(Im)possibilities of literary education in Portuguese basic and secondary education
Submitted by:
Paulo Costa
Abstract:
The Portuguese national curriculum went through considerable changes, in the last five years, in what concerns official/normative discourse and assessment practices. We will focus on the first ones, considering that both the form and the content of the curriculum matter. On one side, prescriptions were simplified but, as a set of broader principles and methodological suggestions, focusing on the learning process, was replaced by a set of basic performance descriptors, focusing on obtaining quantifiable results, a test-driven policy was being implemented. On the other side, new official documents integrated a new specific and autonomous domain literary education, which could work as a powerful predictor of a new and more consistent role for literature in education. As the form of the curriculum narrows down its scope, the content, in a way, broadens its possibilities. The space for hope in this changing times is not much since teachers soon understand that assessment practices, especially national exams, become a priority. Thus, the concern of possible bad results in internal and external assessments obliterates the possibilities for an effective and inspiring work on the artistic value of literature and on the empathic power of literary text.
Through document analysis we will provide some data on the official pedagogical discourse for Portuguese in basic and secondary education, both in synchronic and in diachronic level. We will present some data on the form and content of the curriculum. We will also present some result of an exploratory study: adopting an interpretative approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews on basic and secondary education teachers concerning the way they perceive: the changes on official pedagogical discourse, the role literature can perform on the building of aesthetic experiences and on empathic capacity. Assessment, quantification, and the fear of low scores can be strong inhibitory factors for a real (literary) education and, through it, a humanizing education
References:
Luke, A. (2012) “After the testing. Talking and reading and writing the world.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. v. 56, n. 1, p. 8-13.
Luke, A., Woods, A., Weir, K. (2013). Curriculum, syllabus design and equity. A Primer and Model. New York, NY: Routledge.
Nussbaum, M. (1998). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.