Ana Souza
Oxford Brookes University, School of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Visiting Academic (Honorary)
My research interests include bilingualism, language and identity, language choices, Brazilian migration, language planning (in families and migrant churches), complementary schools, the teaching of Portuguese as a heritage language, and the training of language teachers. My work has been published in edited books and academic journals such as Children & Society, Current Issues in Language Planning, International Journal of Multilingualism, Language Issues, Portuguese Studies, Revista Travessia, The Curriculum Journal, and Women’s Studies International Forum. A translation into Portuguese of six of my articles can be found in Português como Língua de Herança em Londres: recortes em casa, na igreja e na escola (2016).
Before joining UFG, I was a Visiting Professor at University of Brasília - UnB (2018-2020), a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Oxford Brookes University (2015-2018), a Visiting Academic at UCL, Institute of Education (2014-2015), a Research Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London (2012-2014), an MA Dissertation Supervisor at King’s College London (2010-2012), a Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London (2009-2012), St. Mary’s University (2011-2012), Kingston University (2011), and Cass School of Education, University of East London (2009).
I graduated in Language Teaching and Translation (Portuguese/English) in Brazil, where I taught EFL. I taught ESOL and Portuguese in the UK, where I did my postgraduate studies. I did my MA in English Language Teaching at Thames Valley University (present West London University) and conducted my doctoral research on language and identity issues at the University of Southampton. I completed my PGCE in Teaching and Management in Higher Education at Goldsmiths, University of London and became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Before joining UFG, I was a Visiting Professor at University of Brasília - UnB (2018-2020), a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Oxford Brookes University (2015-2018), a Visiting Academic at UCL, Institute of Education (2014-2015), a Research Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London (2012-2014), an MA Dissertation Supervisor at King’s College London (2010-2012), a Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London (2009-2012), St. Mary’s University (2011-2012), Kingston University (2011), and Cass School of Education, University of East London (2009).
I graduated in Language Teaching and Translation (Portuguese/English) in Brazil, where I taught EFL. I taught ESOL and Portuguese in the UK, where I did my postgraduate studies. I did my MA in English Language Teaching at Thames Valley University (present West London University) and conducted my doctoral research on language and identity issues at the University of Southampton. I completed my PGCE in Teaching and Management in Higher Education at Goldsmiths, University of London and became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
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Journal articles by Ana Souza
Methodology: The data were collected as part of a three-year multi-sited collaborative team ethnography documenting how migrant children become literate in faith settings.
Data and analysis: The data consist of participant observations across religious education classes, the Temple and the home, and interviews with the key participant child, Chantia, her brother and the Chief priest at the Temple. The analysis focuses on instances in the data where sacred language learning and performance are thematised. Additionally, we analyse a digital video recording of Chantia’s daily morning prayers using transvisuals.
Findings: Learning Sanskrit consists of integrating a limited set of Sanskrit religious texts and practices, such as key religious concepts, mantras and poetic verses in children’s evolving religious repertoire and is embedded in children’s everyday religious socialisation across contexts. Chantia unites and syncretises a range of conventionalised semiotic resources, including religious texts in Sanskrit to communicate with the Divine and personalise her act of worship.
Conclusions: Children’s religious repertoires are learned, deployed, adapted and expanded differently depending on the affordances of the socio-cultural context. Chantia’s meaning-making process is much more complex than the rigid categorisation of the different modal resources she deploys, forming an integrated system of communication.
Originality: Our conceptualization of Sanskrit sacred language learning is anchored on a multilingual and multimodal perspective that does not privilege Sanskrit over other (sacred) languages nor linguistic over non-linguistic resources.
Significance: Our paper extends current critique of logocentric perspectives in applied and sociolinguistics to the examination of religious repertoires that are often driven by a communication hierarchy positioning sacred languages at the top and other aspects of communication as secondary.
- Originalmente publicado em inglês em MELO-PFEIFER, S; SOUZA, A. Portuguese as a Heritage Language – teaching and learning from a pluricentric perspective. In: SOUZA, A.; MELO-PFEIFER, S. (Eds.) Portuguese as a Heritage Language – a pluricentric perspective (p. 23-48). Campinas: Pontes, 2021. Algumas alterações menores foram feitas no sentido de eliminar referências intertextuais aos restantes capítulos incluídos no livro.
sustainability in complementary schools in England as an example of how schools in precarious circumstances seek to ensure their survival and growth. The schools provide parttime education outside of mainstream, state-funded school systems in many countries. Often
established by migrant and minority ethnic groups to teach language, culture, religion and/or to consolidate state school learning, a lack of resources can threaten their stability and development. Using concepts from organisational sustainability and leadership succession
planning, we analyse data collected from seven Brazilian and Chinese complementary school leaders in England. Our focus on the little researched context of complementary schools adds
to the understanding of leading and managing in distinctive and challenging circumstances. Their inclusion in the debates and research can foster different insights into the ways that schools in diverse and challenging contexts seek to ensure their survival and growth.
last thirty or so years has led to the development of the
teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as a community language abroad. In other words, this type of teaching is new, and consequently, the teachers working in community schools tend to have been trained only to work with monolingual pupils in Brazil. In this article, we reflect on the experience of one of these teachers who works with intermediate and upper-intermediate pupils aged 11 to 15 in London. The class that caters for this group of learners was initially created with the aim of preparing them to take mainstream examinations, i.e. GCSE and A-levels in Portuguese. In this article, we describe the contextual background for these
lessons and contrast it to the teacher’s expectations of
teaching in this context. We then consider the few teaching courses available for teachers of Portuguese as a community language in London. Anderson’s (2008) perceived 8-strand professional development needs of community language teachers are used as a framework for analysing the experience of this Brazilian teacher. We acknowledge the positive impact of these courses on teacher knowledge and practices and call for more of these initiatives.
Souza 2006), suggests that the mothers'identity is strongly affected by their cultural experiences in both their countries of origin and of immigration as well as by their linguistic experiences with their mother tongue (Brazilian Portuguese) and the local language (British English).
Chapters in books by Ana Souza
It was also in the second decade of the 21st century that Brazilian religious diversity officially had an impact on the country’s educational context. It was then that religion was highlighted as an important issue to be integrated into teacher education curriculum in Brazil (Resolution CNE/CP 2, July 1, 2015; https://normativasconselhos.mec.gov.br/normativa/view/CNE_RES_CNECPN22015.pdf?query=LICENCIATURA). Therefore, the ongoing research on which this chapter draws aims to investigate teacher educators’ and student teachers’ perspectives – also referred to as teacher beliefs (Shah, 2021) – on the inclusion of religion in the Brazilian language teaching curriculum, with specific reference to the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Portuguese as a Mother-Tongue (PMT) and Portuguese as a Heritage1 Language (POHL).
Methodology: The data were collected as part of a three-year multi-sited collaborative team ethnography documenting how migrant children become literate in faith settings.
Data and analysis: The data consist of participant observations across religious education classes, the Temple and the home, and interviews with the key participant child, Chantia, her brother and the Chief priest at the Temple. The analysis focuses on instances in the data where sacred language learning and performance are thematised. Additionally, we analyse a digital video recording of Chantia’s daily morning prayers using transvisuals.
Findings: Learning Sanskrit consists of integrating a limited set of Sanskrit religious texts and practices, such as key religious concepts, mantras and poetic verses in children’s evolving religious repertoire and is embedded in children’s everyday religious socialisation across contexts. Chantia unites and syncretises a range of conventionalised semiotic resources, including religious texts in Sanskrit to communicate with the Divine and personalise her act of worship.
Conclusions: Children’s religious repertoires are learned, deployed, adapted and expanded differently depending on the affordances of the socio-cultural context. Chantia’s meaning-making process is much more complex than the rigid categorisation of the different modal resources she deploys, forming an integrated system of communication.
Originality: Our conceptualization of Sanskrit sacred language learning is anchored on a multilingual and multimodal perspective that does not privilege Sanskrit over other (sacred) languages nor linguistic over non-linguistic resources.
Significance: Our paper extends current critique of logocentric perspectives in applied and sociolinguistics to the examination of religious repertoires that are often driven by a communication hierarchy positioning sacred languages at the top and other aspects of communication as secondary.
- Originalmente publicado em inglês em MELO-PFEIFER, S; SOUZA, A. Portuguese as a Heritage Language – teaching and learning from a pluricentric perspective. In: SOUZA, A.; MELO-PFEIFER, S. (Eds.) Portuguese as a Heritage Language – a pluricentric perspective (p. 23-48). Campinas: Pontes, 2021. Algumas alterações menores foram feitas no sentido de eliminar referências intertextuais aos restantes capítulos incluídos no livro.
sustainability in complementary schools in England as an example of how schools in precarious circumstances seek to ensure their survival and growth. The schools provide parttime education outside of mainstream, state-funded school systems in many countries. Often
established by migrant and minority ethnic groups to teach language, culture, religion and/or to consolidate state school learning, a lack of resources can threaten their stability and development. Using concepts from organisational sustainability and leadership succession
planning, we analyse data collected from seven Brazilian and Chinese complementary school leaders in England. Our focus on the little researched context of complementary schools adds
to the understanding of leading and managing in distinctive and challenging circumstances. Their inclusion in the debates and research can foster different insights into the ways that schools in diverse and challenging contexts seek to ensure their survival and growth.
last thirty or so years has led to the development of the
teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as a community language abroad. In other words, this type of teaching is new, and consequently, the teachers working in community schools tend to have been trained only to work with monolingual pupils in Brazil. In this article, we reflect on the experience of one of these teachers who works with intermediate and upper-intermediate pupils aged 11 to 15 in London. The class that caters for this group of learners was initially created with the aim of preparing them to take mainstream examinations, i.e. GCSE and A-levels in Portuguese. In this article, we describe the contextual background for these
lessons and contrast it to the teacher’s expectations of
teaching in this context. We then consider the few teaching courses available for teachers of Portuguese as a community language in London. Anderson’s (2008) perceived 8-strand professional development needs of community language teachers are used as a framework for analysing the experience of this Brazilian teacher. We acknowledge the positive impact of these courses on teacher knowledge and practices and call for more of these initiatives.
Souza 2006), suggests that the mothers'identity is strongly affected by their cultural experiences in both their countries of origin and of immigration as well as by their linguistic experiences with their mother tongue (Brazilian Portuguese) and the local language (British English).
It was also in the second decade of the 21st century that Brazilian religious diversity officially had an impact on the country’s educational context. It was then that religion was highlighted as an important issue to be integrated into teacher education curriculum in Brazil (Resolution CNE/CP 2, July 1, 2015; https://normativasconselhos.mec.gov.br/normativa/view/CNE_RES_CNECPN22015.pdf?query=LICENCIATURA). Therefore, the ongoing research on which this chapter draws aims to investigate teacher educators’ and student teachers’ perspectives – also referred to as teacher beliefs (Shah, 2021) – on the inclusion of religion in the Brazilian language teaching curriculum, with specific reference to the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Portuguese as a Mother-Tongue (PMT) and Portuguese as a Heritage1 Language (POHL).
Anderson, J. (2011) ‘Reshaping pedagogies for a plurilingual agenda’ in Language Learning Journal, 39(2): 135-147.
Montrul, S. (2011). ‘Introduction: Spanish Heritage Speakers: Bridging Formal Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Pedagogy’ in Heritage Language Journal, 8(1): i-vi.
studies in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. With this purpose, the multidisciplinarity
(engagement with different disciplines) and the interdisciplinarity (application of methods and
approaches of different disciplines) involved in researching religion as a dimension of identity
and the link between language and religion in language and identity studies are covered. These
issues are introduced with a discussion of the development of the Sociology of Language and
Religion (SLR) as a subfield of sociolinguistics in the twenty-first century. One fundamental
issue in the studies of language and religion is that both aspects play an important role as identity
markers. An overview of identity and its relationship to language, to religion, and to language
and religion is presented in the following section. Issues of language and religious identities are
then revisited with an examination of ongoing debates in applied linguistics in relation to faith
literacies, language planning and policy, and faith and English language teaching. A number of
denominations, a variety of contexts and a diversity of ethnic groups were used to illustrate the
relevance of language, religion and identity in different parts of the world although the chapter
has in the main focused on studies involving Christian and Muslim participants and/or contexts.
in language use in the religious practices of migrants and the impact that the language choices of the church have on the language development of migrant communities. We learn that ethnic churches have increasingly adopted the use of technology as part of their services and as a way of maintaining transnational
links. This chapter reminds us of the important role that language plays through this rich examination of the interface of language, religion and technology.
University of Miami, USA
“This volume, edited by Ana Souza and Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer, makes a significant new contribution to the study of provision for Heritage Language (…) education. It does so by focusing on the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a Heritage Language (…) in different countries in Europe and by providing an account of developments relating to the teaching and learning of European and Brazilian varieties of Portuguese. As we read across the chapters, we see that the issues and processes identified through the research and practice presented here resonate with issues and processes that are also investigated in other fields of socio and applied linguistics. In fact, some chapters make explicit references to these fields. These fields include research into the multi-layered nature of language policy processes, sociolinguistic studies of multilingualism in migration contexts, the sociolinguistics of globalization and the study of language ideologies, particularly those pertaining to the nexus of language-nation-identity. They also include applied linguistics research into language learning in the context of reduced input, into motivations for language learning, into initial teacher education and the continuing professional development of language teachers.” - Mariyn Martin-Jones, University of Birmingham, England
As iniciativas em prol da manutenção do Português como Língua de Herança são o foco da segunda seção, que dá uma ampla amostra de projetos criados para preservar heranças linguísticas e demarcar espaços mais adequados e democráticos para os herdeiros da língua portuguesa que vivem na diáspora.
Podemos afirmar que o presente trabalho é uma preciosa contribuição para o avanço da discussão sobre o POLH, pois possibilita aos pesquisadores, aos professores e aos pais a reflexão sobre práticas mais recentes ao redor do mundo e sobre a necessidade de formação nesse âmbito para a elaboração funcional de materiais didáticos específicos. Além disso, enriquece, de maneira rigorosa, o panorama bibliográfico dessa que já definimos como “disciplina” com dignidade acadêmica."
Profa. Dra. Katia de Abreu Chulata, Universidade de Pescara, Itália.