Critical reflexivity and (through) academic literacy practices: representations of scientific endeavor from the perspective of graduate students in humanities

Abstract

Assuming that learners’ metareflective movements are closely tied to the process of academic-scientific literacy, this study takes as its focal point the manifestation of critical reflexivity in texts produced by master's and doctoral students. The main objective is to analyze the presence of metadiscursive reflexivity as clues to identifying representations of scientific practice, taking into account the evaluative dimension associated with them, in letters of intent addressed to graduate programs, presumably as part of the selection process for master's and doctoral studies. The production of these letters was part of a set of writing tasks developed within a joint course offered by three universities and four graduate programs in the fields of Languages and Education in Brazil, aimed at the critical production and assessment of academic-scientific genres. The qualitative and interpretive analysis is grounded in studies on literacy from a socio-anthropological and ethnographic perspective, Volóchinov’s contributions regarding the axiological nature of the sign, and Authier-Revuz’s work on enunciative heterogeneity. The results point to representations of scientific practice that fluctuate between emphasizing external factors and focusing on the researcher’s own choices. As a main contribution, the article offers transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological reflections on the relationship between metareflection, representations, and the academic-scientific literacy process.