C r i A Ç Ã O: a board game to argue
Board game. Serious game. Argumentation.
The Board games incorporate a diversity of elements, such as strategy building, decision-making, reward allocation, negotiation conduct, which can enable the construction of different knowledge and reflections on the dynamics of life in society. Associating them with the principles of educational games and/or serious games can stimulate critical thinking in the face of issues relevant to daily life and the practice of problem-solving that simulates real challenges. Within this context, this thesis focuses on the practice of argumentation mediated by CriAÇÃO board games. Its general objective is to investigate how the dynamics of this game favor the use of argumentation and, to achieve it, there are three specific objectives: (i) to identify argumentation skills activated during the game sessions; (ii) to map argumentative strategies more recurrently used in these sessions; (iii) to analyze multiliteracies practices developed before, during, and after each CriAÇÃO game session. To achieve these objectives, it assumes as theoretical framework literacies studies from a sociocultural perspective (Kleiman, 1995; Street, 1984; Gee, 2009; Hamilton, 2000), the conception of language from the Bakhtinian circle (Bakhtin [1979] 2000; Volóchinov, 2021), the studies of interactional argumentation (Grácio, 2016), and the proposal of teaching argumentation as a social practice (Azevedo; Tinoco, 2019). Methodologically, it is inserted in the qualitative approach, of an interpretivist nature, supported by the molds of action research of an ethnographic strand and inserted in Applied Linguistics. The collaborators of this research are students enrolled in high school level courses, in the Youth and Adult Education modality, and in higher education level of a school from the federal education network of Rio Grande do Norte. For data generation, the following instruments were used: participant observation and field notes; photographs and recordings; questionnaires. The preliminary analysis of the data indicates that each CriAÇÃO game session constitutes an event conducive to the practice of argumentation, as it favors: (i) the use of convincing argumentative strategies; (ii) the development of skills to argue and counter-argue; (iii) the mobilization of visible and non-visible elements of the event in favor of the construction of the argumentative chain; (iv) the break with the traditional approach to teaching argumentation.