Reflections about the Voices Contributing to the Constitution of the Literacy Teacher’s Professional Subjectivity

Abstract

The anxiety about the literacy process is constant among literacy educators, either because the various theories come through the academic and bibliographic discourse, or because the educational policies adopt them. This article aims at discussing, through the utterances of literacy teachers, which voices are contributing to their professional subjectivity, determining what makes up the theoretical basis of their pedagogical practice. Data collection was performed by filming the activities carried out in an extension course, edited and then analyzed based on Bakhtinian concepts of language and dialogism. The utterances reveal their teaching beliefs and uncertainties about the appropriate literacy methods, learned in a fragmented and superficial way. It is through the process of understanding a language concept as interlocution, focusing on the subject and his/her history, that the literacy teacher may surpass fads and strengthens himself/herself as the individual responsible for the critical appropriation of reading and writing as taught in school.