Literacy events and practices around literary training in basic education in Mexico

Abstract

This article presents descriptive results on the events and literacy practices in which teachers and students participate in the field of literature within the subjects Spanish and Mother Tongue. Spanish of basic education in Mexico. Literary literacy seeks to train readers who enjoy, understand, and appreciate literary works. In addition, it recognizes that the reading and writing of literary works becomes a practice where meaning is socialized and created in accordance with the values, beliefs, and identities of the community where it is experienced. The research was ethnographic carried out in a public elementary school in Hermosillo, Sonora. Mexico, during January and February 2020, in which 12 teachers and 144 students participated. The data produced by the questionnaire, the focal interview and the observation show: a) a dissociation in the educational policy and the practice in the school around the promotion and literary appreciation, b) the Spanish Lecturas textbooks are not used because the activities of the basic Spanish text and Spanish Mother Language are not linked to each other, c) it is considered that the social practices of the language are very complex to be implemented in the classroom and that they are decontextualized from the interests of the student body and, d) there is an incongruity between the external evaluations of educational quality with what is established in the curricular plans that currently converge: 2011 and 2017. In conclusion, there is a tense context because teachers are forced to make decisions between their didactic practices, their teaching beliefs and the demands of educational policy; this tension prevents that the promotion and teaching of literature and literacy from encouraging the construction of meanings, where the student body builds their own discourse and where interdisciplinarity and intertextuality are made possible.