O Papel da Competência Simbólica no Processo de Internacionalização da Educação Superior Brasileira: fronteiras linguísticas e o idiomas sem fronteiras

Abstract

Institutionalized in 2007, the Brazilian internationalization of universities promises great advances to higher education for the country. In pursuit of academic excellence and a share of the knowledge market, many Brazilian institutions are now engaged in forming international partnerships, promoting academic mobility, and stimulating international quality research. However, these institutions face different challenges in implementing the process, including organizational and functional issues (MOROSINI, 2014). Parameters established by international organizations, such as UNESCO, OCDE, IMF and the World Bank, which tend to impose their quality criteria to the Brazilian process, represent one of these challanges, according to the author. In addition, internationalization of higher education, following the global economy, may have been contributing to disseminate inequalities between the universities of the North and the South due to academic dominance tendencies of both European and American universities, according to Altbach (2013). Taking into consideration the English language hegemony in traditional science (ALTBACH, 2002), language becomes the center of the internationalization process, pervading all of its domains and mediating such power relations, which are intrinsic to language (BOURDIEU, 1989). Nonetheless, by developing Symbolic Competence – SC (KRAMSCH, 2006a), academic communities can operate and re-signify these realities through language. Thus, beyond the communicative proposal, the symbolic use of language (KRAMSCH, 2006b) could contribute to the development of a democratic education (ARONOWITZ; GIROUX, 1991), and pose an opportunity to balance the process faced by the Brazilian universities. This study examines whether and to what extent pedagogical practices (CALDEIRA; SAIDAN, 2013) foster symbolic competence development at the Language without Borders center at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas, through the integration of the three components of SC, namely - production of complexity, tolerance to ambiguity, and form as meaning (KRAMSCH, 2006a). Data collection through the observation of two diferente lessons from different courses, materials used in these lessons and semistructured interviews with their teachers were analyzed by means of data triangulation, through an ecological perspective of language teaching and learning. Thus, we meant to understand rather the relationships between environment, agents, and affordances (VAN LIER, 2002) would contribute to CS emergency. Results suggest that developing Symbolic Competence is not strongly observed in the pedagogical practices of the program, while there is potential for its development.