O profissional do ensino de língua inglesa e o seu objeto de ensino: "do you know what I mean?"

Abstract

Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) as a field of inquiry has developed under the strong influence of Sociocultural Theory (SCT) over the past decades. The findings of this Applied Linguistics (AL) branch of investigation have contributed greatly to the development of second language (L2) teaching programs in general and to learning to teach L2 programs in particular. Main themes of inquiry in the SLTE field are related to practitioners’ experiences in learning and teaching the L2; the origins and the unfolding of teacher cognition and its impact in L2 teaching; and the role of contexts of learning and of teaching L2. Along with the target language, these three topics — experience, cognition, and contexts — are part of a system that comprises the learning to teach English language in the Brazilian secondary school context, which is proposed to embrace a construct of learning to teach in such specific setting. The aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the improvement of Brazilian secondary schooling by departing from AL findings on SLTE — as opposed to the acceptation of teacher training. The advocacy / participatory approach of this qualitative study is reinforced by the collaboration of seven secondary school English language teachers, who contributed with their written narratives followed by structured interactive interviews. The prime contribution of this study is the proposal of an alternative perspective to English language teacher education, i.e., one that actually acknowledges the systemic intertwinedness of agents in English language teachers’ professional development, particularly from a situated point of view. In order to do so, a construct for SLTE for Brazilian secondary English language teachers is presented and developed from the perspective of Complexity Theory.