Let's talk about Betweena! Design Thinking e o Ensino de Língua Inglesa na fronteira sul do Brasil

Abstract

The present study, entitled “Let’s talk about Betweena! Design Thinking and English Language Teaching (LI) on the southern border of Brazil”, proposes to integrate the Design Thinking approach for educators (DTe) to the work of LI, for the construction of a “glocalized” English. This proposal is based on the desire of the specific public of the school community of the public school system in Chuí (RS) to achieve some discursive ability in the orality of the foreign language (LE) that is studied there. As a result, this study was directed by me to experiment with instruments for the possible elaboration of an identity linguistic-discursive repertoire, in a perspective of discursive genre, which includes the most characteristic referential components of the local culture. In this way, the general objective was to identify and to experiment ways of working with the research public (whose collective identity came to be represented by the persona Betweena) in an empathic, collaborative and experimental way, with the specific objectives of identifying which discourse genres are most linked to the utterances by that audience; explore some of the enunciative marks and map the referential discursive components in their statements. The action research carried out is affiliated with Applied Linguistics, in its most critical stance, and with active (cri) pedagogies, especially dialogical ones of the post-method. For this, they are part of the theoretical basis, among others: Alt and Pinheiro, 2012; Bakhtin, 2006; Bhabha, 2010; Bardin, 2016; Brown, 2010; Bruner, 1991; Gardner, 2004; Gil, 2017; Goleman, 2017; Kumaravadivelu, 2009; Lopes, 2006; Molina, 2015; Morin, 2011; Nespor, 2016; Rajagopalan, 2003; Robinson, 2015; Rosenberg, 2019; Sobral, 2009; and Thiollent, 2011. Its main characteristics reflect a qualitative research, with active structured observation. The problematization of the research was rooted in the assertive selection of instruments (tools) that would allow to follow the aforementioned objectives, in addition to seeking some answers to the question that accompanied the entire course of the present study: - “which values does the study of LI exactly add to Betweena’s life? The data collected throughout the process of using the DTe configure the research corpus, whose analyzes are divided into an analysis of DTe's own content and a qualitative analysis of the enunciative marks of the dialogical relations established during the DTe Workshop, with the public-target, analyzed in the light of Bakhtinian assumptions. Therefore, the conclusion of the present text refers to the usability, practicality and conditions of particularity / identity of the instruments (tools) experienced with a view to their use in LI, on the border of Chuí (RS), Brazil.