Projeto de Letramento: contribuições para a escrita com foco em questões de saúde de estudantes adolescentes

Abstract

The adolescent phase is often decisive for the formation of a critical individual capable of making conscious choices and seeking answers to their health issues. For this reason, the present research arose from the need to address themes related to the health of eighth-grade adolescent students in elementary education (final years), through reading and writing practices based on the use of health notebooks in the development of a Literacy Project. The general objective is to investigate the contributions of this project to improving the health literacy of the participants and their writing practices of discursive genres. Specifically, we seek to (i) identify how the literacy practices developed through the Literacy Project assist students in appropriating information relevant to the domain of health; (ii) analyze students' performance through the retextualization and reconstruction of genres produced during the project, by comparing different versions of the same text; (iii) highlight how students manage the health information necessary for their self-care. Theoretically, the research draws on the studies of literacy as a social practice by Kleiman (1995), Oliveira (2008), and Street (2014), within the perspective of Critical Literacy by Motta (2008), Freire (2001), and health literacy by Adams et al. (2009), Rotman et al. (2002), as well as the use of Literacy Projects (Oliveira; Tinoco; Santos 2011), alongside insights from Bakhtin's (1997) Theory of Discursive Genres. Methodologically, the investigation is action research and follows the frameworks established by Thiollent (1986). Its implementation is based on a qualitative approach to data (Bogdan; Biklen 1994), as it is interested in the meanings attributed by participants regarding the actions experienced throughout the project. The analysis corpus consists of material generated during the research, including questionnaires, interviews, discussion groups, lectures, and texts written by students, among other activities. The results of the investigation indicate the relevance of using a Literacy Project, as through its actions, participants were able to experience concrete situations of language use and, consequently, establish connections between school knowledge and socially constructed understandings of health, which directly impacts their ability to care for themselves better, as well as adopt protective measures and assistance for their well-being.