This paper aims to analyze the references in the Portuguese syllabi for the mother tongue education about the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). We will also characterize the actual students, and their learning nomad methods due to the expansion of Personal Digital Devices (PDD). The author identified gaps between the syllabi and best possible use of ICT in education, namely the creation of a model of the educational process, which would allow to discover and develop the creative potential of students, as noted for the high degree of interactivity and communication technologies to create a unique educational and informative environment that it can be used for a variety of teaching tasks for the study of native and foreign language.
Introduction
Over the past two decades, a growing number of educational researchers have studied the benefits of using information and communication technologies (ICT). Simultaneously, Portuguese Government made a big technological investment effort on schools in order to endow them with technological equipment and cable wireless connection to the Internet (Technological Plan of Education). Teachers were exhorted to use computer and web based technologies in classrooms, receiving training courses. Meanwhile, the new millennium also brought new national syllabi for Portuguese Language: first for the secondary level (2001/2002) and more recently (2009) for the basic education (until 16 years old).
This paper aims to understand how the national syllabi for Portuguese Language (L1) reflect these factors and what kind of practices they encourage.
The national syllabi for Portuguese Language: structure and backgrounds
The Portuguese educational system is organized according with three different levels: basic education (3 cycles; 9 years of education from 6 to 15 years old), secondary level (3 years; until 18 years old); and university and polytechnic level (undergraduate, master and doctorate studies).
Portuguese mother tongue is one of the major subjects of the 12 years of education and the national orientations are divided in two volumes. The first one includes the 3 cycles of the basic education: first (primary school, 4 years), second (intermediate levels; 2 years) and third one (3 years). The second volume organizes contents and competencies for the secondary level.
In all of them, they recognize the learning of mother tongue not only to be more proficient in it and be part of a cultural community, but also in order to accomplish learning activities in other school subjects and principally in lifelong learning, in which nowadays the learning practices include nomad styles allowed by web based mobile contents and resources.
Web-based learning: the mobile learning generation
The schools and teachers face a new nomad generation, not because they move from place to place like our ancestors, but due to the fact that they are always connected, sharing, communicating, and searching contents and knowledge in portable digital devices that they can easily transport everywhere, anytime. In fact, the existing literature characterize the ‘millennial students’ as ‘connectedness’ because they are going online and not simply being online like the previous generations [1–3] with a different digital wisdom [4].
Students are used to have content access or content sharing anytime, anywhere, using their portable devices; content chosen by them, discussing it with their colleagues or friends if they are together (not necessarily in presence) in a collaborative environment. Facebook or Twitter are more accessed today by mobile devices than on laptops or desktops. And what about Instagram or Snapchat when you just have to use the camera included in our cellphone, phablet or tablet. We could also mention Scoop.it, Pinterest, Flipboard to collect articles, webpages and use them later for learning or sharing information and knowledge. Nowadays, they do not only search in Wikipedia, they additionally use, post and collect presentations and articles or books in Slideshare or Scribd.
All these mobile possibilities increased their Personal Learning Environment (PLE). In fact, nowadays, they easily communicate, cooperate, and manage information and content in an online environment, using a large diversity of web resources as we can see on Table bellow.
Web-based tools for PLE and mobile learning [5]
Students can now do all type of class activities using only their Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and not the traditional printed text still in use in educative institutions. Effectively, as we told before, they can in online settings:
- communicate and cooperate: sharing and supporting others in their learning activities; reflecting, questioning, clarifying, debating; connecting with others in a collaborative learning environment;
- manage information: searching, aggregating, and analyzing information to develop their knowledge;
- manage content: presenting ideas and knowledge in many ways; manipulating, mixing and adapting knowledge
All this application software that they can download to their PDA or use online allow the students to be more proactive when they consume, act or create information and knowledge [6] and with more freedom than in a classroom or in a printed text based situation. Apprenticeship is made in multiple contexts, through social and content interactions [7] in real life based settings who are more motivator for the learners and addresses student requirements for flexibility and ubiquity, as pointed by Cobcroft et al [8].
ICT based practices in the Portuguese L1 syllabi
None of the syllabi have a particular section for the use of technological resources in Portuguese classrooms or by the students in a PLE environment. Consequently, we need to consult all the sections and pages to find references about the use of ICTs.
The Basic Syllabus (BS) in its Introduction refers three expectations and circumstances from the educational community who were include: the reinforcement of the Portuguese and lusophone literature, the importance of the grammar study and reflection in the classroom and the role of the Internet and web technologies for the language learning:
«O ensino do Português desenrola-se hoje num cenário que apresenta diferenças substanciais, relativamente ao início dos anos 90 do século passado. Exemplo flagrante disso: a projeção, no processo de aprendizagem do idioma, das ferramentas e das linguagens facultadas pelas chamadas tecnologias da informação e comunicação, associadas a procedimentos de escrita e de leitura de textos eletrónicos e à disseminação da Internet e das comunicações em rede1» [9; 5].
So, the recognition of the importance taken by the Internet in the process of learning and teaching a language is assumed in this premise and as reader and user of the syllabus we expect that we will find competencies and student’s performance descriptors according with the use of the ICT possibilities.
In common for the three cycles it's the outcome expectations of the use with autonomy of the written processes using support resources and IT tools [9:26,77,117]. They do not explain in this section what kind of IT tools or uses of web tools. So the teachers need to look at the other sections to see if they find complementary information.
In the first cycle (primary school) we only find another reference of the ICT at the textual diversity chapter [9, 63] and in the management guidelines section [9; 66]. In the first one, the authors mention that there are new scenarios, languages and texts which require different literacies competences, like the informational literacy, associate to the ICT2, what we think they mean digital literacy. Later, at the management guidelines, they also advocate the development of multiple literacies, in particular in the reading and writing competences and in the ICT [9; 66]. However, the authors defend that the context of use of the ICT should be done at the school library in order to develop skills in searching information in different supports. At the same time, the students should develop an awareness of ethical rules to avoid plagiary3. Finally, they make 1 EN: The teaching of Portuguese takes place today in a scenario that presents substantial differences in relation to the early 90s of last century. Striking example of this: the projection, in the language learning process, of tools and languages provided by the called information and communication technologies, combined with written procedures and reading of electronic texts and the spread of the Internet and network communications.
Maybe it is common sense, but we all have already seen students from 6 to 10 years old in front of computers. I don’t think we exclusively need to teach them to search information in Portuguese classes. We can help them to understand how to refine a research, but we can also use ICT to do much more: creating, editing, and publishing texts, individually, or in a collaborative way (non in presence collaboration), searching exercises to complement class practice, listening or viewing audio or video files according to the texts or subjects developed in class, creation of forums where they can develop ideas about the class subjects or expressing their doubts and receiving help from their colleagues, and so on.
The second cycle (Intermediate) refers the ICT at the performance descriptors, the learning contexts and the resources chapter [9; 108–110]. The authors kept the same idea of the development of multiple literacies, where they include the digital one but they go further when they advocate the use of ICT in the classroom and not only at home or at the library. In fact, they defend the use of oral or multimodal texts so the students can have contact with the oral diversity of the Portuguese language4. However, the textual corpus do not include oral or multimodal texts like they suggest or even the performance descriptors. We can find emails, blogs or forums [9; 104] but they are naturally worked in order to develop the reading competence or in residual references to share the production of writing activities. For the multimodal texts (mixing audio, video or image with a written text) there is no reference, or explanation of what they mean. They only reinforce the use of ICT for the textual diversity without examples.
They also advocate the use of the ICT at the language atelier since in one tool the students have access to files, dictionaries, grammars, language enchiridions5, etc. Finally, the authors remark that the ICT can help the students work in order to develop specific competencies like: (i) critically searching the internet according with different objectives; (ii) using software for presentations; (iii) utilizing editing software for the writing revision process; (iv) sharing information, respecting Internet behaviors rules; and (v) being critical relatively the use of ICT to access information, in problem-solving settings or in a creative work6. Nevertheless, none of them is explained, there is no examples of what tools to use in which context. Furthermore, it seems that text editing software can only be used to revise the written product and not to plan or textualize it. Although, at the performance descriptors, particularly at the «writing in personal or creative settings» [9; 90], which means the student's writing texts in personal sphere and that interacts with the study of literature, and it aims to develop the pleasure of writing, the students should produce texts to express their feelings or imaginary, to interact using ICT resources to share their interests, or writing collaboratively. They also mention tools like the email, forums or chatrooms at examples of web resources. So in a certain way we can deduce a contradiction about what the syllabus express in what the authors expect the students can know and do at the end of the second cycle and (the learning outcomes), the performance descriptors (which allow the construction of assessment criteria, and the methodological approach mentioned at the learning context). It seems, as it recurrent in schools, that the performance descriptors include at «writing in personal or creative settings» will mostly take place outside the classroom, like homework or suggested complementary activities.
At the third cycle, the authors reinforce the use of ICT for sharing documents to divulge the student's productions (p. 1287 & p. 150), at the same context of personal and creative writing; they even add an advice acesso à Internet, os alunos terão de aprender, desde cedo, regras básicas de segurança e de comportamento ético, principalmente no que diz respeito às questões de autoria da informação” (Reis, 2009: 67).
for the creation of a dynamic work who leads for the preparation of records prepared by students (memoranda, reading diaries, portfolios, blogs, etc. in paper or digital format) in order to allow the construction of a «memory», to allow the route developed and which could include not only elements relating to the readings taken, but also personal texts [9; 148].
Like in the second cycle, the use of ICT resources like dictionaries, grammars or language enchiridions8
to support the writing process is also promoted and not to use text processors, and their benefits proven for the language learning, especially for the development of writing competences [10, 11], to produce and edit the text (p. 124 & p. 151), and to develop a grammatical awareness of which part of the sentence or text can be manipulated, moved, etc.
The third cycle part of the Basic Education syllabus includes also a list of genres that the students have to study in oral or written competencies. For the reading and writing competencies, the authors list literary texts and nonliterary texts. In these last ones, they mention texts from blogs or forums and emails. So we can expect that the teachers will use these genres because they will be mainly printed in the textbook in as much as in the classrooms in the Portuguese context of educational institutions do not have all personal computers for the students.
Finally, like for the other cycles, they contain a remark about the use of ICT as a learning tool, a documental resource or as an assistant for the student’s work, reinforcing the ethical issues about plagiarism, the critical reflection about the information founded, and the creative use to produce, edit and revise documents and to share them with the community [9; 152,153].
At the secondary level, the syllabus express in the goals that the Portuguese classes have to provide the development of students’ capacities to research, organize, process, and manage the information, including through the use of ICT (Coelho, 2001: 6) in accordance with the objective:
Utilizar métodos e técnicas de pesquisa, registo e tratamento de informação, nomeadamente com o recurso às novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC)9 (Coelho, 2001: 7).
The usage of ICT are included in the description of the strategic competences (defined as the processual and contextual knowledge in communication — anchoring the why, how and when) and covers the search and treatment of information, the use of text processors and data bases, email, and production of audio and video records. Despite these considerations, the learning sequences (thirteen of fourteen sequences) structured by the syllabus authors, refers generally the use of the ICT and only two of the thirteen go further, suggesting creation of web pages, the analysis of the media of different countries using their web pages, or the creation of a school or class newspaper. All the others sustain only the use of ICT without information about what to do, with what kind of web tool. The teachers will have to decide by themselves, using their empirical knowledge about what Internet has to provide for each learning sequence. Fortunately, the syllabus has a chapter dedicated to resources and a large number of references, including web pages, where the teachers can access to information about some of the subjects of the Portuguese curriculum for mother tongue education and how and which tools for language education (Coelho, 2001: 64–76).
Conclusion
The syllabi for the Portuguese (as a mother tongue) as almost reach to the end, and they soon will be substitute, as we know, from some of the declarations of the Portuguese Government.
Nevertheless, the millennium generation is learning Portuguese according with the assumptions of the ones published in 2001 for the Secondary level and 2009 for the Basic level and, even if there is eight years (almost a decade) between them, they advocate mostly the same. ICT are primarily used to search and manage information and to share the productions of the students in blogs, personal web pages or school or class newspapers. It specially stands up with the reading and analysis of the syllabi. In 2001, the Internet and web tools were starting to be more efficient with the development of the web 2.0, and eventually the resources where more limited, but in 2009 we already knew a large number of digital resources that could be used in class for language learning and teaching (some of them in Table) and we don’t find them, not even suggested.
The Government made a large investment to modernize the schools, including net access (through cable and wireless), they made agreements with leading manufacturers to provide laptops and mobile Internet connection to teachers and students10 from the primary school to the secondary school and in some geographical areas there were courses for in-service teaching training.
We could expect that the syllabi reflect this investment and provide different approaches for the learning and teaching of Portuguese language and culture and not only the traditional activities. In fact, we can also conclude that there is a major gap between ICT possibilities and what students usually do with them and what the syllabi defend to use in classroom to make more proficient users of Portuguese language.
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