Les dictionnaires scolaires au Brésil : une expérience d’évaluation pédagogique

Although not new, either on the editorial market, or in our educational policies, the Brazilian dictionaries of the Portuguese language intended for use in schools have a high profile in our educational environment (Rangel & Bagno 2006) and have aroused unprecedented academic interest (Amorim 2003, Costa 2007, Gomes 2007, Moraes 2007, Welker 2008). In 2003, the Ministry of Education (MEC) established, in its program for textbooks, an official procedure of evaluation of books to be recommended and/or distributed to public schools throughout the country. From the discussion initiated then, about the aims of national education, and, in particular, of the teaching/learning of Portuguese, pedagogical principles and parameters were put forward. These, combined with “classical” criteria of lexicography (Landau 1984, Dubois & Dubois 1971, Béjoint 2000), generated an official matrix of “evaluation criteria” for school dictionaries (Rosa 2003). Reviewed every time dictionaries are selected, this matrix has encouraged a debate about what a school dictionary suitable for Basic Education is and what purpose it has (or should have). Therefore, from the concept of language and the lexicon to the criteria adopted for the selection of words and the organization of the dictionary entry, the evaluation of these books has proposed, to the pedagogical (meta)lexicography, new subjects for debate. Thus, the aim of this article is to discuss both this matrix and its impact on the production and revision of school dictionaries.