Tecnicismo e reflexão na formação de professores de inglês no curso Celta.

Abstract

Teacher education proposes a set of theoretical and practical aspects that influence the teacher's practice. When it comes to professionalizing foreign language (FL) teachers, we have two professionalizing-academic contexts in which they prepare the teacher for the working environment: development and training. For this study, we focused on a professional training course for FL teachers. It is the Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages - CELTA, currently administered by the University of Cambridge, offered and recognized, internationally. From our experience, in an experience as a student, in London, in the year of 2019 were interested in investigating the type of professional that CELTA prepares for the job market, mainly because they called our attention some aspects related to teaching planning. As a result, we come to the following research question: How is the CELTA course characterized in terms of the foreign language teacher training paradigm? This questioning led us to list the following general objective: to investigate the functioning of the CELTA course focusing on the teaching planning stage as an instrument inherent to teacher training. In order to achieve the general objective and answer the investigative question, we have developed two specific objectives: (1) To identify the concepts of teacher training and language teaching underlying the CELTA course; (2) Discuss the possible contributions of the teaching planning of the CELTA course to the reflective practice of teachers. The main theoretical pillars that guided this study are related to teacher training, FL teaching and FL teaching planning. The basis of these pillars is based on reflections on teacher training (AMIGUES, 2004; NÓVOA, 2017; SCHÖN, 2000; TARDIF, 2007; ZABALA, 1998; ZEICHNER, 1993), FL teacher training (CELANI, 2008; LEFFA, 2008), approaches and teaching methods of FL as components of teacher practice (RICHARDS; RODGERS, [1986] 2014), as curricular components of teacher training (KUMARAVADIVELU, 2006; LARSEN-FREEMAN, ANDERSON, 2011), and teaching planning as a teaching object (FARRELL, 2002; OLIVEIRA, 2015), and as an object of study (RAFAEL, 2019). In the methodology, we explain how the CELTA course itself is characterized and the research context that the researcher experienced, highlighting the roles of each group of participants, the types of course evaluation and the types of documents provided throughout CELTA. We describe the documentary corpus that consisted of three instruments: the handouts on planning and teaching the language, 26 lesson plans prepared by five teachers and the questionnaires applied to the teachers after the course. From the analysis, we understand that the concept of teacher education and FL teaching in CELTA is hybrid, as it is sometimes supported by a paradigm of ready-made teaching models and language structuralism, as in grammar and pronunciation teaching; and it is supported by a paradigm of autonomy over language practice and functionalism, as in the teaching of speaking and vocabulary. We also understand that the CELTA course stimulates the reflective practice of teachers through the item anticipated problems in the model of the lesson plan, even though the reflections of the teachers are predominantly results of technical and practical reflection.