O uso de tecnologias digitais como suporte no desenvolvimento da autonomia em um contexto de ensino e aprendizagem de língua inglesa

Abstract

With the rapid spread of digital technologies, it becomes impossible not to relate this movement to the teaching and learning process of foreign languages. These digital technologies, if combined in the teaching-learning process, can bring advantages to the students due to much access to information, helping students foster their autonomy. Therefore, as educators, we must consider that the informal environment enables students to seek and build knowledge, which is mediated by digital technologies. Learners can perceive the environment that is around them and this complementarity and perception are important, since the process can foster students’ autonomy. Therefore, I aimed to investigate which digital artifacts students of a regular English language course at a language institute use for language learning and how the teacher may or may not help foster learner’s autonomy. By observing and reflecting upon my classes, data collection and reflective journals, I also seeked to: 1) identify what digital tools students use to learn outside school and what the role of technology in the development of autonomy would be and 2) map students’ perceptions related to the different possibilities of using the digital medium for their learning process inside and outside the classroom. In order to support my research, I discussed the role of education in the technological era (COLLINS; HALVERSON, 2009), definitions of autonomy and, more specifically, autonomy as a complex system (PAIVA, 2006) and the definition of affordances (GIBSON, 1986), by arguing the need to realize different perceptions of what the digital environment or the classroom offer the student, helping in the promotion of their autonomy. The study was a qualitative research of an ethnographic nature, having as data collection instruments semi-structured questionnaires, interviews with the participants, classes perceptions and reflexive journals. The results showed that students use multiple resources to develop autonomy, but each student achieve different affordances by perceiving those resources in different ways. However, there is no evidence that technology alone fosters autonomy; Learning and technology go together, in a complex process of several components that are interconnected (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1997). Moreover, students reflected on the use of certain technologies in the classroom and how those can be used in other contexts, while emerging different uses and autonomous practices from activities carried out within the classroom. Therefore, I realized that the relation that each learner (and also the teacher) has with the technology is different, because different perceptions emerge and, because of that, autonomy can occur in several ways, not being something static, but highly dynamic and complex.