Can we “favelados” speak English? O programa de educação bilíngue em duas comunidades do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This research, which adopts a qualitative approach, consists of a research-action, in which the main objective is identifying whether bilingual education (Portuguese/English) offered by Rio de Janeiro city Educational Office is effective for the slum population of two communities in Rio de Janeiro, taking into consideration the point of view of the teachers and the administrators in these areas. The aims of this research were also to investigate the real identity that can be attributed to the program in the view of these teachers; understand the main difficulties and challenges they face; figure out if there is a sensitive action for the performance of these teachers and administrators in teaching English in the slums. This study aims to answer the following question: Can we “favelados” speak English? The locus selected to support the research are two municipal schools, as they share their location in two large slums in the city and because they represent the first and last school (Portuguese/English) within the bilingual program. This study is based on the concepts of socio-constructivism (Vygotsky, 1988), bilingual education and bilingualism (García 2009; Megale, 2019), plurilingualism (Carboni, 2017) and identity (Hall, 2006; Moita Lopes, 1996). As methodological procedures in the production of data, a documentary and bibliographic survey relevant to the research was carried out, and a questionnaire was applied to identify the opinion of the participants on the use of English, including their impressions about the concept of bilingualism and the program itself. A semi-structured interview based on Daher (1998) was carried out, conducted by Bortoni-Ricardo's (2008) assertions, with some of the participants in the questionnaire stage (Gil, 2002) looking for aspects related to the bilingual program in the favelas. For data processing and interpretation, Bardin's (2016) content analysis and Minayo's (2016) interpretivism were used. Thus, this study presents an overview of the teaching of English as an additional language from the macro level to the micro one of the research context, a brief history of the slums and a contextualization of the municipal education in city of Rio de Janeiro, specifically the aspects related to the conceptualization of pluri/bilingualism