Volume 10, Number 2

A “Bird’s Eye View” on Communication Acts in a Classroom of Low Literacy Adults

  Authors

Carlos Luís^{1, 2}, Helena Afonso³ and Maria José Marcelino¹, ¹CISUC and FCTUC Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, ²IEFP-Centro de Formação Profissional de Coimbra, Portugal, ³IEFP-Delegação Regional do Centro IEFP Coimbra, Portugal

  Introduction

This paper starts by discussing the relevance of dialogues in Adult Education and Training courses with low levels of literacy. In this group, the educational challenges are complex, and innovating the knowledge creation process involves a better understanding of the teaching/learning process. With these case study, we pretend to understand which Communicative Acts are effective in adult learning process, mainly in adults with low literacy. Based on a mixed methods, applied to a convenience sample, we used an ethnographic approach, and the Grounded Theory Methodology. Using the Contextual Design approach, we developed several models of the context (work models) and got a bird's-eye view of the way the communicational acts and the dynamic acts flow in the classroom. The results showed that it was important to integrate the learners' emotions in an existing framework, the SEDA Framework. We found also essential to expand the Communicative Acts coding, with a new set of 17 codes organized in 3 categories in order to understand better the flow of communication in the classroom.

  Keywords

Adult Education, Literacy, Classroom acts, learning environments, Human-Computer-Interaction.