Blog Reflection in Action: Letters’s students’ discourse in reflective processes construction in a virtual environment

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate evidences of reflective processes and how they develop in a collaborative educational blog. The participants that took part in the discourse community were students of courses of languages (Portuguese/English) in four Brazilian universities over a period of six months. Based on the interactions which occurred in and because of the blog, we analyzed how the group developed reflective processes. The theoretical foundation for the research is provided by Smyth (1992), and Zeichner (1994) with respect to critical reflection, together with Gomes (1995), Lanza (2007), and Rodrigues (2008) with regard to teaching and learning in a virtual environment and blogs. The research questions were: 1) what possible evidence of reflective processes can be observed in the interactions among the participants?, and 2) how the group sought to build reflective processes in this virtual environment? The theoretical and methodological paradigm is based on interpretative approach (ERICKSON, 1986/1990). Results point out that students presented ingenuous reflections and they do not question the ideological effects of their discourse.

Keywords

• discurso
• reflexão crítica
• formação de professores
• TIC
• tecnologia
• língua estrangeira