A cultura institucional de uma escola de linguas / The institutionalized culture of a language school

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

This is an ethnographic qualitative study that employs interpretative analysis of the participants answers to a questionnaire and to an unstrustured interview. The purpose is to investigate three English-speaking language institutes in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Southeastern of Brazil), affiliated to a famous national franchise (which has a total of 350 institutes and 150,000 students). The theoretical underpinnings of this work include Vygotsky s social constructivism (2005), Krashen s learning/acquisition hypothesis (1988), Bruner s cultural psychology (2008), Savignon s communicative approach (2001), Richards and Lockhart s beliefs (1994) and Prabhu s concept of tasks (1987). The analysis focuses on deontic and epistemic cultural characteristics, that is, on the two types of cultural norms: explicit (obligations, social roles, approach or method) and implicit (behavior, beliefs and culture shocks), respectively. According to Bruner (2008), institutionalized cultures are "real" in the sense that cultural norms become internalized, which, in turn, helps to maintain the system. To paraphrase Bruner, these cultures can only be analyzed from the perspective of the participants (represented, in this work, by the coordinator, supervisors and teachers) because what is in their mind reflects what is in their culture (and vice versa). The results reveal that the participants concept of language is the essential factor in shaping institutionalized cultures, such as language institutes

ASSUNTO(S)

beliefs escolas de linguas foreign language culture cultura lingua estrangeira ensino teaching crenças

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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