TEACHERS ' BELIEFS ABOUT COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE IN TEACHING-LEARNING PORTUGUESE MOTHER TONGUE
Key words: Beliefs of teachers. Communicative competence. Intercultural perspective portuguese mother tongue. Applied Linguistics.
Considering that the concept of beliefs is very important for language teaching and learning, bearing in mind that their awareness can lead to positive changes in teachers' practice, mainly because "[…] beliefs have a strong impact on our behavior" (BARCELOS, 2006, p. 25), the main objective of this qualitative research of ethnographic basis is to investigate the teachers' beliefs about communicative competence and intercultural perspective in the teaching-learning of portuguese mother tongue, in view of the reality of the classroom, the guiding documents and the didactic materials used in some state schools of Itabuna. In order to achieve this goal, we count on the participation of ten (10) teachers who collaborated with the research and we use as instruments of data collection a questionnaire about beliefs, a semi-structured interview, ethnographic registration through classroom field notes and autobiographical narratives. We also carried out the analysis of two (2) textbooks that were being used in the state schools at the time of the research and we verified the treatment of this theme in the main documents that validate the teaching of the portuguese mother tongue of High School. The results of the research point to the need to include critical reflection on the beliefs inherent to communicative competence and intercultural perspective under the bias of Applied Linguistics, in the training courses and in the portuguese mother tongue classroom, allowing the problematization of differences and identities, the focus on the meaningful use of language and the recognition of the protagonism of language in the construction of a more peaceful, just and solidary society.