Para uma pedagogia cultural da tradição: práticas de professores ribeirinhos na Ilha de Marajó

Abstract

Teaching assumes a fundamental role in education at any level. Therefore, teachers’ practices at school should reflect the socio-cultural context lived by students, especially in multi-level riverside classes, in which the universe is plural. Teaching practices in rural schools is a theme that has mobilized several studies. New arguments gain power from researches by Gonçalves (2005), Oliveira (2003, 2008, 2009, 2011), Almeida (2010, 2017), Farias (2006) and Hage (2005, 2006, 2011). Such authors demonstrate the importance of discussions about practices developed by teachers who work in Initial Years of Elementary Education in multi-ethnic groups. Besides, they value riverside populations’ cultural diversity in Brazilian Amazon. This research focuses on understanding how Science teaching happens in Early Years of Elementary Education and knowledge integration in riverside school multi-level classes. In order to investigate the research question, we work with comprehensive interviews (KAUFMANN, 2013) and observation (VIANNA, 2003). We stayed in school from July 2016 to April 2017, when we recorded semi-structured interviews and made observations concomitantly. For nine months, we interviewed three teachers from Santa Elisa Municipal School for Elementary and Secondary Education, in Ponta de Pedras (Pará, Brazil), on Marajó Island. Also, we carried out observations in their classrooms, aiming to analyze how teachers integrate knowledge in their Science multi-level classes. Analysis of six practices developed by teachers, titled biojewels, carimbó, matapi, plants and herbs, tales and body, revealed that it was possible to understand the meaning that they attribute to their culture and how they welcome plural knowledge in their classes, in order to enhance riverside students’ identity, since curricular contents arranged in didactic books do not fully comprehend complexity required by multi-level classes. As a result, we infer that the practices developed integrate regional socio-cultural knowledge with school knowledge, making it meaningful in students’ lives, which contributes to value identity and cultural diversity of Marajoara riverside people. Cultivating practices based on riverside populations’ secular socio-cultural knowledge allows us to reaffirm ethical principles of education in favor of a multiple, plural and diverse society. Therefore, we hope that proposed reflections encourage other discussions with focus on riverside education in Brazilian Amazon. It is concluded that Amazon riverside life – if it is updated by educational practices in schools – allows regional socio-cultural diversity affirmation and updating. Cultural pedagogy of tradition may favor riverside students to construct a future horizon, where they are to define the water course as they wish.