SCHOOL DIFFICULTIES IN CABINDA/ANGOLA: WHAT DO MONOGRAPHS SAY?

• Main Authors: Maria Helena Canhici, Maria de Fátima Cardoso Gomes
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Estadual de Maringá 2016-11-01
• Series: Psicologia em Estudo
• Subjects: Psicologia histórico-cultural; dificuldades escolares; ensino fundamental.
• Online Access: http://www.periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/PsicolEstud/article/view/31687
• ISSN: 1413-7372; 1807-0329

This study analyzed two monographs of Pedagogy and Psychology, from ISCED/UON/Cabinda/Angola. The study was based on the Historical - Cultural perspective of Vygotsky articulated with Bakhtin's concept of speech genre. In these monographs we find a variety of senses and meanings. These senses and meanings appear as synonyms for poor school performance, school failure, learning difficulties. However, despite this diversity, we find as a common denominator the view that the difficulties are individual and from a biological background. They are located on students and their families. Thus, schooling processes in these schools in Cabinda, although they include students in schools, they also walk towards the exclusion of the same students, which tells us that the difficulties are not necessarily in learning, but in this exclusionary process of schooling. For monographs also point out the precarious working conditions of schools and teacher training, in addition to the linguistic differences between the local language and Portuguese – the language that is spoken and written in schools - as factors contributing to the exclusion of many of the students. This reveals the double face of modernity: on the one hand it includes students within schools, on the other, excludes them from the teaching-learning processes when sociocultural differences are expressed. Through our analysis we realized that in schools in Cabinda, as in many schools in Brazil, reading, writing and mathematics are taught as individual skills acquisitions and not as human activities as taught in Vygotsky.