Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The general objective of this research is to reveal the Chilean pre-service and novice EFL teachers’ metaphoric representations about assessment in English language learning and teaching. Due to the object of study’s subjective characteristics, the qualitative methodology was considered. The participants of this research were, first of all, 64 pre-service EFL teachers, who were carrying out the professional practicum course in three Chilean universities. Likewise, 50 novice EFL teachers were invited to contribute to this study. The two groups of participants were originally from southern and central Chile. A questionnaire of metaphoric representations focused on assessment in English language learning and teaching was used to collect data. The results of this study indicate that the metaphoric representations held by both groups of participants perceive English language learning assessment from a process and product-oriented vision. Regarding the differences between these representations, the pre-service EFL teachers’ responses have a greater inclination towards a product-oriented assessment. On the other hand, the novice EFL teachers emphasize the need to consider the learners’ diversity within assessment. The analysis of metaphoric representations, in undergraduate language teacher education, can be a beneficial tool to promote reflection on pedagogical and disciplinary competencies, particularly on those linked to the assessment of English language receptive and productive skills.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a well-known student-centered methodology, but it is not commonly used in Uruguayan schools. This study measured students’ perceptions of the implementation of PBL and documented the successes and challenges for teachers throughout the process. The data showed that PBL was successfully implemented, but teachers reported a series of difficulties, including the quality of the training, a resistant attitude on the part of some teachers, students’ inexperience regarding the PBL methodology, pressure on teachers to cover the content, and issues with infrastructure and internet connectivity.

This article analyzes epistemes of Mapuche family education obtained from parents in communities of the La Araucanía region of Chile, from a perspective of dialogue of knowledge with school education. The production of Mapuche knowledge is considered an epistemological critique of the Western monoculturality of the school curriculum. The methodology used is qualitative research and it is based on Grounded Theory. The results show intra-family and intra-community education, and processes that imply a double immersion in Chilean society. It is concluded that education is organized considering methods constructed with the logic of Mapuche educational knowledge, as a contribution to a dialogue with Western hegemonic knowledge.

This paper reports the findings of a project using research in co-labor carried out with secondary education teachers in Argentina. Our aim is to reconstruct tensions and challenges in situated writing teaching practices in contexts of advanced literacy from an ethnographic perspective. We retrieved various records produced by the participating teachers in the context of the experience, regarding their own teaching practices, as well as collective discussions regarding writing as theoretical object and as object of teaching and learning. The analysis shows three emerging tensions: between the prominence of writing in society and what is actually taught about writing at school; between a conception of writing as a complex social activity and a school-based conception; and between the objectives of advanced literacy and the pedagogical decisions taken. Furthermore, we highlight three potential actions that emerge strongly in the research records, the institutional approach to which may foster more equitable and democratic practices: (1) restoring the students’ voices regarding the challenges of advanced literacy, (2) questioning “simulated” writing teaching, and (3) deficit discourses in schooling.

Writing is central to university education and disciplinary specialization, but studies that contrast curricular and formative areas are scarce. This study aims to explore experiences with writing and its teaching among students in six disciplinary areas (Arts, Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Pedagogy in Science and Engineering) and three formative stages (entry, transition, and graduation) in a state, metropolitan, and highly selective university in Chile. Using four focus groups, qualitative coding was carried out through emergent categories with software assistance and following criteria for methodological integrity. The students identify the contrast between school and university in terms of writing demands, highlight the lack of formal teaching opportunities, and report self-managed learning of writing by trial and error. In advanced stages of Health Sciences and Engineering, the students question having received training exclusively oriented toward writing in professional contexts, while in Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities they regret not having been trained to write in work settings. The results show that students have flexible strategies to approach academic writing across the curriculum, but they also reveal an experience of institutional neglect in stages that are critical for student persistence, which underlines the urgent need to implement initiatives to support students throughout their education.

This study investigates the ways in which multilingual parents/caregivers support their young children’s emerging identities as writers and communicators at home, within the context of a virtual early literacy program for families of a historically marginalized community near the U.S. border with Mexico. The study’s focus is on a set of multimodal compositions that four-year-old children authored during one of the virtual, videoconference sessions. The researchers employed a discourse analysis approach in examining the transcripts of the virtual sessions, which was guided by the theoretical concepts of community cultural wealth and the pedagogical concept of accompaniment. Their analysis offers a counter narrative to the deficit governmental descriptors (e.g., low-income; low-achieving) assigned to children and families of historically marginalized communities. The parents in their study were well-equipped to enact pedagogies of accompaniment that cultivate their children’s communicative capital and foster their children’s identities as capable communicators.

This study explored the experiences of students in different school grades during a free writing pedagogical intervention within a community. Semi-structured interviews were used to recall memories, spontaneous stories, and interpretations of the experience with 15 students from two different schools. Intersubjective and inductive analyses of all the interviews were conducted by the researchers and the results were constructed around three themes of the experience: the individual, the social, and the situated levels. Students are highly appreciative of personal life having a place in school as the expression and experience of emotions, venting of sadness and problems, writing about topics of interest, reflection on one’s own life, and exercise of identity. Also highlighted is the view that writing in the classroom does not have to be an exercise that is fake, structured, mundane, and punitive, which is often the case, and that there should be opportunities for free writing within a benevolent environment in which peers and teachers collaborate with authenticity around topics that are valuable for the community.

From a writing as a social practice approach, we explore the construction of academic identities in undergraduate dissertation writing at a Chilean university. An online questionnaire was applied and interviews were conducted with students from four disciplinary areas. The participants perceive the dissertation process as an enriching learning experience, but also as lonely and unmotivating. We also observed three forms of identity negotiation that facilitated or hindered engagement with and motivation toward the dissertation: the negotiation of diverse trajectories, of the student’s own voice, and of the disciplinary field. From our findings, we make recommendations for the development of dissertation writing programs. Lastly, this study describes various forms of identity negotiation that play a key role in students’ engagement in their dissertation process.

This paper reconstructs the textual trajectories of study materials in an adult secondary school in Bariloche (Argentina). It studies the effects of the recontextualization of genres from different (academic or professional) social spaces in an adult education classroom, focusing on linguistic/semiotic resources and patterns of organization of discourse that index legitimized social voices and discourses of authority. Two instances of (re)entextualization are analyzed: a) the transformation (adaptation) of the original material by the teachers, and b) the resemiotisation of the written material into an oral text as part of a collective reading event, involving hybridization between different genres, sociolinguistic resources, and discursive practices. The findings show a descending textual trajectory from the perspective of sociolinguistic prestige considering the repertoires of resources deployed, which simultaneously enables greater sociocultural appropriation by the students. In addition, the teachers’ decisions regarding recontextualization and (re)entextualization strategies can be considered acts of agency and indicate a critical stance towards the hegemonic literacy regime in adult education. Through a sociolinguistic and ethnographic approach to writing practices in adult education, this paper aims to contribute to the situated design of mediation strategies in sociolinguistically diverse classrooms.

This paper aims to contrast the digital literacy practices of first-year university students in vernacular and academic contexts. It is situated within sociocultural approaches that conceive language as a socially constructed and mediated process. Using ethnographic qualitative research, case studies were conducted with six Colombian students with different profiles of online activity. The information was collected through techno-biographies and techno[1]diaries, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and multimodal documentary review. To contrast the practices, four categories were addressed: discourse genres, multimodality, interaction, and online identity. The participants were found to carry out a diversity of practices, and they configure their uses in quite different ways and in accordance with their conceptions about writing, their interests, and trajectories. The students mainly carry out practices of receiving textual and audiovisual content, and online interaction, but when they participate in creative activities, they show high levels of motivation. In some cases, disconnections between the contexts are evident, which may be rooted in conceptions of vernacular practices as less relevant, but more entertaining, and the perception of the academic field as strictly normative. Being familiar with the practices of students both inside and outside the academic context can contribute not only to a better understanding of their forms of digital literacy, but also to the consolidation of flexible educational processes that allow the integration of developments constructed by the young people in different contexts.