Desafios e possibilidades na prática docente de língua inglesa do 1º ao 5º ano

Abstract

The objective of this research is to identify the contribution and possible limitations of Letras/English Language academic education in the teaching practice of English Language Teaching for Children (LIC) at 3 schools of full time period (ETI´s) in the municipality of Palmas and to identify if there are policies of continuing education offered by the government as well as what curricular guidelines, methodologies and didactic materials are applied in the teaching practice of LIC teachers In addition, it seeks to see how teachers are dealing with this challenge, since most of these professionals with major degree in Letras/English Language have been prepared by universities to teach only from 6th to 9th grade to Elementary School. Initially, were presented some considerations about the curricular gaps of Teacher´s initial Education who works in the first grades (nursery school and first four grades of primary schools). Next, it seeks to identify aspects of the actions that led to the change of the state of Tocantins schools curriculum, which also started to offer LIC in their of first grades classrooms (nursery school and first four grades of primary school) from the academic year of 2017 and identify who are the actors in this teaching process. The theory in which the study was developed was the Post-Method Pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu, 2001) which consider the teacher an intellectual that needs a change of posture. In order to do that, teachers need stop being a simple consumer of theories produced by specialists and must himself theorize based on their practice, for a more effective language teaching. To support the discussion about LIC teaching, other authors were selected: Brown (2000, 2007), Leffa (1988, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2013), Tonelli (2017), Almeida Filho (1993, 2000) Doninni, Platero e Weigel (2013), Reis (2017), Miccoli (2017) e Luckesi (2014). The research participants were three teachers who work in three distinct ETIs, located in different regions of the municipality: two of them are located to the north and one to the south. The research showed that the participants in this study did not receive proper initial training to act in the LIC teaching, while at the same time the studies pointed out that the university is not the only responsible for all the education background of teachers, in only four years. In addition, the research revealed a lack of continuous education offered by the municipal government and also a lack of material resources. However, despite all the obstacles, such as material resources shortage, limitations in their initial Education and continuing education absence, ETI´s English language teachers of Palmas are aware of their role and inspired by the desire to overcome these issues. As a result, the research demonstrated that it is possible to achieve an efficient LIC teaching at Palmas municipal public schools, if University, Government and School Management join forces to fill the needs left on the initial training of teachers who lecture from 1st to 5th grades of Elementary School.