Teacher Education and Miseducation: An experience from a community of English teacher educators in Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian Ministry of Education has launched in the past five years a variety of continuing teacher education programmes. The huge government investment and support has brought opportunities for teacher educators to put a lot of effort into professional development research. In this context, a Centre for Continuing Teacher Education (NAP-UFPR) at the Federal University of Parana in Brazil has been designing and implementing extension courses and events in the area of English teacher education. Moreover, the teacher educators from this Centre take part into an academic research group and have done pedagogical consultancy to private and public educational institutions. Therefore, a number of researches on English teacher education have already been done at this Centre, including a book published in 2011 (Formacao Desformatada: Praticas com Professores de Lingua Inglesa — Teacher Education and Miseducation: Practices with English Language Teachers). The aim of this presentation is to share one of the experiences the group of English teacher educators at this Centre faced under the construction of their own continuing teacher education. Based on a post-structural educational perspective, the group of teacher educators designed their own collaborative learning process by negotiating a common curriculum for a teacher educators' course. This initiative required the construction of an open space for negotiation and redefinition of the understandings of knowledge, language, and teacher training. The main purpose of this course was the implementation of new pedagogical practices that were collaboratively designed previously among the teacher educators and later through the innovative initiatives of teacher educational programmes for English language teachers, teacher educators, graduate and post-graduate students, and other researchers. Throughout the course, the readings and the discussions were based on the theoretical perspective of critical literacy studies and conceptual questioning. The research analysis has been informed by post-structural theories, relying mainly on the concept of language as discourse and social power (Bakhtin; Foucault), pedagogical practices and the act of listening (Freire), educational change (Usher & Edwards; Sterling), post-method pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu), and educational emancipation (Ranciere). It is worth mentioning that implications and conflicts that emerge from educational movements are highly productive and deserve close attention, especially considering teacher education demands in the twenty-first century.