Course History:

The history of the Graduate Program in Language Teaching (PPGEL) has its origins in the experience of a group of professors offering three Specialization courses at UNIPAMPA: (1) from 2010-2012, the “Letters and Languages” Course; (2) in 2012, the implementation of the “Reading and Writing” Course; and (3) in 2013, the specialization in “Language and Teaching” began functioning.

It’s important to highlight that these courses, focused on improving the quality of basic education, by an assessment of the regional educational reality and the enhancement of teaching professionalism, granted  a productive interaction between critical research conducted by Basic Education teachers about their respective teaching contexts and the experience of professors from the graduation in Letters course, especially as advisers of undergraduate supervised internships. This interaction led to the generation and dissemination of knowledge about schools, particularly public ones. This rich context of continuous education gave rise to the current Program.

Regarding the regional demand, it can be affirmed that there is a significant number of professionals coming from undergraduate courses in Letters and Pedagogy in the region, whether in person or distance courses – who constitute the program’s target audience – and who require courses for their professional qualification, which are lacking in the southern half of Rio Grande do Sul.

In response to this demand, the PPGEL – Professional Master’s Degree – at Unipampa/Campus Bagé, created in 2014, has been strongly working to qualify its actions for the continuous education of teachers in the areas of Letters and Pedagogy.

Since its inception, PPGEL has awarded Master’s degrees to 83 graduates in Language Teaching. It is evaluated by the Linguistics/Literature area at the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) and is linked to the concentration area of Language and Teaching. All research developed within the Program will be linked to one of these lines: 1) Teaching-Learning Language (native and additional) in multiple contexts, and 2) Reading and writing in school practices.

The faculty is composed of professors committed to teaching, guidance, and research, both in postgraduate and undergraduate programs.

Objectives:

General Objective:

• To promote the qualification of teaching in the language field, stimulate innovative practices, and develop a pedagogical product through in-depth theoretical studies and reflection on teaching and learning processes.

Specific Objectives:

• To dispense special attention to Basic Education in the Frontier and Campanha regions to strengthen the School and University integration.
• To commit to teacher training through a close relationship with initial and continuous teacher education.
• To strengthen the development of continuous teacher training projects at the regional, national, and international levels.
• To promote qualified formation of professionals acting in teaching with the production and sharing of knowledge and technologies in different levels and modalities of teaching.
• To contribute to the consolidation of broader concepts of teaching development, such as knowledge, human formation, citizenship, ethical values, and social transformation, which permeate the profile of graduates with a solid, emancipatory, and humanistic academic education, in line with the Institutional Development Plan (PDI) of Unipampa.
• To foment the exercise of reflection and awareness regarding public and social relevance of knowledge, skills, abilities, and values acquired in university life, including the ethical aspects involved, in line with Unipampa’s PDI.

Curriculum:

In the PPGEL curriculum, there are 6 mandatory components shared among the faculty of the two research lines: Theory and Practice in Language Teaching I and II; Research Seminar I and II; Dissertation I and II (each with 3 credits), and nine elective components related to each of these lines (each with 2 credits), totaling 18 elective components in the Program.

According to the PPGEL regulations, necessary conditions for completing the Professional Master’s Degree in Language Teaching are: obtaining 18 credits in mandatory components; obtaining 12 credits in elective courses; elaborating, defending, and obtaining approval for the Master’s Dissertation and Pedagogical Product, following the norms of this program.

It’s important to highlight that the pedagogical product is a specificity of the Professional Master’s Degree in Language Teaching at UNIPAMPA and serves as the guiding axis of the research. It’s characterized as the student’s authored technical production, which will be applied throughout the course in language teaching/learning contexts, aiming to propose innovative alternatives to meet the area’s demands.