Telecollaborative practice in Brazil: what has been published about teletandem?

Abstract

Telecollaboration refers to connecting geographically distant learners in intercultural contact via (a)synchronous communication tools. “Teletandem Brasil: Foreign Languages for All” (Telles, 2006) is a telecollaborative, pedagogical, and research project that has been the object of investigation of studies published under the formats of research articles, master’s theses, Ph.D. dissertations, books, and book chapters. This paper aims to present a descriptive map of peer-reviewed research articles on teletandem practice in Brazil. We selected articles that reported on empirical research from the Web of Science platform and the teletandembrasil.org website and, based on the EPPI reviewing system, analyzed 67 articles. We identified the following aspects of the articles: period of publication, language, research focus, and data analyzed. Our results indicate that (i) there has been a growing interest in the topic reflected in more published papers on teletandem; (ii) most articles are published in Portuguese and English; (iii) research on teletandem has focused on 11 different topics, the most popular ones being language learning and intercultural issues; and (iv) there is a diversity of data analyzed in the publications.