Language, reading, and writing in the construction of personal, local, and cultural identity:

a socio-critical educational experience abstract

Abstract

This study originates from a teaching experience carried out at the “Maestro Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa” Educational Unit, located in Boca del Río, Macanao Peninsula, Margarita Island, Venezuela, based on a diagnostic assessment conducted with second-year General Secondary Education students during the 2018–2019 school year. The aim of the research was to promote reading and writing as social practices oriented toward the construction of personal, local, and cultural identity among students at this educational level. The study adopted a qualitative approach, grounded in the socio-critical paradigm and the Transformative Participatory Action Research (TPAR) method. Its central focus was on strengthening the use of oral and written language through contextualized, participatory pedagogical strategies linked to students’ lived and community experiences. The results reveal significant advances in communicative skills, evidenced through the narration of personal experiences, the production of critical accounts of audiovisual content, the comprehensive reading of short stories and myths, and the creation of various text types, such as traditional recipes, biographies, and letters. In addition, students were able to recover and resignify their community’s historical memory through the compilation of family narratives, legends, décimas, and local anecdotal accounts. Overall, the activities implemented fostered students’ recognition of themselves as active members of a community with its own history, culture, and values, ther eby strengthening their collective identity.