“Eles não estão aptos”: auxiliando o desenvolvimento do letramento crítico nos anos iniciais

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the teacher’s role in promoting critical literacy during the early years of literacy education, analyzing the strengths and limitations of teacher support materials, particularly the teacher’s manuals used in the first years of elementary education in Barbacena/MG, Brazil. Based on a qualitative approach and the enunciative-discursive theory of the Bakhtin Circle, the study discusses how reader development goes beyond decoding, requiring meaning-making, valuing otherness, and active teacher mediation. The corpus analysis shows that, although textbooks offer structured content and a diversity of discursive genres, their effectiveness depends on the teacher’s reading experience and critical stance, who must move beyond simple information retrieval to foster inference, debate, and hypothesis construction. The research also identifies weaknesses in the guidance provided to teachers, often generic or ambiguous, which may limit the development of critical literacy. As an educational product, an e-book with theoretical foundations and practical suggestions was created to support teachers’ work. The study concludes that, without a teacher who is an experienced reader and critical mediator, even the most well-structured teaching materials are insufficient to form critical and autonomous readers. The dissertation also suggests the need for further investigation into the initial training of teachers in pedagogy programs, aiming to understand how they are being prepared to foster critical literacy from the earliest stages of education.