TRAJETÓRIES AND IDENTITIES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS FOR CHILDREN
Applied Linguistics. English Language. English Language for Children. Teachers. Identity.
This master thesis presents a study carried out with teachers who work with English language for children in regular schools in Brazil. Its purpose was to analyze their trajectories and identity(ies) constructed by these teachers throughout their experiences as students, teachers in initial training and continuing training and also in the exercise of their teaching practice. Understanding how identities are constructed can help to reveal the trajectories and characteristics of a teaching professional who chose to teach an audience that demands specific skills to work with children, considering the challenges and particularities necessary to teach during this period of human development. Thus, as theoretical support, we resorted to discussions about the training of English language teachers for children (Santos, 2005, 2011; Santos and Tonelli, 2021) about conceptions around teaching and learning (Barcelos, 2010, 2007; Santos, 2005) and, especially, on the concept of identity (Hall, 1997; Bauman, 2005). The study path is based on the principles of qualitative-interpretative research and used narrative interviews with teachers to generate data. Thus, their trajectories and identities that are manifested, implicitly or explicitly, in the voices of English language teachers for children allow us to understand the teaching training process, its challenges and needs in relation to teaching and learning the English language.