"Eu faço o que posso": experiências, agência e complexidade no ensino de língua inglesa

Abstract

This paper presents a narrative study of experiences in teaching English of four teachers - two from a public school and two from a private school, having human agency as a focus. The objective of the research is to document and describe the relationships that underlie teachers choices and decisions in the classroom, seeking a contextualized understanding of the teaching action that could reveal the complexity of teaching and learning a foreign language. The study is based on the concept of experience by Miccoli (MICCOLI, 1997-2013) and the Chaos/Complexity Theory (LARSEN-FREEMAN & CAMERON, 2008; LEFFA, 2006, 2009, PAIVA 2006, 2009a, 2009b, among others). The construct of human agency is discussed based on studies in anthropology (AHEARN 2001, 2013), psychology (BANDURA, 2006, 2008), philosophy (JUARRERO, 1999, 2000) and applied linguistics (LANTOLF & THORNE, 2006; LARSEN -FREEMAN & CAMERON, 2008; VAN LIER, 2008; Paiva, 2013a and RESENDE, 2009) and agency is conceived as a complex adaptive system (MERCER, 2011, 2012). A quantitative and qualitative approach to the analysis and presentation of the results was adopted. The data collection process involved in-context participant observation, video recordings of teachers' in-classroom teaching, audio-recorded interviews and the researcher's field notes. Data analysis followed Miccoli (1997) procedures of experience categorization from teachers' transcribed interview narratives. The data analysis yielded the expansion and refinement of the first categorization of teachers experiences' (MICCOLI, 2007c), which led to the development of a Framework of Teachers Experiences. The results show that teachers agency is contextually, inter and intrapersonally, as well as temporally situated. Teachers actions and decisions are modulated by the interplay of the elements in those domains. Implications for the comprehension of the elements that modulate teachers agency suggest that teaching English in regular school classrooms is a system whose complexity can be captured from the nature of experiences, which reveal the interplay of elements in the four domains mentioned above. Another implication comes from the preliminary documentation of the impact of these teachers' agency in students' learning systems - an area that should be further researched.