Linguagem e cognição: categorização e significado das concepções de educadores sobre tecnologia digital

Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze the categorization and meaning of educators conceptions of digital technology. We justify our research by the fact that digital technology takes part of a dynamic process that occurs in our society, altering the way people interact and engage in relationships. Hence, schools and educators face the challenge of understanding and giving meaning to digital technology in order to develop the contents they intend to teach in meaningful and interesting ways. The main hypothesis is that the interviewed educators have different conceptions of the digital technology. This work is based on the frameworks of Embodied Situation and Cognition (VARELA; THOMPSON;ROSCH, 2003) as well as on the Theory of Conciousness and Language (EDELMAN, 1995) and on the studies of Embodied Meaning (JOHNSON, 2007). We mainly adopt the principles of qualitative research, based on the methodology of Grounded Theory (SCALABRIN, 2010) and its proceedings of open, axial and selective codification, and use semi-structured interviews as an instrument of data collection. The sample consistsof 20 (twenty) educators from the public system of education of the State of Piauí, Brazil, participants in the advanced cycle of the Program for Continued Formation in Media and Education, sponsored by the Ministery of Education. For data analysis, we take the discursive language of informants as object. It was collected through semi-structered interviews from January to March 2011. We identify, through the process of open codification, the conceptions of digital technology in the concepts presented by educators, based on their perceptions of the studied phenomenon. Then, we analyzed the categorization from the conceptions ofeducators about digital technology through axial codification and through the process of questioning and similarities. The results led to 06 (six) categorized conceptions: use or utilization of technological equipment (25%); instruments or technological artifacts (20,83%); facilitation of teaching and learning (16,67%); mechanism of interaction amongst people (16,67%); universality or ubiquity (12,5%); and media integration and professional fields (8,23%). In the analysis of meaning, we explicit and discuss the meaning of the conceptions of digital technology after the process of categorization. Conclusions show that the category use or utilization of technological equipment is the one that embraces the highest number of conceptions of digital technology (25%) and that the meanings that occur with higher frequency are technological resources (13,64%) and utilization of technological resources (9,09%). The main hypothesis was validated, corroborating the thesis that educators have different conceptions of digital technology and that these conceptions can be categorized and have meaning.