TRAJECTORIES IN THE MAKING: A SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON BECOMING AN ENGLISH TEACHER

Abstract

This project has the aim of a longitudinal qualitative inquiry, interpretative in nature, on the English language teacher education process under a sociocultural perspective. The participants are three undergraduates majoring in English and Portuguese languages at a Brazilian state university. The selected instruments and procedures entail focus groups, internship journals, academic papers written by the students and interviews. Data collection will be carried out throughout three years in the total of four of the students' initial education, and the triangulation will be conducted based on the combination of instruments used in each of the three years. The theoretical framework is based on sociocultural underpinnings from studies by soviet psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky and his followers (JOHNSON, 2009; JOHNSON; GOLOMBECK, 2011; LANTOLF; THORNE, 2006, among others) and their unfolding for language teacher education within Applied Linguistics. Considering the premise that human development is a socially mediated process, which is established in specific social contexts and which transforms the human beings in the course of their history, we aim with this project at unveiling the stories and experiences of the undergraduates which shape their professional education process, outlining a timeline that enables to see the construction of such trajectory.