Writing in the practices of teaching*1

The production of writing at school is a highly respected object of study for several of the domains in the field of language and education. Pursued under different theoretical perspectives and disciplinary traditions, most of the academic reflection on the subject writing, in Brazil, has been concerned with the learning processes of writing by pupils of various age groups, levels of literacy, and schooling within specific sociocultural and institutional contexts. Along a different, but complementary, direction, the present study focuses on the ways in which writing is constituted in the teaching practice, and through which is becomes a taught object (Dolz; Ronveaux; Schneuwly, 2007). To such end, the article is based on a corpus comprised of audio and video recordings of episodes of the teaching of writing produced in different institutional and sociocultural contexts. The way in which the relation is established between the objects of teaching, the professional gestures, and the didactic devices is analyzed (Aeby Daghé; Dolz, 2007; Gomes-Santos; Almeida, 2009; Schneuwly, 2000; 2001). From a theoretical and methodological viewpoint, the questions of the study are illuminated by the contribution of researches on the description of the modes of organization and functioning of language in school interactions, and by studies that center on the specifically didactic dimension of those interactions. The investigation of writing in the practices of teaching has enriched the reflection about the didactic devices needed at the heart of the teaching/learning practices in order to develop active ways to facilitate the access to symbolic goods