledge behaves as a system that has five central agents and/or elements (teachers, colleagues, students, family, and teaching spaces), four knowledge base (pedagogical intentionality, affectivity, criticality and technological-pedagogical fluency) and is regulated by three operators (experiences of affection and conflict (FONTANA, 2015), reflexive monitoring of actions (GIDDENS, 2003) and collective variables (LARSEN-FREEMAN; CAMERON, 2008). Thus, the learning resources created are the products of complex adaptive behaviors (DAMINELI; SOUZA, 2008) that, during the process of socialization of the three teachers as professionals, emerged from their interactions with the other systemic agents in different spaces and times, regulated by the dynamic operators mentioned. I conclude that a complex look at teachers’ authorship allows seeing learning resources not as a finished work disconnected from its author, but as a result of a complex dynamic experienced by teachers in the development of their profession. Furthermore, it favors one to recognize the importance, transformative potential and legitimacy of authorial learning resources, in which teachers project themselves as agents of their practices. All of this offers subsidies for (re)thinking teacher training that fosters authorship spaces and practices, encouraging the development of the identity of future teachers as authors.