Transnational Imaginaries of Emerging Identities in English Teacher Education in a Period of Accommodation to Social Change in Brazilian Higher Education

Abstract

Between 2003 and 2014, the Brazilian government adopted a public policy of expansion within Brazilian Higher Education, to strengthen processes of social inclusion. This included the construction of new campi in far-from-the-shore cities within Brazil's interior. This study took place in one of these campi, which is located in a peripheral city of a big metropolis, where an English Teacher Education course was established in 2009. The course - academic writing for English teachers - aimed to develop students' writing together with their critical thinking. It is from this academic writing course that this research emerges. The pedagogy of writing suggested in this article is based on Giroux (1988) and Freire (2005). As such, it conceives of writing as an epistemology, a mode of learning that seeks to find "the thematic universe" or "the cluster of generative topics" that the students wished to research and write about (FREIRE, 2005, p. 101). The process pursued the investigation of the students' way of thinking of the "real" in the educational context through written language. The texts produced by students revealed transnational imaginaries and literacies that rupture the dominant model of transnational movements, physical or virtual. In this context, I believe that the ethnographic approach adopted by the course to investigate the cultures and literacies of this community of students contributed to the development of the students' academic writing skills and to an exchange of world views among the students and teacher that enriched the classroom as a learning space.

Critical Pedagogy Trends in English Language Teaching

“…Finally, Mizan (2019) conducted a study with an ethnographic approach to investigate the cultures and literacies surrounding students. This study emerged from an academic writing course for EFL teachers that aimed to develop both their writing skills and their critical thinking.…”