Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 15 Number 3, December 2014
___________________________________________________________________
The Study of Literary Fiction in Brazilian Technical Schooling: a possible way for consciousness
by
Abstract:
For many years Brazilian technical professional schools have been based on imparting a utilitarian-pragmatic knowledge from which the technician has only been prepared for mere reproduction of practices predetermined by the current model, which Martins (2000) featured as an “unconscious making”. In other words, the technical schooling has not been based on either reflection (for social-historical change) or creativity (for redesigning and creating new methods). In this context, more reflective subjects such as philosophy, sociology, and literature have been undervalued for being considered to be unnecessary for this professional background. Therefore, this paper discusses the importance of teaching/studying literary fiction as a means of developing a real consciousness in professional schooling, as well as its relationship with the results of a field research study applied at the Instituto Federal de Pernambuco, in which teachers and students disclosed their concepts about the role of literary fiction as a curricular component of professional schooling.
Keywords: literary fiction, professional schooling, curricular component.
1. Introduction
“Literature presents a particularity of opening, when promoting the insertion with other art forms or knowledge, opening for other human experience forms.” (PEREIRA; SILVA, 2010, p. 02, our translation)
This paper aims to approach two historically dichotomic areas: on the one hand, the objectivity of Brazilian technical professional schooling and, on the other hand, the subjectivity of the study of literary fiction. While the technical courses, since their origins, have been focusing mainly on staff training to provide a competitive edge in the labor market, literary study was reserved for (or accessed only by) smaller groups, the “scholars” from prestigious social classes, who perceived literature to be an object of erudition.
Massive changes have taken place in the technical professional realm with globalization and the technological revolution that exploded in the second half of twentieth century. In the meantime, assumptions by those engaged in literary studies have created the dichotomy with the rapidly globalizing technical world. Thus their interdisciplinarity becomes difficult.
Thus, in the first section, we discuss some ideologies embedded in Brazil’s technical professional schooling system, its changes, and possible roles that literature, with its newly developing concepts, can perform in such schooling. In the second section, we analyze the answers of the teachers and students from Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco (IFPE) – Belo Jardim campus—concerning the function of literature in technical schooling.
2. Technical Professional Schooling and Literary Fiction
Since the foundation of the so-called Students and Craftspeople House, in the nineteenth century, Brazilian professional courses have been dedicated to the improvement of the less prestigious social classes’ handwork. While the elite attended universities, where the required intellectual background for decision making posts was taught, proletarian groups found learning through technical courses that provide a door to the labor market. And such improvements as have occurred in Brazilian education have, ever since, been conducted as a kind of dressage in behavioral patterns. Accordingly, the professional reproduces, by imitation, pre-established practices, without the reflection that can generate important changes in his/her profession or in society (Martins, 2000). In the classic movie Modern Times (1936), created by the British cineaste Charles Chaplin, lampooned this kind of behavior in manufacturing environments. However, the technical professional schooling, principally after the end of the Cold War in 1989, could not be discontinued as development of the country proceeded; since both industrialization and the capitalist mode of production had multiplied more and more and consolidated themselves worldwide.
In this context, when analyzing the ideologies that surround contemporary Brazilian technical teaching, it is important to consider the contexts from which they emerged and that influenced them. These considerations include the need for training people from less prestigious classes for the world of work; the intensification of the American technicist pedagogy adopted in Brazil in the second half of twentieth century; the influences of repression lived during Brazilian military dictatorship, and the capitalist view, more clearly featured by the Decree 2.208/97, which, according to Martins (2000, p. 105, our translation), meant “... in the national perspective, accepting the submission of the subaltern class to the ruling class, and, in the international perspective, the national submission to the dictates of the international capital”. Among the criticisms of the decree, is its promotion of separating general schooling from technical schooling. Thus, with this decree, the Federal Institutions of Technical Teaching were only responsible for technical background, being unbound from general schooling offered in high school, which is different from what happened until then in the concomitant model.
However, the desired integration between general schooling and professional schooling was reiterated by the Decree 5154/2004, which made possible a pedagogy directed at fostering a broader professional background while holding off from the behaviorist tradition and/or from capitalist utilitarianism. The decree aimed to break the dualism between intellectual work and handwork. And it was a fruitful initiative from both pedagogical and human perspectives; as Saviane points out in his Historical-Critical Pedagogy, “… different from other animals, which adapt to the natural reality, and have their existence naturally guaranteed, human beings need to continually produce their own existence.” (Saviani, 1997, p. 15, our translation).
In the perspective of constructing our own existence, besides the need of an “educating for thinking”, so that there are social changes, capitalism itself, after globalization and technological revolution, has required more and more creative professionals able to innovate boldly. It is important to clarify that the purpose of this paper is not just to criticize globalization or capitalism, but to affirm the effective schooling of a professional who, inserted in this context, is more reflective, creative, innovator, able to change his/her practices, rather than being a mere subaltern and passive repeater.
Considering this dialectic (utilitarian, static, unreflective praxis versus creative, modificative, reflective praxis), it is plausible to think about the role of literary fiction in the schooling of the professional in integrated technical courses offered by Education Federal Institutions in Brazil, in this case, at our campus (Belo Jardim). Approaching the need of a more creative and reflective professional schooling, it is suggested the literary fiction as an important area of study for this task.
The problem this paper seeks to address lies in the traditions of Brazilian technical pedagogy, which has focused on training professionals for a kind of automated or an unreflective praxis by means of a utilitarian conception of the schooling. With respect to the unreflective praxis, Martins (2000, p. 21, our translation) observes that such professionals “... are just dedicated to the mere technique, the mere unconscious making.” This kind of thinking should have been overcome a long time ago, since the ideal professional must be able, in the modern context, to modify, innovate his/her practice, besides changing society and constructing his/her own history.
However, professional schooling seems not to have given students due exposure to subjects that are both more reflective, like philosophy and sociology, and more creative or imaginative, like art, music and literature. Hence, such professional schooling lacks a solid background for fostering thoughtful knowledge, a cultural schooling that would make the technicians able to decide their historical fate and work, a schooling focusing on citizenship that equalizes the rulers and the ruled ones (Martins, 2000, p. 33-34).
Moreover, it is important to question the utilitarian concept that professional teaching has reproduced. As Kosik (apud Carvalho, 2006, p. 21, our translation) emphasizes, “the immediate utilitarian praxis and the common sense related to it making human beings able to be oriented in the world, to be familiarized with things and how to handle them, do not provide the comprehension of things and reality”. And such comprehension of the world is among the main components of forming productive citizens. It should be remembered that, before being a professional, the subject needs to become a citizen; this formative process must also pervade the technical teaching institutions, since as Martins (2000, p. 41, our translation) points out,
This view of a human being as a subject who constructs him/herself and the world around them, however, is obscured by the capitalist mode of production. In this mode, human labor is defaced by alienation, which fetishizes the product, and reifies the producer ... Thus, humankind loses the possibility of understanding the whole process of the constitution of history and the ability to act on it.
Nevertheless, as pointed out, the Decree 5154/2004, which allowed the integration of general schooling and professional schooling at Federal Institutions of Technical Teaching, offer the possibility of overcoming this strictly utilitarian view. The study of more reflective subjects, besides promoting citizen formation, has a great usefulness in professional schooling. This is because the ability to propose reflections and creativity may contribute to improvements and innovations. Specifically, the study of literature may be revealed as an important subject in the schooling of the professional citizen.
It should be emphasized that the difficulty to recognize literature as an important component in citizen formation is present not only at technical schools, but within the entire Brazilian basic educational system. It is a fact that no special attention is paid to the study of literature and its specificities, neither in currently proscribed textbooks nor in the NCP (National Curricular Parameters). Gomes (2009, p. 01, our translation) notes that
With the advent of post-industrial societies, from the second half of 20th century, when the uses of written words were diversified and redefined because of the implantation of new technologies and when audiovisual media assumed the role as privileged mediators of cultural property, the importance of reading and literary production as social practices has undeniably been decreased.
Thus the author suggests a possible crisis of literary reading and production. This crisis originated in the new technologies and their visual culture, and now pervades the educational environment. From this perspective, Gomes emphasizes the fact that “In the middle school, literature does not exist as subject content, although curricular guides and textbooks mention it unsystematically” (Gomes, 2009, p. 03, our translation). There is a fusion of the study of literature and other textual genres without an appropriate differentiation between both in the Portuguese language NCP now taught in the third and fourth educational cycles.
For high school, the author reports that
... the role of literature is still less emphasized, although there is the recommendation that "high school should give a special attention to forming readers, including classics of Brazilian literature" (2002: 68). In the text, literary studies are diluted in language studies, and literary genres are considered to be just a discursive practice like any other. (Gomes, 2009, p. 03, our translation)
With these observations it is obvious that in Brazilian basic education, from elementary to high school, there is no articulated didactical-curricular identification of the study of literature as a specific subject. Another problem is that teaching literature in school has for a long time focused on a merely biographical-historical approach, in which authors’ birth-death dates and places, publishing dates, and titles of the books were memorized, among other learning activities that do not feature the appropriate study of literature, as Pereira and Silva (2010, p. 02, our translation) assert:
... the practices of teaching literature were for a long time limited to the historicist and/or biographical view, being concentrated on the study of literary schools without a real contact with the literary work, at the most, students read snippets presented in the textbooks.
However, the importance of studying literary texts during educational process is reinforced by Azevedo (apud Gomes, 2009, p. 04, our translation), when he states that it is not “possible to talk seriously about education without accessing, comprehending and familiarizing students with poetic and subjective texts”. This concept is also corroborated by Edgar Morin, when he points out that
It is in the novel, in the movie, in the poem that existence reveals its misery and its tragic magnificence, with the risk of failure, mistake, and madness. It is with our heroes’ death that we have our first experiences about death. It is, therefore, with literature that teaching about human condition can become vivid and active, in order to elucidate each person about his/her own life. (Morin, 2005, p. 49, our translation)
Yet, according to this line of thinking, Maurício Silva (2010) wrote a long sentence that should be mentioned here:
Dealing with literature is, therefore, a way to better and more deeply comprehend a kind of tool able to de-automatize our perception of the everyday, acting contrary to the standardization of our apprehension of reality; to develop our sensibility and intelligence, enabling them fully for a broader reading of the world; to arouse our capacity of indignation, creating in each of us a critical consciousness of the surrounding reality; to base our ethical behavior in social life, in order to improve our human interrelations; and to develop our ability of comprehending and absorbing the aesthetic activity, from a solid hermeneutical practice. (Silva, 2010, p. 02, our translation)
Thus, on the one hand, if technical schooling in Brazil has focused mostly on an “unconscious making” with merely utilitarian purposes without giving due value to reflection and creativity, and, on the other hand, given the lack of special attention to the study of literary texts in Brazilian basic education; what is the case of the teaching/study of literature in integrated technical courses like?
In integrated technical courses, the subjects from high school, which compose the general schooling, mainly philosophy, sociology, music, art and literature, tend to be undervalued, being considered to be just a support to technical subjects, because the latter are considered to represent the real or main purpose of the technical course (this view was identified in our field research, which will be presented in the next section). This devaluation of the study of literature leads to the question: what is the usefulness of this subject for professional schooling? It should be noted that usefulness does not always mean an immediate or tangible result. By analogy, what would be the usefulness of philosophy, a subject that explores only reflection? Yet it is known that such reflection finds usefulness that is mostly revealed as more important than practice itself, since the latter is constructed or modified from the former. Thereby, the usefulness of the study of literary texts may not be shown to be applicable quickly or even utilitarian in the sense of producing immediate results, but such study can offer, besides aesthetic pleasure, an ability to question and teach creativity indispensable to the citizen constitution.
As regards the creativity provided by the study of literature, Silva (2010, p. 03, our translation) notes that
It is, however, necessary to always keep in mind that readers also participate – actively – in the process of literary creation, since reading is a particular way of creative reorganization of the writer’s ideas: it is through readers, in a process of recreation of the work, that the literary text obtains its aesthetic value, conducted by the conscious criticism.
Thus readers become coauthors in the process of constructing meanings suggested by the literary work, leaving the passive attitude behind. And in constructing meanings, they practice their reflection and stimulate their creative potential. Still on the usefulness of literature, it is important to understand it as
… an aesthetic object that could make us ‘better people’ that is linked to a certain idea of the subject, to what theorists have come to call ‘the liberal subject’; the individual defined not by a social situation and interests but by an individual subjectivity (rationality and morality) conceived as essentially free of social determinants. (Culler, 2000, p. 37)
As has been shown, Culler posits literature as an aesthetic object. Indeed, literary texts may present an aesthetic feature that differs from other texts. It is among the nuances that literature becomes art. Hence, among the tasks of studying literature, the comprehension of such aesthetic specificities must be included. However, literature is not only an aesthetic object. It presents contents, and provides reflection, and “… engages the mind in ethical issues, inducing readers to examine conduct (including their own) as an outsider or a reader of novels would.” (Culler, 2000, p. 37). In other words, literature brings the problems of human life to the fore and can promote self-awareness.
Literary content enriches life understanding. Daniel Taylor (1995), in his emphatic approach to the functions that literature can play in people’s lives, states: “Stories teach us how to live. We are born and raised in stories, and stories answer all the big questions in life: who am I? why am I here? What should I do?” (Taylor, 1995, p.58). The power of literature to provide such answers resides in the close relationship between fiction and reality, that is, “... there is no essential difference between the stories of literature and the stories of our lives.” (Taylor, 1995, p. 66).
Being, therefore, so close to reality, literary fiction brings up ethical debates that promote reflection and questioning of moral systems. Literature transports readers to its fictional reality, and makes them realize, among other things, social injustices. Taylor (1995, p. 58) emphasizes that “Literature is inescapably tied to ethics and is useful in personal ethical development, thought, and action.”
On that basis, it is noticed that, in certain patterns of society there are the rulers and the ruled; those who have power do not like popular riots or popular reactions to their rulings. Thus, in such contexts, a subject like literature may not probably be welcome, since “… literature is the vehicle of ideology and that literature is an instrument for its undoing.” (Culler, 2000, p. 38). That is why, during the Brazilian military dictatorship, for example, there were so many cases of censorship against artists whose lyrics, plays, poems or narratives that provided clues for reflecting on or criticizing what the government was really doing. Such artists, as well as many other citizens, were tortured, exiled or murdered. Such repression against artistic manifestations, especially literature, can be based on what Culler (2000, p. 39) points out: “… literature has historically been seen as dangerous: it promotes the questioning of authority and social arrangements.” As regards such criticism that literature can generate, which a priori might be regarded as harmless, it is important to remember that
Historically, works of literature are credited with producing change: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a best-seller in its day, helped create a revulsion against slavery that made possible the American Civil War (Culler, 2000, p. 39).
Accordingly, literature is much more than an aesthetic, fine and artistic phenomenon. In other words, it is not only form; it consists of content, whose nature is rooted in the dilemmas of life. Thus, these two dimensions of literature should be considered in the processes of teaching. Jouve (2012, p. 135, our translation) reinforces that
... literary fictions are not only aesthetic realities. They are also objects of language that – for expressing culture, thought and a relationship with the world – deserve to concern us all.
Thus, as well as music, dance, painting, sculpture, among other arts, literature promotes admiration, leisure, happiness, sadness and many other feelings that make us human. But not only that! Literature also incites reflection. It questions moral patterns and the most varied nuances of social and individual life. As Fischer (apud Sena, 2006, our translation) states, “Art is necessary so that humankind becomes able to understand and change the world. But art is also necessary because of its inherent magic.” These two features (form and content) of the usefulness of literature are summarized by Sena (2006, our translation):
Form: the playful function which comes up when literature is seen as a microcosm, as a value in itself, as a kind of game, as a specific reality, without useful purpose, and designed to only give pleasure, to stimulate emotions, to distract, to rejoice, to move, etc.;
Content: the cognitive function of literature, seen as a way of knowledge, an element that reveals the psychological truth of human beings or the hidden truth under the surface of human relationships.
3. The view of teachers and students from IFPE – Belo Jardim campus about the study of literature in technical schooling
This section contextualizes the studied locus, and discusses the teachers’ and students’ views about the role of literature in technical schooling.
IFPE – Belo Jardim campus, Pernambuco, Brazil, held its first classes on May 5th, 1970, when it was still named the Agricultural School of Belo Jardim, and became the Federal Agricultural School of Belo Jardim in 1979, and the campus of Instituto Federal de Educação de Pernambuco in 2010, today offers Integrated Technical Courses (technical courses integrated with high school, which include degrees in technician in agriculture, technician in agroindustry and technician in informatics), Subsequent Technical Courses (technical courses for high school graduates, which are technician in agriculture, technician in agroindustry, technician in informatics and technician in nursing), PROEJA (young and adults education integrated with the technical course in agroindustry), and a Higher Course (graduation in interpretative practices of popular music).
Thus, the teachers at this institution, called Teachers of Basic, Technical and Technological Education, work in the various levels and modalities of teaching. In this research, the respondents were teachers of technical subjects (agriculture, agroindustry and informatics), teachers of general subjects (high school) and students from integrated technical courses, where literature is a compulsory curricular subject.
The data collection was conducted in the first semester of 2013, with the participation of 23 teachers, 13 of technical subjects and 12 of general schooling, and 23 students, 7 from informatics, 10 from agriculture and 6 from agroindustry. The teachers are identified as T 1, T 2 etc., and the students as S 1, S 2 and so on. In a structured questionnaire, it was asked to all the respondents: In your opinion, is the study of literary fiction important for professional technician schooling? Yes, No, Intermediate. Why? Yet it was asked only to the teachers of technical subjects: In your opinion, what is the function of subjects from high school in the integrated technical course?
From 23 teachers, only 2 (8,69%) answered as intermediate in response to the question about the importance of the study of literature for professional technical schooling. The other 21 (91,3%) pointed it as important. As regards the students, 9 (39,1%) answered as intermediate, and 14 (60,8%) as important. None of the respondents said it was unimportant. It is noticed, therefore, a tendency of the respondents to regard the study literature in technical schooling as being important.
3.1 The Study of Literature has Intermediate Importance
It is observed that the teachers who posited as intermediate the importance of the study of literature in technical schooling (8,69%) work with technical subjects. The justification for their answers is that the study of literature “... may help, if taught by a teacher who knows the approached theme.” (T 1) and “to have impact, it is necessary that literature has an implicit content like the educational comics.” (T 2). In other words, for such teachers, the relativity resides in how the literary study is conducted, not in its study. Moreover, T 2 emphasizes that, for being important, the literary text should bring up a specific content, which presents educational purposes. Among the students, this number increases. 39,1% posited an intermediate importance in the study of literature for technical schooling. Among the justifications, it is emphasized: 1) “because it is not real stories” (S 1, 2, 3 and 4) and 2) “because it helps to improve reading, but it does not influence straight in the course” (S 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9). As noticed, the students do not see usefulness in literature except in terms of improving reading, which they perceive as its only usefulness for technical schooling. The students see such fragility in the importance of studying literature because of its fictional or “non-real” feature. However, as discussed in the previous section, the interplay between fiction and reality in literary texts is much more subtle than it seems to be, since neither there is completely real narrative nor completely fictional narrative, as Lejeune (1991) asserts. Literature can unfold both plots that describe “real stories” and plots that could be real, which are, therefore, relevant to study.
3.2 The Study of Literature is Important
Although 91,3% of the teachers and 60,8% of the students have pointed as important the study of literature in technical schooling, it is important to notice that some justifications – 7 (30,4%) teachers and 4 (17,3%) students – are based on the improvement of reading and writing as the function of literature:
T 3: “articulation of speech and writing”
T 4: “it helps in writing”
T 5: “Professionals who use to read tend to be more disciplined”
T 6: “just for its reading, it already arouses the will of deepening in many themes”
T 7: “through reading this kind of literature it is possible to have a discovery about a given topic (stimulus) by the reader”
T 8: “reading is important in any level of teaching, because who reads also writes better and interprets better.”
T 9: “it helps in developing skills related to communication and writing.”
S 10: “because what matters is not the style of reading, but the habit to read”
S 11: “it is a way of showing knowledge both on writing and on speech in itself”
S 12: “I enlarge my vocabulary”
S 13: “depending on each reading, we acquire more knowledge about the words”
A much smaller number of respondents – 4 (17,3%) teachers and 2 (8,69%) students – connected the study of literature to a more critical and creative human development:
T 10: “it stimulates our students’ imagination and creativity, contributing somehow to educating an innovative and creative youth.”
T 11: “it makes people be more critical.”
T 12: “it encourages thinking of a goal that, even if it is utopic, can bring advances in students’ creativity.”
S 14: “it helps in students’ creativity.”
S 15: “it improves imagination, leading us understand the world.”
Finally, from all the respondents, only 3 (13%) teachers presented more consistent justifications to the proposal of this paper, when they say that:
T 13: “The study of literary texts is important so that students have the opportunity to live aesthetic experiences beyond technical schooling, because literature provides readers a sharpening of their critical sense and sophistication of sensibility, besides the enlargement of their view of the world. Such characteristics are important so that the individual acts in a more participatory way in society, as well as being able to read reality more coherently. Thus, the literary text contributes not only to the technical schooling, but to the human being.”
T 14: “many fictions like, for example, ‘Vidas Secas’, by Graciliano Ramos and ‘Morte e Vida Severina’, by João Cabral de Melo Neto, approach people’s life in the countryside.”
T 15: “Literary fiction as a way of recreating reality has utmost importance, both in technical schooling and in other areas. The technician before anything is a human being, therefore, needy for subjectivity.”
T 13 emphasizes the “sharpening of their critical sense” and the “enlargement of their view of the world” as possible purposes of the study of literature. This view corroborates the proposal presented here, whereby readers’ critical sense can be improved, whereas literary texts mostly reveal as a simulacrum of reality, bringing reflections and questions about the established models to the readers. Examples of such possibility are given by T 14, when mentioning the books Vidas Secas, by Graciliano, and Morte e Vida Severina, by João Cabral, as a strong representation of “people’s life in the countryside”, what could be an object to study in subjects related to agriculture. T 15, in turns, emphasizes the human inherent need to “subjectivity”, which can be found in literary texts, by providing an opening from which readers can be free to interpret.
The other respondents, 7 (30,4%) teachers and 7 (30,4%) students, decided not to present justifications for their answers.
In general, linked to the development of reading and writing, or linked to a more critical and creative schooling, the respondents pointed as important the study of literature for technical professional schooling. However, when confronting this view with the answers given to another question of the questionnaire about the role of subjects from high school in technical courses, it is noticed a tendency of the teachers to see it as just a base or support for technical subjects wherewith they work. Some of such teachers even call them “supporting subjects”:
T 5: “The subjects from high school used in the integrated technical course serve as a support in executing and improving the functions of the technician.”
T 16: “High school is a support for technical schooling.”
T 17: “Subjects from high school are a support for technical courses.”
T 18: “High school is a tool to improve the technician.”
In other words, although posited as important, the study of literature in technical schooling is reduced to a “supporting subject”. The word support provides greatly an idea of secondarization, that is, the subject remains aside in technical schooling. Would this not be related to that old idea of technical schooling only being suitable for skilled handwork for labor market? As the new idea of integrated schooling defends a break in the old tradition of dividing intellectual work and handwork, should not subjects of general schooling, including literature, and subjects of technical schooling have same importance?
Hence, based on the views of teachers and students from the studied institution, it can be said that literature has not been fully acknowledged or exploited yet, even in the courses where it is a compulsory subject (the integrated technical courses). It is possible to infer that such views, explicitly or implicitly transmitted by the teachers, are rooted in the studied curriculum, and this echoes in the students; this can be one of the reasons why some of them are not conscious that the study of literary texts can represent an important way to become a better professional citizen.
Conclusion
The functions that literature can perform for readers and scholars are various. From aesthetic pleasure, which awakens different emotions, to the analysis of its content, which interfaces with other areas of knowledge, literature has demonstrated an important way to develop knowledge and human consciousness. On that basis, its study should be considered in the educational process of citizen formation. As the integrated technical courses have an obligation to form citizens, as LDB (educational law in Brazil) mandates, and to train innovative professionals required by the new contexts in the world of the work, literature becomes an important subject to include in the curriculum.
As seen, the teachers and students from the studied institution still carry vestiges of a traditional utilitarian-pragmatic view about the professional schooling in Brazil, although some of them already indicate an inclination to include new perspectives in their praxis. Such ambivalence resides on the border of dichotomy between intellectual work and handwork. Finally, the approach of this paper emanates from the worry about the teaching patterns adopted in technical courses, aiming to hold them off from an attitude that the study of literature should be subordinate and merely supportive.
References
CARVALHO, M. A., 2006, A prática docente: subsídios para uma análise crítica. In: CARVALHO, M. A. & MENDES SOBRINHO, J. A. C. (Orgs.) Formação de professores e práticas docentes: olhares contemporâneos. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.
CULLER, J., 2000, Literary theory: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
GOMES, I. R., 2009, (In)certos discursos sobre a leitura literária. In: Anais do 17º Congresso de Leitura do Brasil. Unicamp. Available on: http://www.alb.com.br/anais17/txtcompletos/sem04/COLE_3874.pdf Accessed on October 12th, 2014.
JOUVE, V., 2012, Por que estudar literatura? São Paulo: Parábola.
LEJEUNE, P., 1991, El pacto autobiográfico. In: LOUREIRO, A. G. (Org.) La autobiografía y sus problemas teóricos. Barcelona: Antropos, p. 47-61
MARTINS, M. F., 2000, Ensino técnico e globalização: cidadania ou submissão? Campinas, SP: Autores Associados.
MORIN, E., 2005, A cabeça bem feita: repensar a reforma, repensar o ensino. 11. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
PEREIRA, J. A.; SILVA, M. V. da, 2010, O ensino da literatura e a condição humana. In: Conferência Internacional sobre os Sete Saberes. Available on: http://www.uece.br/setesaberes/anais/pdfs/trabalhos/387-08082010-001342.pdf Accessed on October 12th, 2014.
SAVIANI, D., 1997, Pedagogia histórico-crítica: primeiras aproximações. 6. Ed. Campinas, SP: Autores Associados.
SENA, N., 2006, A função da literatura em face da ética e as novas tecnologias. Available on: http://www.kplus.com.br/materia.asp?co=323&rv=Literatura Accessed on July 15th, 2010.
SILVA, M., 2010, Literatura e experiência de vida: novas abordagens no ensino de literatura. Nau Literária: crítica e teoria de literaturas. Issn 1981-4526, PPG-LET-UFRGS, Porto Alegre, v. 6, n. 2, jul/dez.
TAYLOR, D., 1995, The ethical implications of storytelling: giving ear to the literature of the oppressed. Mars Hill Review, Issue no 3, p. 58-70.