Abstract:

The paper problematizes the curriculum as a space of power and production of subjectivities committed to different basic education projects, starting from the process of institutionalizing the teaching of Spanish in municipal schools of Niterói/RJ - understanding it as a result of discursive conflicts. To this end, the discursive view of language is articulated with the cartographic perspective, in order to map the process of signifying the teaching of a foreign language amidst linguistic and cognitive policies. The analyzes are dedicated to the curricular framework, the textbook and the evaluation and show a clash between visions of (teaching of) language, from structural to utilitarian, aimed at training for the market.

Keywords:
Curriculum; Evaluation; Spanish Teaching; Cognitive Policies

Resumo:

O artigo problematiza o currículo como espaço de poder e de produção de subjetividades comprometido com diferentes projetos de formação básica, partindo do processo de institucionalização do ensino de Espanhol na rede municipal de Niterói/RJ - situado no cerne de conflitos discursivos. Para tal, articula-se a visão discursiva de linguagem à perspectiva cartográfica, com vistas a mapear o processo de significação do ensino de uma língua estrangeira em meio a políticas linguísticas e cognitivas. As análises dedicam-se ao referencial curricular, ao livro didático e à avaliação e evidenciam um embate entre visões de (ensino de) língua, das estruturais às utilitaristas, voltadas à formação para o mercado.

Palavras-chave:
Currículo; Avaliação; Ensino de Espanhol; Políticas Cognitivas

Introduction

The contemporary scenario is brimming with attacks against public education and political struggles to determine what must (not) be included in school curricula and pedagogical practices. Neocolonial discourses have encroached upon the educational debate, where they often fuel exclusionary, market-oriented actions¹ 1 On that issue, we recommend the work of Souza (2019) and Giorgi et al. (2018). . This text, produced amidst that panorama, discusses the implementation of Spanish as a curricular component in the final years of Elementary Education (Ensino Fundamental) in municipal schools located in the city of Niterói. That implementation is here understood as the embodiment of a series of linguistic and cognitive policies which, in turn, point back to a plethora of discursive conflicts and conceptions about foreign languages and about their importance in Basic Education.

The issue we address is made even more relevant in view of the shrinking plurilingualism of Brazilian curricular policies. While neoliberal discourses unwaveringly assume that English teaching is instrumental in preparing a new workforce for the Brazilian job market (Souza, 2019SOUZA, Alice Moraes Rego de. Base Nacional Comum para quê/quem?: uma cartografia de conflitos discursivos na produção de um currículo oficial. 2019. 362 f. Tese (Doutorado em Estudos da Linguagem) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Estudos da Linguagem, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, 2019.), Spanish teaching finds itself increasingly enfeebled in Basic Education, even as the language grows ever more ubiquitous in everyday Brazilian life. This setback can be partly attributed to Law 13.415/2017 - which established the compulsory teaching of English in High School (Ensino Médio) and in the final years of Elementary Education -, as well as to some of its reverberations, namely: a) the publication of a National Common Curricular Core (BNCC), which suppressed the ‘Modern Foreign Languages’ curricular component and replaced it with English; and b) the removal of Spanish from the National School Coursebook Program (PNLD).

In the Niterói municipal network, the implementation of Spanish in the final years of Elementary Education took place in 2011, a time when this curricular component was in nationwide expansion. It is our interest to focus on that context, mapping and scrutinizing the conflicts which emerged in relation to how foreign language teaching ought to be constituted and of which formative projects it ought to be aligned with. In other words, we wish to advance an understanding of foreign languages as curricular components which are part and parcel of larger, broader formative enterprises, and whose underpinning linguistic conceptions reveal their alignment with practices that are more or less committed to linguistic education² 2 We understand linguistic education as an assemblage of practices experienced by subjects, in a range of social spaces, which add to the construction of linguistic knowledge and involve usage, beliefs, norms, prejudice etc. .

We have developed an interventionist, cartographic movement (Barros; Kastrup, 2012BARROS, Laura Pozzana; KASTRUP, Virgínia. Cartografar é Acompanhar Processos. In: PASSOS, Eduardo; KASTRUP, Virgínia; ESCÓSSIA, Liliana (Org.). Pistas do Método da Cartografia: pesquisa-intervenção e produção de subjetividade. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2012. P. 52-75.), premised on the centrality of our own gaze in the constitution of our research objects. Our own memories and experiences have prompted us to analyse utterances and discourses about the implementation of Spanish in Niterói’s municipal schools. Intervention occurs throughout the analytical flow, taking the shape of reflections about the common plan³ 3 This is a principle of cartographic research which orients the relationship between researchers, research objects and research subjects. The goal is to outline a common plan of participation which can guide investigations. This interventionist principle also reflects researchers’ commitment to participating in the construction of a world in which differences can co-exist in a communal space (Barros; Kastrup, 2012). of curricular construction, here regarded as a territory of struggles (Arroyo, 2011ARROYO, Miguel. Currículo, Território de Disputas. Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes, 2011.).

Our analytical corpus encompasses a discursive field (Maingueneau, 2008MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Gênese dos Discursos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.) composed of the following utterances: a) the Spanish Language Curricular References for the city of Niterói; b) the coursebook adopted in the first years after the language was introduced in the network; and c) the Spanish-language exam which, in 2013, integrated Niterói’s Educational Assessment System (SAEN) - the first large-scale evaluation in the network. We both worked as teachers in Niterói between 2011 and 2014/2015; as such, we were part of the ongoing institutionalization effort. We assisted with the elaboration of the second version of the Curricular References and, crucially, we participated directly through our work in the classroom.

The text begins by historicizing the teaching of Spanish in Brazil and underscoring its alignment with different educational, linguistic and cognitive policies. Afterwards, as we introduce our analytical framework, we draw connections between curricular and assessment studies; and we present the discursive view of language (Maingueneau, 2008MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Gênese dos Discursos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.; 2015MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Discurso e Análise do Discurso. São Paulo: Parábola, 2015.) and the concept of cognitive policies (Kastrup, 2005KASTRUP, Virginia. Políticas Cognitivas na Formação do Professor e o Problema do Devir-Mestre. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 93, p. 1273-1288, set./dez. 2005.; 2012KASTRUP, Virginia. Conversando sobre Políticas Cognitivas e Formação Inventiva. In: DIAS, Rosimeri. Oliveira (Org.). Formação Inventiva de Professores. Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina, 2012. P. 52-60.), both of which orient our readings.

A Cartography of Linguistic, Cognitive and Educational Policies in the Teaching of Spanish

There is a process of institutionalization which structures the socio-historical constitution of any curricular component. This process establishes organizational goals and favors specific forms of knowledge; cultural practices; cognitive, interactional and discursive standards; as well as belief systems and structures of expectation (Gerhardt, 2013GERHARDT, Ana Flávia Lopes Magela. As Identidades Situadas, os Documentos Curriculares e os Caminhos Abertos Para o Ensino de Língua Portuguesa no Brasil. In: GERHARDT, Ana Flávia Lopes Magela; AMORIM, Marcel Alvaro; CARVALHO, Álvaro Monteiro (Org.). Linguística Aplicada e Ensino: língua e literatura. Campinas: Pontes, 2013. P.77-113.). Thus, before specifically addressing the implementation of Spanish in Niterói’s municipal schools, we must produce a cartography of how Spanish was constituted as a curricular component in Brazil. By doing so, we hope to shed light upon discourses which, despite having emerged in specific timeframes, propagated meanings about language (teaching) which also inform more contemporary processes.

As argued by Rajagopalan (2003)RAJAGOPALAN, Kanavillil. Por uma Lingüística Crítica: linguagem, identidade e questão ética. São Paulo: Parábola, 2003., any debate on language teaching includes an inextricable political element. A language becomes constituted as a curricular component by means of countless interactions between clashing educational, political and cognitive policies. These policies, in turn, emerge as a result of interdiscursive struggles (Maingueneau, 2008MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Gênese dos Discursos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.), i.e., ongoing negotiations between different standpoints which can either materialize in official proceedings or occur in everyday discursive practices, including those of teachers and students.

As we map such trajectories, our goal is to foreground the discursive field in which different foreign language teaching policies interact. We approach that field as

Our attention is centered on the discursive positionings which compose the educational-political field and which, by doing so, engender specific teaching/learning dynamics and produce friction between cognitive policies. This last concept hinges on the idea that a conception of learning always arises from pedagogical discourses and practices. According to Kastrup (2012KASTRUP, Virginia. Conversando sobre Políticas Cognitivas e Formação Inventiva. In: DIAS, Rosimeri. Oliveira (Org.). Formação Inventiva de Professores. Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina, 2012. P. 52-60., p. 56), a cognitive policy is “[…] a particular relationship with knowledge, with the world, and with oneself.” Arguing that the construction of knowledge, the production of subjectivities and the realm of politics are all inseparable from one another, Kastrup (2005KASTRUP, Virginia. Políticas Cognitivas na Formação do Professor e o Problema do Devir-Mestre. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 93, p. 1273-1288, set./dez. 2005.; 2012)KASTRUP, Virginia. Conversando sobre Políticas Cognitivas e Formação Inventiva. In: DIAS, Rosimeri. Oliveira (Org.). Formação Inventiva de Professores. Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina, 2012. P. 52-60. writes that our ideas about knowledge and learning are more than mere theoretical stances; rather, they actively configure cognitive policies.

Cognitive policies can emerge as: a) policies of recognition (or representation), which posit that worlds and subjects pre-exist learning situations and that these, in turn, should revolve around logical, rule-governed problem solving; or b) policies of invention, which treat worlds and subjectivities as the effect of practices. According to this second perspective, learning occurs not through problem-solving, but through problem -invention, that is, through a series of practices of knowing (Kastrup, 2005KASTRUP, Virginia. Políticas Cognitivas na Formação do Professor e o Problema do Devir-Mestre. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 93, p. 1273-1288, set./dez. 2005.; 2012KASTRUP, Virginia. Conversando sobre Políticas Cognitivas e Formação Inventiva. In: DIAS, Rosimeri. Oliveira (Org.). Formação Inventiva de Professores. Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina, 2012. P. 52-60.). Cognitive policies become apparent in our daily practices, but also in public policies (in this case, educational and linguistic ones). They integrate the competitive relationships (Maingueneau, 2008MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Gênese dos Discursos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.) which are the backbone of any discursive field.

Let us now revisit our discursive field and examine which contrasting perspectives have informed the implementation of different foreign language teaching policies in Brazil. In our country, foreign language teaching can be traced back to colonization itself (Daher; 2006DAHER, del Carmen. Enseñanzas del Español y Políticas Lingüísticas en Brasil. Hispanista, Niterói, n. 27, p. 1-12, 2006.); yet, since we are primarily concerned with the constitution of Spanish as a curricular component, let us begin by turning to what Celada and González (2000)CELADA, Maria Teresa; GONZÁLEZ, Neide Therezinha Maia. Los Estudios de Lengua Española en Brasil. ABEH, São Paulo, Consejería de Educación, n. 10, p. 35-58, 2000. call a founding gesture: the process whereby Spanish became institutionalized, starting with Antenor Nascentes’ 1919 entry into Colégio Pedro II.

In 1934, Nascentes published the first Spanish grammar for Brazilian students. The book, heavily influenced by the contrastive principle (Daher, 2006DAHER, del Carmen. Enseñanzas del Español y Políticas Lingüísticas en Brasil. Hispanista, Niterói, n. 27, p. 1-12, 2006.), became the main reference for Spanish teaching in the country. It soon served as a basis for the construction of Brazil’s first Spanish teaching manual, published by Idel Becker in 1945. These movements ushered in a conception about Spanish teaching in Brazil-one focused on the contrasts and differences between Portuguese and Spanish (Celada; González, 2000CELADA, Maria Teresa; GONZÁLEZ, Neide Therezinha Maia. Los Estudios de Lengua Española en Brasil. ABEH, São Paulo, Consejería de Educación, n. 10, p. 35-58, 2000.). On that issue, Vargas (2017VARGAS, Diego da Silva Vargas. O plano inferencial de leitura e o ensino de espanhol na escola brasileira: cognição distribuída, políticas cognitivas e livro didático. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em Letras Neolatinas) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2017., p. 141) writes that

It was only in 1942, with the so-called Capanema Reform and the enactment of the Organic Law of Secondary Education, that Spanish was converted into a compulsory curricular component. It is no accident that it replaced German and began to be offered in the first year of secondary Classic or Scientific degrees, for fewer weekly hours than the other languages: French, English, Latin and Greek (Daher, 2006DAHER, del Carmen. Enseñanzas del Español y Políticas Lingüísticas en Brasil. Hispanista, Niterói, n. 27, p. 1-12, 2006.; Freitas; Barreto, 2007FREITAS, Luciana Maria Almeida de; BARRETO, Talita. Construindo uma História: a APEERJ e o ensino de Espanhol no Brasil. ABEH, São Paulo, Consejería de Educación, n. 17, p. 65-69, 2007.). Daher (2006)DAHER, del Carmen. Enseñanzas del Español y Políticas Lingüísticas en Brasil. Hispanista, Niterói, n. 27, p. 1-12, 2006. reminds us that the Capanema Reform also advocated the adoption of the Direct Method, which emphasizes spoken language, in the form of brief conversations and reading exercises, and only later incorporates written activities. The Direct Method was the first to pursue a holistic treatment of the so-called four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing, in that order); nonetheless, it was not enthusiastically embraced by teachers, who still favored the Grammar-Translation Method (Leffa, 1988LEFFA, Vilson José. Metodologia do Ensino de Línguas. In: BOHN, Hilário; VANDRESEN, Paulino. Tópicos em Lingüística Aplicada: o ensino de línguas estrangeiras. Florianópolis: Ed. UFSC, 1988. P. 211-236.).

While a change in methodology does not, per se, alter the cognitive policies underlying the teaching of a language, this is a remarkable example of how theoretical-methodological perspectives, even when forcibly imposed by legal means, may not be fully adopted by field participants. This phenomenon corroborates the aforementioned notion of competition as a process which produces both struggles and alliances.

The first Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education (LDB), passed in 1961, did not allude to foreign language teaching. Consequently, Spanish progressively shrank in importance across school curricula and, since its presence and relevance had not been entirely consolidated, practically disappeared at a certain point (Daher, 2006DAHER, del Carmen. Enseñanzas del Español y Políticas Lingüísticas en Brasil. Hispanista, Niterói, n. 27, p. 1-12, 2006.; Rodrigues, 2010RODRIGUES, Fernanda dos Santos Castelano. Leis e línguas: o lugar do espanhol na escola brasileira. In: BARROS, Cristiano; COSTA, Elzimar. Espanhol: ensino médio - coleção explorando o ensino. Brasília: MEC/SEB, 2010. P. 13-24.). In 1971, a new LDB suggested that foreign languages could be selected by State Educational Councils (CEE); then, in 1976, Resolution 58/76 of the National Education Council established that foreign languages were mandatory in the common core of Secondary Education, and recommended in Primary Education. Each CEE, however, was still tasked with choosing which language to teach, which caused the status of Spanish to remain largely the same (Rodrigues, 2010RODRIGUES, Fernanda dos Santos Castelano. Leis e línguas: o lugar do espanhol na escola brasileira. In: BARROS, Cristiano; COSTA, Elzimar. Espanhol: ensino médio - coleção explorando o ensino. Brasília: MEC/SEB, 2010. P. 13-24.; Freitas, 2011FREITAS, Luciana Maria Almeida de. Entre Lembranças e Esquecimentos: relato memorialístico sobre o ensino de espanhol no Rio de Janeiro. Hispanista, Niterói, v. 12, n. 46, p. 1-25, 2011.).

In the 1980s, a significant transformation was underway. As Spanish Teachers Associations were founded, a number of voices demanded the inclusion of Spanish in municipal and state schools across the country. In Rio de Janeiro, a movement spearheaded by the state’s Spanish Teachers Association succeeded in passing legislation which established the teaching of Spanish as mandatory in Primary and Secondary Education, both in municipal and state schools (Daher, 2006DAHER, del Carmen. Enseñanzas del Español y Políticas Lingüísticas en Brasil. Hispanista, Niterói, n. 27, p. 1-12, 2006.; Freitas; Barreto, 2007FREITAS, Luciana Maria Almeida de; BARRETO, Talita. Construindo uma História: a APEERJ e o ensino de Espanhol no Brasil. ABEH, São Paulo, Consejería de Educación, n. 17, p. 65-69, 2007.). While offer itself has certainly been expanded in public school networks ever since, such laws - which are still in force - remain widely disregarded.

The 1996 LDB altered the state of foreign languages in school curricula by defining that any foreign language selected by the school community had to be included as a mandatory curricular component in the second half of Elementary Education. In High School, schools should attempt to offer another foreign language as an optional class (Freitas; Barreto, 2007FREITAS, Luciana Maria Almeida de; BARRETO, Talita. Construindo uma História: a APEERJ e o ensino de Espanhol no Brasil. ABEH, São Paulo, Consejería de Educación, n. 17, p. 65-69, 2007.; Rodrigues, 2010RODRIGUES, Fernanda dos Santos Castelano. Leis e línguas: o lugar do espanhol na escola brasileira. In: BARROS, Cristiano; COSTA, Elzimar. Espanhol: ensino médio - coleção explorando o ensino. Brasília: MEC/SEB, 2010. P. 13-24.). Once again, this did not immediately affect the official status of the Spanish language - after all, the LDB did not explicitly name which languages had to be taught -, but, amidst ongoing pressure by Associations and ever-strengthening Mercosul ties, Spanish teaching gradually became more prevalent.

In 1998, the Brazilian government published the National Curricular Parameters (PCNs), which helped regulate the incorporation of Spanish in curricula across the country. The PCNs underscored the social importance of teaching Spanish and defined schools as the ideal context for the language to be learned. In face of students’ most pressing needs and of schools’ infrastructural limitations, the document prescribed that emphasis should be placed on the development of reading skills (Brasil, 1998BRASIL. Secretaria de Educação. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais: terceiro e quarto ciclos do ensino fundamental - língua estrangeira. Brasília: Secretaria de Educação Fundamental, 1998.).

In the same year, Instituto Cervantes⁴ 4 An organ of Spain’s Ministry of Education which seeks to foster the study of Spanish around the world. opened its doors in Brazil, where it sought to train new teachers. As this constituted a violation of national laws (Freitas, 2011FREITAS, Luciana Maria Almeida de. Entre Lembranças e Esquecimentos: relato memorialístico sobre o ensino de espanhol no Rio de Janeiro. Hispanista, Niterói, v. 12, n. 46, p. 1-25, 2011.), the project soon floundered, but there were many occasions on which the Institute attempted to participate in teacher formation, always reinforcing a set of colonial and recognitive practices which have never entirely disappeared from curricular struggles. This happened, for instance, in the Niterói municipal network in 2011⁵ 5 To learn more about resistance to the Institute’s interventions, please see: <https://espanholdobrasil.wordpress.com>. . As this example illustrates, language teaching in Brazil has always been shaped by clashing and competing views.

In 2005, the enactment of Law 11.161 followed up on the LDB and instituted that Spanish should necessarily be offered in High School, with students free to take it as an optional class. From that moment on, the Ministry of Education (MEC) started to implement a series of policies which furthered the expansion of Spanish teaching in both public and private networks. It was in that context that, in 2011, Spanish was introduced as a curricular component in Niterói’s municipal schools. Other classes had their workload adjusted and Spanish became a compulsory curricular component alongside English, with all students having to take it for 1.5 hours a week during the final years of Elementary Education. Naturally, workload definitions and time constraints all affect curricula; as such, they also constitute areas of struggle. These changes were soon criticized by students and teachers from other areas, whose number of weekly hours had been reduced. Break-time was also abbreviated so that Spanish could be assimilated into the existing timetables.

The cartography we have drawn illuminates the ways in which different discursive clashes impacted the establishment of foreign languages - and of Spanish - as curricular components. Contrastive and utilitarian perspectives, sociolinguistic and neocolonial enterprises all participated in the language’s expansion throughout the educational circuit. Crucially, however, such conflicts and collisions were hardly successful in disrupting the prevailing policy of recognition (Kastrup, 2005KASTRUP, Virginia. Políticas Cognitivas na Formação do Professor e o Problema do Devir-Mestre. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 93, p. 1273-1288, set./dez. 2005.; 2012KASTRUP, Virginia. Conversando sobre Políticas Cognitivas e Formação Inventiva. In: DIAS, Rosimeri. Oliveira (Org.). Formação Inventiva de Professores. Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina, 2012. P. 52-60.). In particular, the legal instruments and components which structure public policies still tend to assume the existence of a pre-existing world, and to impose specific perspectives and procedures upon the subjects who directly experience the everyday materialization of these curricular components.

Since our analysis cannot fully account for all the relationships which compose this discursive field (Maingueneau, 2008MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Gênese dos Discursos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.), our discussion will now specifically turn to the utterances mentioned in the Introduction. By focusing on the interdiscursive relationships which emerge as these utterances interact with and affect one another, we shall examine which perspectives and policies have guided the implementation of Spanish in Niterói’s municipal schools.

Privileges of Knowledge in the Spanish Curricular Matrix

The Niterói municipal network put out two versions of its Curricular References for the Teaching of Spanish. The first one, the 2010 Curricular References: A Collective Construction, published in 2011 and instituted by Administrative Rule FME 085/2011, was elaborated before teachers themselves had arrived in schools. The second, which configures our analytical focus, was co-constructed in 2012 by a group of Spanish teachers from the municipal network who volunteered for the task⁶ 6 The authors of this paper integrated that group. .

Given our alignment with studies in both Language and Education, we understand that foreign language curricula take shape through a process informed by an array of educational, linguistic and cognitive policies - and, consequently, by the clashing discourses which constitute each of these policies. From an educational viewpoint, the curriculum can be viewed as the final outcome of a selection, as a social invention produced by a historical process. As such, it cannot be divorced from issues of power and identity⁷ 7 While this text addresses the prescriptive nature of curricula utterances, we understand that curricula materialize in classrooms, where social subjects, their experience and values interact and clash with officialized forms of knowing in the situated process of knowledge construction (Arroyo, 2011). (Silva, 2009SILVA, Tomaz Tadeu da. Documentos de Identidade: uma introdução às teorias do currículo. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009.).

Curricula are inseparable from mutually antagonizing conceptions, values and understandings about teachers’ and students’ functions; about the role of instructional material; about the aims of pedagogical practice and of Basic Education; and so forth. Ultimately, curricular documents - whether they are local, regional or national - are the upshot of such discursive and non-discursive conflicts, i.e., of processes which necessarily campaign for or marginalize specific forms of knowledge.

On that same note, Silva (2009)SILVA, Tomaz Tadeu da. Documentos de Identidade: uma introdução às teorias do currículo. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009. maintains that curricula are not ready-made, self-evident objects; rather, they are constructed, and made meaning of, by positing a particular viewpoint as true. Arguing that knowledge is inherent in power mechanisms, the author writes that “[…] the curriculum is inextricably, centrally, vitally linked to the issue of who we are, of who we become: our identity, our subjectivity” (Silva, 2009SILVA, Tomaz Tadeu da. Documentos de Identidade: uma introdução às teorias do currículo. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009., p. 15). This theoretical stance, which we espouse in this paper, accentuates the relevance of our study, insofar as it assigns to the curriculum - in view of everything it values or effaces - the potential to produce subjectivities. To put it differently, the curriculum is part of a political-educational device (Souza, 2019SOUZA, Alice Moraes Rego de. Base Nacional Comum para quê/quem?: uma cartografia de conflitos discursivos na produção de um currículo oficial. 2019. 362 f. Tese (Doutorado em Estudos da Linguagem) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Estudos da Linguagem, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, 2019.) which participates in the production of subjects. Every curricular structure requires our attention and warrants an analysis of what its composition legitimizes and what kind of citizenship it promotes.

In addition, according to Language Studies, each curriculum can be viewed as an utterance produced by a particular enunciator (as a rule, an institutional enunciator, whose seemingly unisonous voice simulates consensus) at a specific point in time and space. It follows that meaning, rather than intrinsically inhabiting words themselves, is produced across a myriad of enunciative situations, and always vis-à-vis social and historical relations that these situations engender and are engendered by. Thus,

With that in mind, let us now turn to our discussion of the Spanish Curricular References. Our analysis will make use of Bakhtin’s notion of speech genres, which helps us to examine language as it operates in the social world. According to Bakhtin (2011)BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Gêneros de Discurso. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da Criação Verbal. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2011. P. 261-306., each and every utterance takes the shape of a speech genre - i.e., a form of discourse that is socially shared and relatively stable in terms of its compositional structure, subject matter, and style.

Bakhtin adds that the characteristics of each genre point to existing relationships between utterances and specific forms of human activity. Thus, by looking at these elements, we might be able to identify meanings that are being constructed about the nature of the activity itself - namely, in our case, foreign language teaching. As we scrutinize curricular matrixes from a genre-based perspective, for example, it soon stands out that curricular utterances tend to be presented as tables, which seek to objectively and pragmatically define the nature of a given curricular component. Such documents construct educational practices as controllable, objective¸ and subject to prescription; they also conceal the constellation of discursive conflicts which characterize the process of curricular construction.

A close-up analysis of the compositional aspect of the matrix reveals that, despite the fact that contents are displayed in a table - which produces a meaning effect of objectivity -, the information which is presented distinguishes this table from the ones employed by other networks:

The names of the first two columns seem to suggest a convergence between the Matrix and the National Curricular Parameters (PCNs). Indeed, the former seems to underscore the issue of citizenship, whereas the latter defines the following themes as central:

Yet, upon closer inspection, the meaning ascribed to the phrase subject matters seems to be more closely related to the notion of linguistic content, and lexico-grammatical topics are here outlined as if in a structuralist, communicative syllabus. In other words, the Subject Matters column features a collection of linguistic items which might as well be subsumed under headings such as Text Linguistics, Lexicon, and Grammar. The first would encompass items like Predominant Textual Typology: Description; the second, Everyday Greetings (saying hello, saying thank you, saying goodbye); the third, Personal Pronouns, Forms of Treatment (Formal and Informal), and Basic Punctuation.

The second column, on the other hand, focuses on the skills and practices of citizenship, thereby echoing similar concerns voiced by the PCNs. While this alignment is confirmed upon closer inspection, it is important to note that, by divorcing the skills of citizenship from so-called subject matters, the Matrix reinforces a long-standing separation which overvalues linguistic content. These skills may be touched upon, but, per se, they are not treated as knowledge, and the privileges of systemic linguistic proficiency are once again reiterated.

This supports the idea that, in the construction of a single curricular matrix, educational public policies clash and compete with traditional understandings of what it means to teach or learn a foreign language. Indeed, as the second version of Niterói’s Curricular Matrix was being (re)created, conflicts like this one emerged recurrently. The structure of the document could not be changed; nor, by extension, could the conceptions which underpinned it. As we compare the first two columns, we can see that themes themselves appear in the column reserved for the skills and practices of citizenship, and not in the one reserved for subject matters. In short, efforts were made to promote critical reflection about issues related to students’ social lives, but the overall organization of the Matrix implies a contrast between structural content and critical education.

The Specific Skills column gives us clues about what is considered to be specific to the teaching of Spanish. Once again, an understanding of language as a structure and as a communicative instrument is fortified as the document enumerates elements which are mostly related to the study of the linguistic system (i.e., grammar and lexicon). As we have already discussed, this represents an endorsement of the linguistic-cognitive policy which has historically informed foreign language teaching. Examples of this affiliation include items such as adequately employing everyday greetings (6^th grade); naming, in writing and orally, people and objects by referring to family pictures or illustrations (7^th grade); and adequately recognizing and employing Spanish words and phrases to talk about leisure activities and spaces (8^th grade).

Finally, the last column of each Matrix, called Some Methodological Suggestions, outlines a few possible activities, but does not directly recommend specific ways of approaching the topics listed in the other sections of the table. Some of the suggestions prioritize systemic linguistic knowledge, whereas others emphasize forms of genre-based written production. These last ones, however, only illuminate the Curricular References’ overall lack of cohesion, since the Matrix never proposes that students should study these same genres beforehand. These are exercises in reproduction, not in critical reflection about the social role of language. The column also hinges on a structuralist approach, with most recommendations focusing on lexical or grammatical aspects, such as working with Spanish-language songs to recognize specific sounds and underline differences in pronunciation (6^th grade).

As we have seen, this curricular proposal is underpinned by a view of teaching which, more often than not, values superficial, decontextualized, systemic knowledge. Qualitatively, most of the Matrix upholds a structuralistic, communicative view of language teaching, insofar as the contents, specific skills and activities presented all involve recognizing and employing grammar and lexicon. Official discourse consolidates the logic of recognition that has informed the teaching of Spanish since its founding gestures, and very little room is left for treating language as a trove of meaning-making possibilities - a tool with which to see and invent both the world and ourselves. Ultimately, in short, the engagement of foreign language classes in an emancipatory project for Basic Education remains jeopardized.

The Case of the Coursebook amidst Curricular Clashes

Following our cartography, we now turn to the coursebook chosen by the Niterói municipal network. Once again, our overarching goal is to investigate which views on language inform official, curricular, prescriptive proposals - which compose our discursive field - and, by doing so, to produce an understanding of how, as suggested by Vargas (2017)VARGAS, Diego da Silva Vargas. O plano inferencial de leitura e o ensino de espanhol na escola brasileira: cognição distribuída, políticas cognitivas e livro didático. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em Letras Neolatinas) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2017., a curricular component becomes integrated into a school culture.

We first encountered this specific collection in 2012. At the time, in a meeting conducted by the Spanish department, we were introduced to the material, which had been selected by an interdisciplinary coordinating committee. Teachers themselves had not been consulted, and, because the collection had not been included in the National School Coursebook Program (PNLD), the books had had to be purchased with the municipal government’s own funds. In fact, during the 2011 PNLD, Spanish had still not been officially assimilated into the network’s curriculum. The collection, named Ventana al Español (Almeida; Amendola, 2011ALMEIDA, Adriana Pedro; AMENDOLA, Roberta (Org.). Ventana al Español 1. Livro do Professor. São Paulo: Moderna/Santillana, 2011.), was produced after the 2011 PNLD, but it was not included in the 2014 PNLD. That is not to say, exactly, that it was not approved in 2014, since the Ministry of Education never publishes a full list of rejected works.

Curricula are also what we made of them (Silva, 2009SILVA, Tomaz Tadeu da. Documentos de Identidade: uma introdução às teorias do currículo. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009.). They materialize not only through the implementation of curricular matrixes, but also through the selection of coursebooks which, by defining what must be taught and learned within a particular curricular component, orient and prescribe both teachers’ and students’ classroom practices. Coursebooks can be understood as a microcosm of utterances which favor specific forms of knowledge and subscribe to specific ways of conceiving (foreign) languages.

In this section, following in Vargas’ (2017)VARGAS, Diego da Silva Vargas. O plano inferencial de leitura e o ensino de espanhol na escola brasileira: cognição distribuída, políticas cognitivas e livro didático. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em Letras Neolatinas) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2017. footsteps, our analysis zooms in on a few fragments taken from the collection’s Teachers’ Manual - a document which officially presents the material to teachers. We also examine how the collection is organized, since this too can shed light on the material’s underlying conceptions of language, teaching and learning.

The following passage can be found in the Manual’s introduction. It delineates the theoretical-methodological views which inform the collection, and it also offers a few suggestions for classroom work:

Despite advancing an understanding of language as a communicative tool (something at odds with the National Curricular Parameters), the fragment suggests that students - and not the language itself - should take center stage. Language, it is argued, works by allowing students to amplify their worldviews and express their ideas. The importance of text-based practice is also underscored, which is a significant departure from the Curricular References’ primary focus on lexico-grammatical components, i.e., the systemic aspects of language.

Further, in a subsection called Visión de lenguaje y de lengua, the authors explain that their coursebook approaches language as “[…] a situated social and interactive activity (those who use the language always consider the audience they address or who has produced the original utterance), so that historical and discursive aspects are interwoven and language is approached in its social, cognitive and historical dimensions” (Almeida; Amendola, 2011ALMEIDA, Adriana Pedro; AMENDOLA, Roberta (Org.). Ventana al Español 1. Livro do Professor. São Paulo: Moderna/Santillana, 2011., p. 2). Quoting Bakhtin, they add that, according to this conception, “[…] human beings use language to act in a social context; language is understood as a form of social engagement, as a realm of interlocution which enables the emergence of different forms of action” (Almeida; Amendola, 2011ALMEIDA, Adriana Pedro; AMENDOLA, Roberta (Org.). Ventana al Español 1. Livro do Professor. São Paulo: Moderna/Santillana, 2011., p. 2-3).

The coursebook is thereby presented to teachers as embracing a more inventive perspective. Learning is understood as a process in which participants construct ways of acting in the world. These conceptions, of course, are startingly at odds with the ones introduced in the Curricular Matrix, which yet again highlights how different discursive standpoints interact and compete as they ascribe different meanings to foreign language teaching and learning.

When discussing assessment procedures and explaining how the material is organized, the authors cite the National Curricular Parameters as their theoretical foundation, which reinforces their affiliation with an official regulatory process (Vargas, 2017VARGAS, Diego da Silva Vargas. O plano inferencial de leitura e o ensino de espanhol na escola brasileira: cognição distribuída, políticas cognitivas e livro didático. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em Letras Neolatinas) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2017.) - that is, despite the fact that the collection did not rank among the approved works for two consecutive PNLD cycles. Contrastingly, the very distribution of the coursebook’s contents antagonizes the municipal network’s official curricular proposal. In other words, given its interest in appealing to a wide audience, the coursebook subscribes to conceptions and discourses which are present in a nationally prescriptive document. Yet, interestingly, it was chosen to be used in a context where local curricular orientations are not of a piece with the national guidelines.

Our analysis of how the book presents its sections to teachers reveals that such curricular clashes can also materialize in other ways. For instance, in terms of reading practice - which the National Curricular Parameters define as a priority -, the coursebook offers three different sections: ¿Qué sabes?; ¡A empezar! and Contextos. The first one seeks to “[...] determine students’ knowledge about the issue at hand” (Almeida; Amendola, 2011ALMEIDA, Adriana Pedro; AMENDOLA, Roberta (Org.). Ventana al Español 1. Livro do Professor. São Paulo: Moderna/Santillana, 2011., p. 4) by having students engage with a series of pre-reading questions. The second, according to the Teacher’s Manual, aims to develop students’ written and oral comprehension skills by having them first listen to a recorded reading of a text and, subsequently, read the text itself. The texts belong to different speech genres and gradually escalate in complexity. The purpose of this second section is to encourage students to develop and employ “[...] reading strategies which could help them to make inferences about texts, so that their analysis can be informed by their knowledge of texts and of the world” (Almeida; Amendola, 2011ALMEIDA, Adriana Pedro; AMENDOLA, Roberta (Org.). Ventana al Español 1. Livro do Professor. São Paulo: Moderna/Santillana, 2011., p. 4).

While the coursebook explicitly aligns itself with the National Curricular Parameters (PCNs), that theoretical alignment is somewhat compromised by the fact that the texts presented to students (and not, say, the text-based activities students must complete) gradually escalate in complexity. In other words, even if reading practice is prioritized - as prescribed by the PCNs, although not by the municipal network’s own guidelines -, the collection suggests that linguistic practice should occur linearly - which contradicts the PCNs, but dovetails with the linearity advocated in the city’s Curricular References. Once again, this reveals that clashing discursive positionings and competing cognitive policies are part and parcel of foreign language teaching, and that curricular construction must be approached as a realm of divergence and antagonism.

The last section, called Contextos, introduces additional ways for students to interact with texts. Here, “students are led to recognize different speech genres by means of activities which articulate reading comprehension and the analysis of the intrinsic components of each text type” (Almeida; Amendola, 2011ALMEIDA, Adriana Pedro; AMENDOLA, Roberta (Org.). Ventana al Español 1. Livro do Professor. São Paulo: Moderna/Santillana, 2011., p. 5). Centered on speech genres and text types, this proposal draws the coursebook closer to a social understanding of language - i.e., to the same theoretical principles espoused by the National Curricular Parameters. Yet, a more in-depth analysis shows that the genre-based activities do not always continue to explore the main subject matter of each unit; nor do they necessarily work in tandem with the preceding sections. Such activities are presented as extra material and are notably absent, for instance, from revision units.

A more panoramic analysis shows that the units in the collection are often named in accordance with the lexical content in focus. For example, in the 6^th-grade coursebook, some of the units are called: El mundo habla español, Hola, ¿qué tal?, Hora de aprender, Lazos de família, Cómo somos, Mi casa, tu casa. Just like in the Curricular References, emphasis is placed on systemic knowledge, which the coursebook contextualizes but partially (Vargas, 2017VARGAS, Diego da Silva Vargas. O plano inferencial de leitura e o ensino de espanhol na escola brasileira: cognição distribuída, políticas cognitivas e livro didático. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em Letras Neolatinas) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2017.). Furthermore, it is worth noting that the subject matters developed in the collection neither fully mirror the ones proposed by the city’s Curricular References, nor entirely embrace the transversal themes established in the National Curricular Parameters. They seem more conducive to the study of lexicon or of linguistic structures than to the promotion of a social understanding of language as an instrument of citizenship.

Unit organization is standardized and remains stable even in terms of the number of pages dedicated to each section. This attempt to control the learning process seems arguably inconsistent with the theoretical framework cited by the collection. The following table enumerates the sections which can be found in each unit:

In addition to illustrating the already-mentioned attempt to exert control over the learning process, this distribution exemplifies how different understandings of language compete within one same coursebook. Different though they may be, such conceptions converge towards a policy of recognition: learners are given little room to think about their own status as subjects who are learning a language and who can use it to constitute themselves and the world around them. This perspective, which is compatible with the Curricular References, is made clear by the emphasis given to sentence-level lexical and grammatical elements.

Texts occupy clearly circumscribed positions, playing a central role in the opening and closing of each unit. While such texts may have been chosen or created according to the vocabulary they contain, reading and listening activities do, in some cases, go beyond focusing on lexicon and grammar (Vargas, 2017VARGAS, Diego da Silva Vargas. O plano inferencial de leitura e o ensino de espanhol na escola brasileira: cognição distribuída, políticas cognitivas e livro didático. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em Letras Neolatinas) - Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras Neolatinas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2017.). Yet, in keeping with the city’s Curricular References, grammar and lexicon are mostly treated as decontextualized elements, and specific lexico-grammatical items being taught are, more often than not, notably absent from the texts read by students. Finally, in the last section, the texts which support genre-based activities can be understood as extra elements, detached from each unit’s broader architecture (something reminiscent of the way typologies are presented in a decontextualized fashion in the city’s curricular proposal).

Conceptions of foreign language teaching remains rather crystallized. Learning is believed to happen through repetition and interaction, and students are expected to reproduce systematized formulae. Although the National Curricular Parameters are mentioned as a guiding instance, the document is only present as a simulacrum (Maingueneau, 2008MAINGUENEAU, Dominique. Gênese dos Discursos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2008.). While different forms of knowledge inevitably interact and clash with one another in the process of constructing a curricular utterance, the coursebook echoes the decades-old perspectives adopted by the Curricular References. At times, in a somewhat timid alignment with Text Linguistics, the collection does enable a more critical study of texts; similarly, voices present in the Curricular References do occasionally advance a view of language as key to the development of citizenship. Nonetheless, our analysis suggests that, in both cases, a traditional understanding of language and foreign language teaching still predominates.

The role of the SAEN in Spanish Curricular Policies

This section foregrounds the discursive debates which occur around the issue of the curriculum, highlighting how they relate to discussions on the topic of assessment. Curricular guidelines and assessment procedures are markedly intertwined: as they complement and antagonize each other, they both enable educational, linguistic and cognitive policies to materialize in classrooms:

In that regard, it is our understanding that assessment is (or should be) part of a larger, collective pedagogical endeavor; it is an enterprise developed by collective bodies and organizations, but also by the individuals who integrate them. Developing an assessment framework requires considering a number of different spheres and goals (Fernandes; Freitas, 2007FERNANDES, Claudia; FREITAS, Luiz Carlos. Indagações sobre Currículo: currículo e avaliação. Brasília: MEC/SEB, 2007.).

In this study, our analysis is centered on a macro-level, standardized exam whose aim is to evaluate the quality of Niterói’s educational system. Of course, this examination is also designed to assess classroom practices: students take the exams individually and, while their outcomes reveal their knowledge of the topics chosen for the tests, they are also indicative of how schools are doing. Results are systematized and categorized per school so that students’ collective performance can also be monitored.

The impacts of macro-level assessment upon school curricula cannot be downplayed (Sousa, 2003SOUSA, Sandra Maria Zákia Lian. Possíveis Impactos das Políticas de Avaliação no Currículo Escolar. Cadernos de Pesquisa, Fundação Carlos Chagas, São Paulo, n. 119, p. 175-190, jul. 2003.). Nor can we overlook the fact that, as suggested by Esteban (2008)ESTEBAN, Maria Teresa. A Avaliação no Cotidiano Escolar. In: ESTEBAN, Maria Teresa (Org.). Avaliação: uma prática em busca de novos sentidos. Petrópolis: DPetAlli, 2008. P. 07-24., there seems to be a worldwide movement back to an understanding of assessment as a quantitative process, that is, as a “[…] mechanism to control time, content, procedures, subjects and pedagogical outcomes” in order to enhance the overall quality of education, here understood in terms of “[…] the knowledge conveyed to students and kept by them” (Esteban, 2008ESTEBAN, Maria Teresa. A Avaliação no Cotidiano Escolar. In: ESTEBAN, Maria Teresa (Org.). Avaliação: uma prática em busca de novos sentidos. Petrópolis: DPetAlli, 2008. P. 07-24., p. 10).

According to the author, this consolidates a hybrid model, in which “[…] school contexts are awarded a certain degree of freedom, but pedagogical processes remain largely tethered to a previously established product” (Esteban, 2008ESTEBAN, Maria Teresa. A Avaliação no Cotidiano Escolar. In: ESTEBAN, Maria Teresa (Org.). Avaliação: uma prática em busca de novos sentidos. Petrópolis: DPetAlli, 2008. P. 07-24., p. 11). In our case, the product is previously established, on the one hand, by a curricular matrix; and, on the other, by a coursebook. Compliance is tested by an institutional exam given to all the students in the city, which simultaneously seeks to assess students’ learning, teachers’ performance, and the quality of the network as a whole. All of this, of course, hinges on a model based on reproduction, i.e., on the implementation of policies of recognition (Kastrup, 2005KASTRUP, Virginia. Políticas Cognitivas na Formação do Professor e o Problema do Devir-Mestre. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 93, p. 1273-1288, set./dez. 2005.; 2012KASTRUP, Virginia. Conversando sobre Políticas Cognitivas e Formação Inventiva. In: DIAS, Rosimeri. Oliveira (Org.). Formação Inventiva de Professores. Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina, 2012. P. 52-60.).

Niterói’s Educational Assessment System (SAEN) was instituted in 2013 through Municipal Law 3.067. The system encompasses the Avaliar para Conhecer (“Assess to Know”) programme, in which students take exams in order to, as expressed by the local government, assess their level of knowledge. In this section, we advance our mapping of Niterói’s Spanish curricular policies by examining the Spanish exam given in 2013, the year in which the SAEN was implemented.

Officially, the SAEN is predicated on the notion that the study of assessment outcomes can lead to the development of initiatives to improve the quality of teaching. However, as sustained by Vasconcellos and Maurício (2018VASCONCELLOS, Carla Cristina Martins da Conceição; MAURÍCIO, Lúcia Velloso. Sistema de Avaliação da Educação de Niterói: a percepção de professores no contexto da prática. Revista Teias, UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 19, n. 54, p. 193-208, jul./set. 2018., p. 2000), although the system is supposed to assess more than simply how much students have learned vis-à-vis the official syllabus, “[…] the aspects of participation, protagonism and the wish to evaluate the other factors which affect educational processes […] are not tangible in the Context of Practice. In their everyday work, teachers cannot see the impacts and the ramifications of the SAEN”.

For reasons which were not made explicit in any official documents, the Spanish exam was only given to students in the 8^th and 9^th grades of Elementary Education-even though, at the time, the class was offered in all the grades of that level. The exam featured ten multiple-choice questions with four options each, all based on texts or fragments, as shown below:

Interestingly, all the questions are organized in a similar fashion. By and large - and without initiating a more in-depth discussion on conceptions of reading -, the entire exam can be said to include reading questions based on texts or fragments pertaining to a number of different genres. As regards text types, the 8^th-grade exam features eight narrative and two descriptive texts, whereas the 9^th-grade exam contains eight narrative and two argumentative texts. This signals a partial alignment with the Curricular References, which defined narration and argumentation, respectively, as predominant typologies in 8^th and 9^th grades.

Let us recall that, in the official curriculum, a discursive clash opposed a structuralist/communicative understanding of language to a more typological one, built upon contributions from Text Linguistics. In that document, from a quantitative viewpoint, tradition prevailed, and there was often no direct connection between lexico-grammatical content and the text types defined as predominant. The linearity envisioned for each grade relied heavily on the progression of linguistic contents. This discrepancy could also be seen in the coursebook adopted by the schools, which gradually introduced ever-more-complex systemic items while keeping them apart from genre-based work.

Considering all such factors, it can be argued that, in terms of foreign language assessment, the city of Niterói’s educational network chose to follow the standards of major national and international exams - such as the Prova Brasil, the PISA, or the ENEM -, rather than to align itself with its own curricular perspective (which, in theory, should orient both teachers’ work and students’ learning). This illuminates how struggles between conceptions can occur within the same educational, linguistic and cognitive public policies. As far as Spanish is concerned, the goal of the Avaliar para Conhecer programme seems to have been to prepare students for nationwide examinations, and not to determine to what extent the city’s own curricular proposal was being followed.

Spanish questions in the 2013 SAEN can be distributed as follows:

Table 5 reiterates the discrepancy between assessment and curricular orientations, insofar as the contents (or skills) tested in the questions do not reflect the network’s guidelines. This changes when we look at cognitive policies: in both cases, what prevails is an understanding of the world as a pre-given entity, with speakers and languages kept apart. The exam also adheres to a structuralist view of language, since texts are only present in order for students to locate references; extract explicit or implicit information; and employ their lexico-grammatical knowledge to identify systemic linguistic elements or analyse connectors. There is no room left for students to construct themselves as readers who, by means of the interlocution engendered by reading practices, co-participate in meaning-making,

Texts are not used to assess whether students have learned the contents prescribed by the official curriculum, or even by the selected coursebook. Reading is approached superficially, and there are no questions tackling how the texts are organized or dwelling on the subject matters which participate in the exercise of citizenship. All of this suggests that the exam does not abide by the official discourse which states that Spanish teaching is part of a critical, emancipatory enterprise. Furthermore, most of the texts revolve around subject matters which do not correspond to the ones in the Curricular References, and, even when there is a connection, the themes themselves are not directly emphasized. Finally, the questions do not explore the aforementioned skills of citizenship or the selected linguistic contents.

In conclusion, the official educational policies of the network bring together contrasting understanding of language and teaching - i.e., clashing linguistic policies. At the same time, such policies can all be understood as reiterating the same cognitive policy, based on the reproduction of previously established forms of knowledge. Intersections between curricula and assessment are informed by these different ways of conceptualizing language and teaching. While the network’s proposal may strike us as a thoughtless assemblage, we believe it is best understood as the upshot of an ongoing competition between, on the one hand, conventional pedagogical understandings and, on the other, educational policies derived from contexts such as the PNLD and large-scale examinations.

Final Remarks

The purpose of this text was to map the policies involved in the implementation of Spanish in Niterói’s municipal schools. These policies are informed by discursive positionings which propagate specific views on Basic Education and foreign language teaching, thereby championing specific formative enterprises. In the interest of shedding light upon these conflicts, our first cartographic step consisted in examining the discursive field with which we are concerned, namely, the field of educational and curricular policies in foreign language teaching. Then, as we circumscribed our discursive space, we centered our analysis on three documentary utterances.

We believe that the formulation, implementation and consolidation of educational and curricular policies all unfold amidst clashes and conflicts which, over time, gradually construct a curricular component in Brazilian schools. Analysing the specific case of Spanish can help us to understand how the language was, alternatively and at adjoining historical moments, given a rather official status (through its inclusion in laws at different levels) and made remarkably fragile by means of its complete removal from national educational policies.

Our cartography shows that Spanish still struggles to construct an effective place for itself-at least in Niterói’s municipal schools, where it is a compulsory curricular component for the third and fourth cycles of Elementary Education. Any knowledge which enters a classroom does so as the outcome of a political-discursive struggle; as such, it is necessarily provisional. However, other curricular components can be said to display a greater sense of alignment between their official guidelines and their assessment procedures.

Our trajectory revealed a panorama in which structuralist or communicative views of foreign language teaching tend to be favored. Language is oftentimes divorced from its role in the construction of subjectivities, realities, social relations and worldviews, as well as in the production of otherness. To restate a point made at the beginning: if the teaching of Spanish gained momentum and became official on account of its relevance for the Mercosul (i.e., an essentially economic enterprise), then it is no wonder that a more utilitarian view of language currently prevails. The same happens with English, a language often described as business oriented.

Such policies should be understood as consequences of a contemporary, provisional discursive stability which defines that education, in lieu of engaging in the construction of a more equal society, should channel its efforts into producing a non-critical workforce. The way English is overvalued, for example, by the recent High School (dis)reformation and by the National Common Curricular Core (BNCC), reinforces such discourses: not only because these are centralizing measures, but because they reflect a homogenizing, antidemocratic project - the massive training of market-ready workers.

This scenario illustrates how fragile Spanish and other foreign languages remain in curricula. If we wish to change this situation, debate is paramount: not in order to strengthen a particular curricular component, or to further particular theoretical understandings, but to reflect on “[…] why go to school, what must be learned, what we wish to know” (Fernandes; Freitas, 2007FERNANDES, Claudia; FREITAS, Luiz Carlos. Indagações sobre Currículo: currículo e avaliação. Brasília: MEC/SEB, 2007., p. 36).

There is a long road ahead. We hope this paper may have contributed with ongoing discussions which bring Education and Language Studies together. Our overriding goal was to enhance our critical understanding of how educational policies are constructed, implemented, and consolidated; of how they impact pedagogical practices; and of how different, competing discourses assign different meanings to Basic Education. On a more optimistic note, we hope we have been able to encourage the creation of policies based not on recognition, but on reinvention (Kastrup, 2005KASTRUP, Virginia. Políticas Cognitivas na Formação do Professor e o Problema do Devir-Mestre. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 93, p. 1273-1288, set./dez. 2005.), with students positioned as protagonists who can produce meanings about the world and about their own existence in it.

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