O impacto dos indicadores da leitura no Brasil na formação de leitores no Vale do Rio Pardo.

Abstract

As a measure to qualify education in the country, Brazilian government, following an international trend, began to adopt in the 90s an evaluation policy of basic education, guiding students of elementary and high school to tests that, among other skills, assess reading, in particular. These evaluations resulted in a set of quality indicators of reading in Brazil. Although the students' achievements have shown their disabilities about reading, they can contribute to the improvement of reading teaching and learning in Brazilian schools and the implementation of public policies focused on the reader’s development. Based on this perception, we define as a research guiding the investigation of the impact of indicators of reading in reader’s development. To achieve our objectives, we start with a theoretical review of the cognitive and social aspects involved in teaching and learning of reading, as well as the possibility of assessing this ability. Then we approach the most important indicators of reading in Brazil, including the System of Evaluation of Basic Education (Saeb/Prova Brasil), Provinha Brasil, The National Secondary Education Examination (Enem) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa). We established as a field of study the public schools in the Vale do Rio Pardo, central region of Rio Grande do Sul state. To select the counties and the schools, we followed the average Index of Basic Education Development (Ideb). We visited eleven schools in six counties and conducted 43 interviews with teachers of 2nd and 5th grade of elementary school, Portuguese teachers of the 9th grade of elementary school and 3rd grade of high school and members of the school management teams. Therefore, we sought to understand how the indicators of reading affect schools and how they are handled by teachers. The survey results emphasise the fact that the knowledge of educational professionals about reading evaluation is just superficial, what makes the achievements be seen just as numbers and not exploited as much as they should be. The lack of time for formation and quality discussion favours that the situation remains the same. Furthermore, there seems to be a failure on the part of school workers about their role in society, because, as observed, students’ deficiency in reading is generally attributed exclusively to students’ family and sociocultural contexts. Another important aspect to be considered is the lack of post-evaluation policies that provide for the exploitations of the reading indicators at schools and that give support to these institutions. The Brazilian government's actions must exceed conducting evaluations and dissemination of results. We hope that the information presented in this study may contribute to fostering discussion about the qualifications of reading teaching and learning not only in academy and but also in the schools of Vale do Rio Pardo. So reading indicators can fulfil their role.