Percepções de professores sobre o uso de mídias digitais nas aulas de língua inglesa

Abstract

This qualitative interpretative work (DENZIN; LINCOLN, 2006, MOITA LOPES, 1994, MINAYO, 2004) attempted to investigate the perceptions of English language teachers from public and private schools in cities in southwestern Paraná about the use of digital media in their classes. Specifically, the study aimed: 1) to investigate teachers' perceptions of facilitating and limiting factors for the use of digital media in English language classes; 2) investigate perceptions of how participating teachers use digital media in their EL classes. The data were generated in the short course of extension/continuing training: "Digital media in language teaching and learning", offered free of charge to eight language teachers in the first half of 2019. Because it is a research in the context of English language, only three English language teachers working in the classroom at the time of the short course became focal participants of the research. The research corpus is composed predominantly a) of the audiorecording of the mini-course and subsequent transcription of parts of the teachers' statements; b) answers from a questionnaire applied to participants as a short course activity; and c) the discussion of lesson plans prepared by the participants after the short course in order to demonstrate the use of digital media to achieve the proposed pedagogical objective(s). The content analysis was done in the perspective of the ideas and theories of Lévy (1999), Martino (2015), Setton (2010), Selwyn (2011, 2013, 2017), Miskolci (2011), Leffa (1999), Celani (1997), Paiva (2001, 2013, 2019), among others. Data analysis indicates that the perceptions of participating teachers about both facilitating and limiting factors of the use of digital media in English language classes are of technical orders (e.g. operation or not of equipment); (e.g.: positivity or negativity in the management of equipment), access or not to computer labs); pedagogical (e.g.: students and teachers like to use digital media for ease and agility in obtaining information; teachers are resistant to the use of digital media). When it comes to how to use digital media in English language classes, teachers' perceptions point out that they are used as an instrument or educational technology, able to mediate and to give support to the English language teaching-learning process. As a general result, we conclude that despite the recognition of the speed of access to information and agility in the teaching-learning process which the digital media provide, teachers see the matter of the time that the use of such media demand them as a restrictive or even preventing factor. In addition, teachers need knowhow to use the media, besides the complicity of an effective technical and administrative structure, it is undeniable in the participants' discourse that digital media have entered the school context and that they are incorporated into various aspects of life. However, even if they say yes, they use them in their classes and for the sake of teaching and learning, what seems to show more than the use itself is the intention of use. This research aims to contribute to a growing demand for other research with regard to the prescribed or expected use of digital technologies in the school context in the area of Applied Linguistics with regard to continuing teacher training.