The future Language and Literature teacher’s initial training: focusing on reading mediation

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss how literary mediation occurs in a Language and Literature course at a university in the Southern of Brazil, which is part of Santa Catarina’s Association of Educational Foundations (Acafe) and its impact on the education of future teachers. This is an exploratory qualitative research. Data was collected through an interview with an eight-student focus group taking the Literary Studies subject. Though not an interviewee, the literature teacher was considered a research participant because, through the academics' testimonies, student’s perceptions were identified about her performance in the classroom, and her methodological and theoretical choices. The data analysis followed the content analysis based on Franco (2008). The study was drawn from Barthes (2015, 1992), Duarte Júnior. (2010, 2012), Martins (2005, 2014), Neitzel et al. (2017), Todorov (2020), among others. Results indicate: the mediation of the literary reading occurred from the professor’s conception that to mediate implies an attitude of valuing the other; mediation took place by the proposition of objects and spaces - books, paintings, music, postcards, excerpts from films, among others -, which the professor explored to give the students the opportunity to appreciate the literary text as an aesthetic and artistic object; the proposition spaces, such as corridors, stairs, libraries, outdoor spaces and the classroom, were experimented to broaden the students’ perceptions of the book and to be affected by it. The experiences rippled and there are indications that they contributed to the aesthetic education of the future teachers.