The opinion of Emilia Ferreiro on literacy

Abstract

With the aim of contributing to the comprehension of an important moment in Brazil’s literacy history, this paper analyzes aspects of Emilia Ferreiro’s (1937 - ) thoughts on literacy, emphasizing her theories about the process of constructing knowledge of written language by children. These theories are the result of her research on the psychogenesis of written language, based on Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology and on Noam Chomsky’s psycholinguistics, both of which had significant repercussions in our country beginning in the mid 1980s. This paper’s topic is approached from a historical perspective through the process of locating, gathering and organizing the available bibliography by and about Emilia Ferreiro and analyzing the textual configuration of the book Psychogenesis of Written Language (Psicogênese da língua escrita).