The subject-matter of this study is the investigation of knowledge
construction processes, carried out in school institutions through the
observation of face to face interaction among classroom participants in the
lesson environment. We aim at demonstrating that the construction of
knowledge is not something individually performed by one subject, nor is it
consequence of pure internalization of information, which is received,
treated and stored in the student's mind. On the contrary, it has, in fact,
essentially public nature and occurs due to contextually situated
social-interactive activity, by the negotiation of versions of reality, and
by the sharing of common grounds. We have made use of selected excerpts
from lessons on several subjects, which have been collected through
fieldwork in fourth and fifth grade public school classrooms as part of a
research of ethnographic interests, and we have proceeded to the analysis
of these data according to an interpretive method, which seeks to answer
the query on what is happening in classroom regarding knowledge
construction. This analysis is founded on the theoretical assumptions of
cognitive linguistics – mainly on the social-cognitive hypothesis of
language; on categorization studies and processes of conceptualization
verified in the development of discourse; as well as on the interactive
postulates of modern linguistics and ethnography of communication. Our
results prove the productivity of varied processes of collective categories
construction, undertook within face to face interaction; the prominent role
of collaborative action to the construction of ways of acting interactively
in classroom contexts; and the broad participation of the subjects engaged
in the lessons in the elaboration and negotiation of discourse-objects,
which are the touchstone of knowledge construction.
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