Letramento visual crítico : leitura, interpretação e apropriação das imagens dos livros didáticos

Abstract

This piece of research aims to: analyze the illustrations that compose the textbook High Up, approved by the PNLD 2015 and used by most State schools of Belo Horizonte; identify how the representations of ethnic, cultural and social diversity in Brazil are made through imagery; investigate whether it has provided teachers and students with enough opportunities for critical debates and meaning constructions that exceed possible stereotypes. For this analysis, we have resumed the concepts of critical literacy (LUKE and FREEBODY, 1997; CERVETTI, 2001), of multiliteracy (LANKSHEAR, SNYDER and GREEN, 2000; GEE, 2006) and of visual literacy (BROWETT, 2002; BRAMFORD, 2009). The mixed method and the adoption of the exploratory sequential strategy (CRESWELL, 2003; DÖRNYEI, 2007) are used as they allow concatenating the quantitative data collected and triangulating it during the analysis and interpretation phase. In this research, the procedures were 1) quantitative analysis: quantifying the overall number of images in the collection and the percentage of pictures that represent Brazilian contexts; 2) detailed categorization according to the images themes and qualitative analysis of the imagery, pedagogical guidelines and textbook activities; The results show: the collections difficulty to adequately represent the Brazilian diversity through pictures as various Brazilian local contexts are not presented, and that there is the lack of guidance and extra information to the teacher as far as the images are concerned. As a consequence, many opportunities for debates that may broaden the cultural capital and the criticality of the students are missing. In conclusion, these results pointed to the need of a new look at the images of the textbooks in the collection and resulted to the development of a theoretical framework which can be helpful to assist teachers and students to closely scrutinize, interpret and take ownership of imagery content. This would lead them to critical discussions where the ultimate aim is to establish a critical visual literacy practice that empowers students and expands their larning opportunities.