LANGUAGE POLICIES AND INTERNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN BRAZIL: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM APPLIED LINGUISTS (original) (raw)

Local agency in national language policies: the internationalisation of higher education in a Brazilian institution

CURRENT ISSUES IN LANGUAGE PLANNING, 2019

This study discusses agency in language policy and planning (LPP) development from the perspective of Brazilian national language policies reflected in the local LPP programme/initiative of a public university in the Southeast region of the country. With that goal, national and local (institutional) documents are analysed and contrasted with the perceptions of local agents – or people with interest in Baldauf’s terminology – comprised of students of a Brazilian government-funded programme called Languages without Borders (LwB) at that university. The perceptions of the academic community (students, lecturers and administrative staff) were obtained through an online questionnaire. The results show that top-down national policies had a great impact on the development of local policies, leaving little room for bottom-up local agency. The study concludes that the university lacked a coherent language approach that connected the macro, meso and micro levels and the four categories of agents, namely, people with power, people with expertise, people with influence and people with interest. KEYWORDS Language policy; agency; internationalisation; multilingualism

Language and internationalization in Brazilian Higher Education: From policy to practice Linguagem e Internacionalização no Ensino Superior Brasileiro: Da política à prática

Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, 2023

Internationalization (in general) and Englishization (in particular) are processes currently at work in a number of Brazilian universities. This article provides an account of ethnographic research into language policy processes unfolding in one federal university. Firstly, an analysis of the university’s internationalization plan is presented. This documentary analysis is then accompanied by an interpretation of the perspectives of key social actors on how the policy has been implemented in their context. I conclude by highlighting the need for there to be wider engagement between senior management teams and university personnel on different scales relating to the development and implementation of internationalization plans.

“Looking for more Brazilian solutions”: Rhetorical Strategies against Ethnic Quotas in Brazilian Higher Education

Brasiliana- Journal for Brazilian Studies, 2018

These invited representatives, besides accuser and defendant (the party "Democrats" and the University of Brasília), comprised representatives of the judiciary (prosecutors, officials from the above mentioned SEPPIR), representatives of the State and Federal Agencies (MEC, FUNAI, IPEA, Fundação Palmares), representatives of civil society and social movements (AFROBRAS, EDUCAFRO, Instituto da Mulher Negra de São Paulo, Movimento Negro Socialista), universities and their representation bodies (UNE, Coordenação Nacional de Entidades Negras), and finally, renowned scientists, who had prominently participated in the earlier debate (five each to argue for and against the constitutionality).

The interconnection between languages and internationalization of higher education in Brazil.

In K. Finardi (Ed.), English in the South (pp. 22-50). Londrina: EDUEL., 2019

Abstract This paper investigates the role of languages in the internationalization of higher education by analyzing the programs of the last five editions of the largest Brazilian event on internationalization of education, the annual Conference promoted by the Brazilian Association of International Education (FAUBAI). Data were collected from the titles and abstracts of presentations from 2013 to 2017 Conference’s editions. Based on data analysis (Saldanã, 2009), eight categories and one subcategory emerged. The most recurrent category was Language Policies. Overall, the data show that FAUBAI Conferences have grown substantially over the last five years on par with the number of presentations on language-related issues. The analysis allows for the identification of trends and voices that constitute the incipient field of Languages and Internationalization of Higher Education in Brazil.

Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

Sociology Compass, 2010

Dozens of Brazilian universities recently adopted racial quotas for negros, read Afro-Brazilians, in higher education. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize this step as a paradigm shift in the state's approach to 'race'. State discourse in past decades touted a mixed-race population not beset by overt discriminatory practices. In response to this new approach, two welldefined clusters of professors in Brazil's universities authored several dueling manifestos supporting and opposing race-based affirmative action. This article suggests a 'culture war' framing of the debate and delineates the contrasting historic ideologies of racialism and antiracialism that inform the divergent racial worldviews of each academic camp. It then explores four points of contention from the manifestos that characterize their conflicting perspectives. They differ in terms of (1) their images of the Brazilian nation, (2) their diagnoses of the mechanisms behind non-white underrepresentation in Brazilian universities, (3) their prognoses for a remedy via racial quotas, and (4) their motivations for entering the debate. At the same time, the article locates some possible common ground. Dozens of public universities in Brazil have recently adopted racial quotas to increase the presence of negros, read Afro-Brazilians, in higher education. Moreover, the Brazilian national congress is considering legislating racial quotas in the country's federal universities. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize these steps as uncharacteristic. Race-based policies directed at its citizens have been absent in post-abolition Brazil in terms of both negative and positive discrimination, much unlike post-abolition United States (Bailey 2009; Telles 2004). State-level discourse in past decades touted a mixed population not beset by the types of discriminatory practices that would illicit race-based intervention. Hence, new affirmative action policies place 'race' center stage in a society previously reticent to officially engage it. Some applaud this 'progression'; others lament this 'regression'. In fact, the opposing views on Brazil's new race-targeted policies are well-defined and locked in a bitter battle reminiscent of 'culture wars' (DiMaggio 2003; Hunter 1991). These are 'conflicts over issues that are rooted in non-negotiable conceptions of cultural and moral order' (Mouw and Sobel 2001, p. 915) and are typified by a lack of common ground between sides. In the United States, the culture war concept has been employed to understand the struggle between conservative evangelicals and liberals, and over such issues as abortion, gay rights, feminism, among others. The tenacity of the US culture war did not reside, however, in single policy issues, but involved greater stakes such as the country's self-image and culture. Evidence of culture wars might typically entail dramatic splits in public opinion or perhaps even the possibility of violence between factions (DiMaggio 2003; Mouw and Sobel 2001). In contrast, in Brazil, the warring sides are not numerous population segments, but two clusters sharing space in Brazil's universities-its professors. These pro-and antiquota intellectuals view the issues surrounding the relationship between inequality in

Not just racial quotas: affirmative action in Brazilian higher education 10 years later

This paper examines how affirmative action in Brazilian public universities has evolved from the start of the new millennium up to recent years. After an overview of the existing policies in public universities, we explain these patterns based on an analysis of the processes internal and external to the universities. Although these policies were initially thought of as racial quotas, class-based criteria have predominated, while the racial criteria became relatively circumscribed. Within the institutions, affirmative action brought new concerns about how to support and retain low-income students, as well as a discussion about racism, although the latter remains controversial.

Social Inclusion in Brazilian Universities: the case of UFBa 1

In 1996, during an ANPOCS [Brazilian Association of Postgraduate Programs and Research in Social Sciences] roundtable which debated the possibility of the implementation of affirmative actions for black people at Brazilian universities, we heard two arguments which would be repeated over the following years in various forms. The first, put forward by Carlos Hasembalg, was that if these programs were implemented there would be serious problems with regard to their applicability, since the boundaries between groups of colour in Brazil are very flexible; the second, put forward by Fábio Wanderley Reis, stated that whereas the class struggle ideology had a libertarian nature, as classes would be abolished once the proletariat reached power, ethnic-racial policies, when implemented, tended to fix colour groups, instead of dissolving them into the nation: that is, classes have a dialectic whose characteristic was that of being superseded; races do not. During the debate that followed, a professor in the audience asked a question which reflected everyone's fears: would not the quality of Brazilian public universities fall to the standard of secondary public schools from where beneficiaries of affirmative actions were expected to come from? At this event, one of the authors of this text (Guimarães 1996) argued that if frauds sabotaged affirmative actions, these policies would in fact have to be abandoned, but he believed that the colour groups in Brazil were relatively stable and, in theory, we should not expect the number of frauds to be any higher than those that occur in relation to policies aimed at the low income population, for example. With regard to Reis' argument, Guimarães (1996) doubted, above all, whether it was possible to maintain the belief that we are a racially homogeneous nation when clearly we never have been. Ten years have passed since that roundtable and we now have data with which to assess the policies of affirmative actions for black people at Brazilian universities,

Universities, inequalities and public policy: A brief discussion of affirmative action in higher education in Brazil

2017

In this article, affirmative actions for Afro-Brazilians and poor people in Brazilian public universities will be analyzed. Introduced in the early 2000s, these measures provoked intense public debate in the country, calling into question not only the viability of their application in a country with such a high level of miscegenation as Brazil, but also their effects on the quality of Brazilian universities. Our starting point is that these policies should not be considered only educational policies, since they are also ways to symbolically reframe the place of some social groups (poor people and black people) in the national imaginary. With this objective, we propose to understand the transformations in university education over the last two decades (an increase in the number of students, social and ethnic-racial diversification of the student population etc.) as evidence of changes not only in universities but also in Brazilian society as a whole. Dans cet article, nous analysons ...

Affirmative Action in the Brazilian Higher Education System

Affirmative Action in the Brazilian Higher Education System Abstract The purpose of this article is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of affirmative action in the Brazilian system of higher education, which is aimed at benefitting Afro-Brazilians suffering from the legacy of structural racism and economic inequality. The authors will highlight some of the problems linked to the racial quota system, and demonstrate that its implementation is deeply hindered by several factors, such as traditional denial of existing racial prejudice in Brazilian society, a lack of precise, normative definitions of eligibility for programs, failure of pre-university public education to properly prepare students for university-level academics, and – last but not least – a lack of sufficient support from academic institutions. The article will present both quantitative and qualitative data that show the expectations, doubts, and fears of the Brazilian academic environment with regard to the racial quota system. After a review of Brazil's racial history and an analysis of students' and professors' opinions, the authors will argue that, in order for colored citizens to become fully integrated into Brazilian society, they must first be legally enabled to overcome social, educational, and economic obstacles and handicap.