Reading and academic writing in initial teacher training: What literacies?

Abstract

From a historical perspective on the initial training of teachers in Brazil, a survey of research developed was carried out, locating in articles published in the last two decades the modes of functioning of the school institution, in the continuous movement of learning-teaching-learning reading and academic writing. Historically, Brazil has presented many difficulties in universalizing the learning of reading and writing in a socially significant way. In the direction of the formation of the critical citizen, we discuss the difficulties to make academic reading and writing effective as processes of forming and transforming the condition of citizenship of the Brazilian population. Proceeding with a qualitative approach, the articulation between the lines of investigation of the selected studies, which focused on teacher training, teaching work and the construction of a teacher's professional identity, were analyzed in the defense that being a teacher is to develop a work based on a solid specific training and that initial training courses should also be concerned with teacher professionalization (Nóvoa,  2017). In the case of initial training, it should allow students to go through teaching and learning experiences that are based on the use and reflection of the characteristics of academic writing, so that future teachers know how to deal with the prescriptions inherent to their work context and document their experiences, as the written record becomes part of a routine developed since initial training when the triad reading is adopted,  analysis and production of academic texts as a formative and evaluative principle. In this sense, the analyses carried out reveal that academic literacy should permeate the entire initial training of teachers, with objective prescriptions, considering the autonomy of the trainer to plan and replan his classes coherently with his didactic-methodological choices (Mizukami, 2005-2006; 2000), in a political and pedagogical project committed to an education linked to more assertive teaching practices (Gatti, 2014; André et. al., 2010), with academic writing as one of the constitutive elements of a socially referenced quality education.