Avaliação da alfabetização: Provinha Brasil

Abstract

The present text is part of the results of a wider documental study whose objective was to analyze the programs focused on child literacy implemented by the Ministry for Education since 2003. It seeks to understand the origins of the Program for Literacy Assessment and the changes that happened during its development; also, based on the exam of the Reference Matrices for the Assessment of Full and Initial Literacy and of the documents that comprise the kit of the Provinha Brasil, it aims at understanding the conceptions of full and initial literacy, of idiom/language and of reading that give support to the assessment model adopted by the Ministry for Education. It concludes that the program has its origins in the definitions made by world organizations for the literacy decade (2003-2012). The autonomous model of literacy is the ground of the Assessment Program and, because of that, the emphasis lies on the learning of the abstract units of language. Reading, a dimension associated to initial literacy, is understood as the process of decoding and identifying ideas expressed in explicit form in short texts. Considering the aspect analyzed, the article proposes that the conception of idiom/language as a structure sustains the creation of the Reference Matrices and the construction of the topics of the exam. Finally, it questions in what way the Provinha Brasil, thought of as a pedagogical instrument, may be able to contribute to the formation of readers and writers.