Abstract

OLIVEIRA, João Batista Araujo e. Construtivismo e alfabetização: um casamento que não deu certo. Ensaio: aval. pol. públ. educ. [online]. 2002, vol.10, n.35, pp.161-200. ISSN 0104-4036.

The Federal and most state and municipal departments of Education have adopted whole-language, known in Brazil as constructivism, as the official literacy orientation. Yet, the scientific evidence on how reading should be taught indicates such methods are inadequate. The paper reviews the theoretical and empirical evidence on the matter, discusses the inadequacies and shortcomings of constructivism approaches as well as the limitations of the scarce empirical evidence. I also discuss the reasons why constructivism became so popular in the country. The paper concludes by summarizing the main findings of psycholinguistics and cognitive sciences that explain the superiority of explicit developing phonemic awareness and teaching phonics.

Keywords : Whole Language; Teaching Reading; Phonics.

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