Que inglês é esse que eu quero saber: uma afroeducação plurilingue e decolonial na Escola Afro-brasileira Maria Felipa

Abstract

Given the growth of so-called bilingual schools in Brazil and the commercial and social impact generated by this expansion, this paper focuses on an Afro-Brazilian school located in Salvador, the blackest city outside of Africa, with the purpose of understanding the possibilities of perspective others (Matos, 2022) for bilingual education in the country. In this scenario, the main objective is to delve into the particularities of this educational context in order to investigate how a decolonial and Afrocentric bilingual education is configured at that school. The methodological approach is qualitative, with the ethnographic case study being adopted as a research strategy. Class observations and semi-structured interviews with the pedagogical team are used as research instruments, in order to generate data on the educational process and pedagogical practices. The theoretical framework is composed of studies on Bilingual Education (Megale, 2005, 2018, 2019; García, 2009; Liberali et al., 2022, among others) Decoloniality (Gonzalez, 1988, 2018; Mignolo, 2007; Maldonado-Torres, 2016; Quijano, 1992; Carneiro, 2005; Bernardino-Costa, 2018; Grosfoguel, 2018; Fanon, 2008; Santos, 2001; Gomes, 2018, Bispo Dos Santos, 2023, among others) and Afrocentricity (Nascimento, 2009; Finch Iii , 2009; Mazama 2009; Asante, 2014; Noguera, 2010; Njeri, 2020, among others). In this scope, I analyzed the bilingual (Portuguese-English) pedagogical proposal adopted by the school, aiming at understanding the decolonial and Afro-centered concepts that guide the teachers' pedagogical practices. To this end, the institution's Political-Pedagogical Project (PPP) was also analyzed with the purpose of finding out how this document materializes in the English language classroom. Finally, I reflected on “a linguistic education aligned with a critical and insurgent perspective” (Mendes, 2022) in order to contribute to studies in the area of Applied Linguistics with a focus on Bilingual Education.