After years of debate, the new curricular standards known as the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), proposed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC), were released in December 2018. The BNCC is a normative document that provides a framework for all students from preschool to high school, in both private and public schools, setting academic standards that every student is expected to learn at each grade level. A new Federal Law 13415/17 has been introduced, requiring states and municipalities to implement the changes in the new curriculum by 2024. This presentation discusses a series of workshops and a handbook developed to support Brazilian teachers in implementing the new curriculum standards in their English classes. The handbook, titled "Application of BNCC for High School English Classes," provides an overview of the document for teachers. Additionally, six online sessions have been organized to support teachers' professional development in implementing BNCC practices. The workshops will take place with high school teachers across Brazil in March and April 2023. The presentation will focus on the development of both the handbook and the workshops, as well as some preliminary data collection.
Dr. Vania Castro currently holds the Werner Baer Post-Doctoral Position at the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She is developing an innovative framework to support Brazilian teachers in implementing the new curriculum standards at schools. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil in May 2021. She was a visiting scholar with the CAPES/PRINT program at UIUC in 2019 and 2020 where she developed part of her doctoral studies. Her work focused on the use of mobile devices to support teachers and students from underprivileged areas in Brazil. She was also a Fulbright scholar at Florida State University (FSU) from 2015-2016. Her current research interests include emerging technologies in education, mobile learning, multiliteracies, teacher education, and artificial intelligence.
