Can the Teacher Act? Agency in Language Teacher Education

Abstract

Based on the assumption that agency is a discursive practice and one basic premise of an education aimed at developing critical, participative and transformative agents to live in a society under constant changes associated with globalization and neoliberalism, the main objective of this paper, which results from my PhD research (Landim, 2020), was to investigate if agency development implies a critically oriented English Language Teaching (ELT) in global times. To address such objective, the research was conducted with a group of teachers and student teachers participating in the English Language Teaching (ELT) practicum of a public university located in the north of Brazil. The study followed qualitative research methodological paths of ethnographic nature, within the field of critical applied linguistics, using concepts borrowed from decolonial theories, new literacies studies and crEitical literacies and other fields, especially sociology and philosophy of education. The main results indicate that agency concepts developed by the participants ranged from neoliberal traditions in education to decolonial/critical perspectives.