ABS095 - How teachers master and appropriate semiotic tools in working activities

The work is a complex activity historically constituted and guided. This implies that it is always related to the participation in the institutional practices, to the use of certain types of semiotic and technical tools, and to the way professionals develop their activities and solve problems using and transforming the available tools, as well as constructing new ones. At school, the work of the teacher is guided by a set of cultural notions and tools which delimit and organize its contours, such as the social roles of teachers and students, the ritual and procedures associated with the teaching and learning activities, and the selection of topics and subjects to be taught. The empirical data analyses explore how the use of particular tools and the introduction of practices at school are intrinsically interlaced with notions, concepts and other aspects involved in the teaching dynamics. The peculiarity of the work of the teacher as a mediated activity is that it addresses multiple targets: the worker her/himself, the student activity and also the subject of the task. This multiple addressing involves a very elaborate manner of using the meditational means and tools by adjusting and recreating them in each situation. Situations like this, inherent to the classroom routines, make explicit the complexity of the teaching activity, which involves the simultaneous use of meditational tools of different types and levels.