ABS138 - Developing English teachers as transformative agents

This communication aims at discussing the proposals of a postdoctoral project in Applied Linguistics developed at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. The main objective of the study is to investigate the complexity of the activity of developing English teachers as critical transformative agents. The context for this study is two subjects called "Reflective Teacher Development 1 and 2", held during the first year of an English teaching graduation course of a private college in São Paulo. These subjects aim at providing students with a theoretical and methodological framework for reflective teaching necessary to develop critical agency for their future English teaching practice so as to foster transformation to cross boundaries of school subcontexts. The main theoretical pillar is the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (VYGOTSKY, 1930, 1994; LEONTIEV, 1978, ENGESTRÖM, 1987, 1999), focusing on collaborative agency (MIETTINEN, 2013) as a way to potentiate the involved ones in a collective movement of overcoming issues related to English teaching from a critical transformative perspective. The focus is to investigate to what extent multimodal mediating artifacts constitute the development of agency of the involved participants in the activity, considering the chaotic situations, human complexity, ‘life that one lives’ (MARX & ENGELS, 2006), but with the omnipresence of creativity and innovation of human action that usually creates possibilities for a new object, a new order.  The data collected will be analysed and interpreted based on the perspective of critical and interpretative aspects, in the light of argumentative categories of interpretation (LIBERALI, 2000, 2004).