Signum: Estudos da Linguagem (Dec 2016)
(UN)EXPLORED CONTEXTS IN THE TEACHING PRACTICUM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE COURSES: THE PLACE OF CLASSROOM OBSERVATION IN THE REPORTS OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS
Abstract
Teaching contexts are essential to establish the relationships between theory and classroom practice. One of the stages in such process consists in observing movements that happens at schools, the actions executed by the teachers and the attitudes and behaviours of the students when contents are taught and the relationships are established. Hence, it was proposed to four pre-service teachers, after they had chosen the teaching context they most identified with and where they would develop their teaching practicum, a moment of reflexion about the role and the importance of previous observation. In this paper we aim at reflecting upon the place of that phase of the teaching practicum considering the chosen contexts: the teaching of English to kindergarteners and to students with special educational needs. Oral texts produced by the pre-service teachers were analyzed based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the Sociodiscursive Interactionism, which assumes that all textual production (written and/or oral) is part of a socio-cultural-historical context, which determines the context of text production and its use by readers/listeners. Because it is an unexplored performance in English language teaching practicum in the English Language and Literature courses, previous observation of the context was essential for the pre-service teachers decision-making.
