The "other" ways of literacy, reading and writing

Abstract

Considering the fact that the word literacy has been frequently and differently used by education professionals, we intend to investigate - based on the theoretical-methodological postulate of the analyzes of the French "line" speech and on the Tfouni works on literacy and alphabetization - the different focuses of literacy that circulate nowadays in schools, as well as their consequences and implications on the reading and writing practices. We interviewed teachers and attended their classes, intending to observe how they effectively used their conceptions of literacy while teaching reading and writing. One of our conclusions was that literacy is used as a synonym for alphabetization, and the student that can not read or write is seen as "illiterate" and "ignorant". Such focuses are not acceptable so we presented a proposal of literate alphabetization and a work where one takes into consideration reading as an attribution of senses.