This master’s thesis aims to investigate the role of the teacher as a literacy agent in
the development of reading competence. To be more specific it aims: a) to
investigate how meanings are negotiated by the teacher-researcher in the reading
activity; b) to analyze how students collaboratively make meaning in the reading
activity; c) to investigate how the teacher-researcher is envisaged as a literacy agent
in the reading activity. Aligned with the objectives are a few research questions
through which we seek to answer: How are meanings negotiated by the teacher in
the reading activity? How do students collaboratively make meaning in the reading
activity? What actions performed by the teacher-researcher enable students to take a
leading role in meaning making, as well as her constitution as a literacy agent in the
reading activity? The methodological, qualitative-interpretative framework (MOITA
LOPES, 2006) characterizes the development of research. The methodological
instrument used was the Group Think Aloud – GTA, (ZANOTTO, 2014), which
defends a dialogic and a participative reading practice. Research subjects include the
participants of the Extension Course: “Developing academic literacy: Reading and
writing practices at the University”. The discussion proposed in this work is inserted in
the area of Applied Linguistics, in an undisciplined perspective (MOITA LOPES,
2006), which is concerned with investigating human language in its interactional
relationships, as well as it assumes both the dialogical conception of language
(VOLÓCHINOV, 2017; BAKHTIN, 2003) and the social conception of literacy
(STREET, 2014). Data has revealed that GTA enables collective meaning making. In
so doing, students are responsive-reader-subjects (BATISTA-SANTOS, 2018) as
they refute, agree, infer and reframe their readings. In the analyzed data, we can also
see the paradigm shift from the teacher-researcher as a negotiator and mediator of
multiple meanings in the reading class, since she has left her place of maximum
interpretive authority to hear and legitimize participants’ voices during the activity of
reading.
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