O inglês no chão do Quilombo: práticas decolonias de educação linguística em Pau d'Arco

Abstract

Systemic inequality in English language education is a persistent challenge in many educational contexts and becomes even more pronounced in rural and culturally diverse communities, such as quilombolas. Thus, this research aims to investigate how (de)colonial practices can make English language education more inclusive and culturally sensitive, promoting the linguistic empowerment of young people in the quilombola community of Vila Pau d’Arco, in them Agreste region of Alagoas. To this end, scholars such as Walter Mignolo (2017), Maldonado-Torres (2005), and Quijano (2005) will be consulted, who have developed a perspective on Eurocentric knowledge production and its socioeconomic, symbolic, and subjective consequences, as well as Gomes (2018), Carneiro (2023), and Passos and Pinheiro (2021) to address the decolonization of the curriculum and Brazilian epistemicide. Furthermore, studies on language education from the critical, transgressive, and nondisciplinary perspective of contemporary Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2006) will also be fundamental. This approach engages in social research practices that focus on situations of exclusion and social marginalization (Fabrício, 2006) in order to contribute to improvements in the quality of life of AL research participants (Rojo, 2006). From a methodological perspective, this project will follow the interpretivist paradigm (Moita Lopes, 1994) of qualitative research (Bortoni-Ricardo, 2008), based on action research (Tripp, 2005). Thus, a program of language education practices in English will be developed and delivered in partnership with the Associação dos Quilombolas da Vila Pau d'Arco, based on a decolonial and quilombola education perspective. Based on field diaries, pedagogical records, and other interaction data generated in teaching situations, contingent interpretations will be produced regarding the objectives pursued in this research. Given the effects of structural racism in our country, it is necessary to relate this critical decolonization movement to the pedagogical practices of/in quilombola communities, as well as to analyze the critical potential of these practices.