Banca de DEFESA: PAULA BASTO LEVAY

ONLINE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN POSTGRADUATION: 
contributions to construction of teaching and learning processes in light of real life.

English language teaching and learning; online education; postgraduate;
pedagogical guidelines; learning for life.

This thesis mobilizes evidence, drawn from literature and also from the researcher's
personal and professional experience, which shows that there is still a gap in the
participation of Master's and Doctorate students in academic activities in English
language, which is configured as a fragility in the context of students' lives and in the
University. In the face of this problem, we conceive the general objective of the
research to investigate the context of online teaching and learning of English
language, in the context of postgraduate, in order to develop a set of pedagogical
guidelines focusing on the real needs of students from public universities. We seek to
answer the following research questions: 'What are the real needs regarding the use
of the language in the context of stricto sensu post-graduate?' 'Specifically, what are
the pedagogical aspects, considering approaches, methods, format, dynamics, and
resources, that should integrate a distance learning process of English language?'
For this purpose, qualitative research was conducted, based on Design-Based
Research, in which iterative stages and cycles were carried out with male and female
students, experts, and using institutional documents in order to identify the
specificities of the context, propose, and refine an educational solution for the
identified challenge. Grounding ourselves in the socio-historical-cultural perspective,
mainly from Dewey and Vygotsky, in the contributions of distance education in
dialogue with the teaching and learning process of English language and in the
concepts of (multi)literacy and multimodality and multimedia, we raise the hypothesis
that a distance learning process of English language, focused on the
accomplishment of a real-life academic activity and in a multimodal and multimedia
conception, would be more suitable for the reality of postgraduate, considering the
students and also the institutional issues. Data were collected through
questionnaires, interviews, documentary research, and focus group sessions and
were analyzed through coding cycles by Saldaña (2013), confronting it with the
theory. After the analyzes, it was possible to confirm the thesis raised and the
answers to the research questions were translated into pedagogical guidelines,
among which we highlight: contextualized learning with the accomplishment of a real
activity, conscious association between aspects derived from some approaches and
learning theories, teacher mediation, variation of media, resources, tools, and
activities, collaborative learning, detachment from the perspective of formality of the
curriculum, hybrid modality, easy technological contribution, usability and budgetary
adherence, flexibility, and affectivity, empathy, and humility. The main result of this
research is these didactic-methodological aspects, structural aspects, and
technological aspects that make up the set of guidelines. In addition, suggestions for
activities and names of tools, resources, and artifacts were listed. Without intending
to point out a ready-made and rigid educational solution, we hope that the guidelines
resulting from this study can be reflected upon to be adapted, re-signified,
complemented, and used in other scenarios, supporting the provision of teaching and
learning processes that better dialogue with the needs of students and universities
and that, thus, can enhance the student's performance in real academic social
experiences in English language