Interação verbal com fontes: letramento(s) no ensino de História

Abstract

Students abilities to read and write are often pointed out as a key factor in school failure statistics. However, regardless of the unquestioned role literacy plays in fostering disciplinary learning in school contexts, literacy development tends to be associated with language classes. The present study aims at reflecting upon the literacy practices that take place within the History classroom and at investigating the effects students interactions with historical sources may possibly have on their learning of History. It is our belief that the nature of the literacy practices adopted in the History class reflects a certain understanding of what learning History is and that in order to change the latter one has to change the former. We also believe that using historical sources as a pedagogical resource may be a strategy to develop different kinds of literacies. On one hand, given their very nature, such documents may present themselves in various shapes and forms (written texts, pictures, photos, objects, maps etc.), providing students with opportunities to deal with different kinds of modes of meaning, an ability that is becoming increasingly important due to the proliferation of multimodal texts, particularly in web-based environments. On the other hand, their use may enable students to better understand how historical knowledge is produced. Therefore, it is possible to integrate them into activities aiming at developing muiltiliteracies as well as historical literacy.