Time, Space, and Memory in the Teaching and Learning of English as a Foreign Language within a Brazilian Juvenile Detention Center

Time, Space, and Memory in the Teaching and Learning of English as a Foreign Language within a Brazilian Juvenile Detention Center

Reis , Valdeni

This paper investigates the way students within a Juvenile Detention Center in Brazil, experienced the learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). If a youth under 18 violates some of the Brazilian laws, the “Statute of the Child and the Adolescent” (ECA) establishes that he/she may be sent to a Juvenile Socio-Educational Center where English is taught as a mandatory subject. This study analyzes the nature of the actions involved in teaching-learning EFL within this space. The investigation explores the notion of memory related to the notion of space as a central point to the understanding of this educational setting. It also shows how the institutional and discursive spaces are established and negotiated by the teacher and students involved in this practice. In order to do so, one lesson is analyzed to show the way the participants take the word to build the physical and discursive spaces as their identities and relationship. The lesson was audio-recorded and transcribed, additionally, a structural map was designed. A triangulation of the data was developed by relating the themes found from the analysis of the lesson to the themes found from the journals and interviews, also gathered during the data collection. The study is conducted by the Discourse Analysis methodology. The analysis points to a constitution of a confused space formed by the way the educational and the incarcerated settings are confronted by the (participants’) memory. It is also formed by the way the teacher and students assume or deny their discursive positions. Besides, it is noticed that the confused space is also established by the effect of suspension, from which the current moment seems to be in suspense by the repetition of some linguistic content or dependent on what happened somewhere else brought to the classroom by the work of memory.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05

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