English Teacher Critical Education

in Brazil
ANDRÉA MACHADO DE ALMEIDA MATTOS

­Introduction

Research on second and foreign language teacher education (LTE) in Applied

Linguistics dates back to the 1970s or even before, when the focus of teacher educa-
tion programs was still on training second and foreign language teachers how best
to apply the techniques and strategies of the methods and approaches to English
language teaching (ELT) available at the time. The aim of this type of training was
only to make teachers familiar with a particular method of instruction, so that they
would become better teachers, or trained specialists, in employing the step‐by‐step
procedures of the chosen ELT method. According to Freeman (2001), “Second lan-
guage (L2) teacher education describes the field of professional activity through
which individuals learn to teach L2s… The term teacher education refers to the sum
of experiences and activities through which individuals learn to be language teach-
ers” (p. 72). This entry discusses concepts related to LTE and describes how ELT
and LTE have developed since the beginnings, especially in Brazil.

­ELT Dimensions

Several researchers in LTE differentiate between teacher training and teacher

development. According to Wallace (1991), “training is something that can be pre-
sented or managed by others; whereas development is something that can only be
done by and for oneself” (p. 3). Toward the end of 1980s and throughout the 1990s
there was a big shift in LTE—away from the perspective of training—adopting a
new perspective on teacher development (Wallace, 1991; Freeman, 1996, and sev-
eral others). Freeman (1996), for example, views research on LTE as characterized
by three different approaches: the behavioral view, the cognitive view, and the
interpretivist view. Each of these views characterizes a specific way of facing
teacher education, “depending on the point of view assumed by the researcher

The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching.

Edited by John I. Liontas.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0929

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 2 English Teacher Critical Education in Brazil

and the importance of the contributions of the participant teacher” (Mattos, 2009,
p. 33).
The first approach is mostly concerned with understanding—and many times
controlling—the behavior of the teacher in the classroom. The research pro-
cesses mainly involve observation of the teacher’s pedagogical actions to relate
them to the learning results the students achieved. The objective of this type of
research was clearly to find the most effective teachers, those who would best
increment students’ positive results. A second objective was to examine the
pedagogical actions of effective teachers to help train newcomers to the field. In
Freeman’s (1996) view, this type of research leads to a compartmentalized and
impersonal perception of the teacher’s pedagogical practices, which is very
detached from the teaching context since conclusions are made solely by the
researcher.
The second approach, namely the cognitive view, tends to be more personal as
it is focused on the teachers’ mental processes, their perceptions and intentions,
their beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes, as well as on the affective dimensions
(such as feelings of anxiety and fear) which shape their thoughts and actions in
their daily practice. This approach became widely known as Research on Teacher
Cognition or Teacher Thinking; it seeks to correlate what teachers think while pre-
paring their lessons with what they think during lessons. The objective is to under-
stand teaching in all its complexities, trying to reveal not only the teachers’
personal perspective of teaching but also the limitations of the approach in
question.
Freeman (1996) suggests an alternative approach, the interpretivist view, which
aims at understanding how teachers interpret their own practice in relation to the
specific contexts in which they work. This new perspective intends to cater not
only to the researcher’s conclusions but also to the voices of the participant teach-
ers. The author concludes that “such research provides a mirror that reflects the
teacher centrally in [its] account” (p. 99).
The interpretivist view gave rise to what, in Brazil, became known as reflective
teaching, bringing together researchers and teachers in a quest to better understand
teaching contexts and pedagogical practices and, more importantly, to
de‐automatize teachers’ attitudes and actions while teaching. Research methods in
this type of research commonly used recordings of classroom data, such as
videotaping of lessons, combined with participant teachers’ reflective diaries,
researchers’ observation notes, or both. The researcher and the teacher would then
conduct reflective sessions, or retrospective interviews, while watching the
videotape of the lesson. The objective was to provide participant teachers with an
appropriate time, after the lesson, for reflecting on what happened during the
lesson, in order to try to repeat what was considered positive, and to modify what
was considered ineffective or problematic in any way.
Mostly dominated by qualitative paradigms in terms of research perspectives
on data collection and analysis, the field of English language teacher education has
been fruitful in raising awareness of the various problems, tensions, and conflicts
present in many teaching processes, in addition to bringing insights into teacher

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 English Teacher Critical Education in Brazil 3

knowledge and practices. Narrative research and sociocultural views on teacher

education have also opened up space for studying teacher choice and voice, thus
helping both researchers and teachers better understand the context‐bound nature
of teacher activity (Freeman, 1996). Research and practice in teacher education in
Brazil have closely followed international perspectives and advances in the area,
and Brazilian researchers and teacher educators, as well as the teachers them-
selves, have greatly benefited from research results that have illuminated class-
room practices, especially in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts (see, for
example, Mattos, 2009).
The turn of the millennium has brought yet another perspective on teacher edu-
cation and development. Critical approaches to ELT and FL teacher education
(Norton & Toohey, 2004) have lately raised the interest of researchers in the field.
In Brazil, these critical perspectives have been brought to the attention of teachers
and researchers after the publication of the National Curriculum Guidelines for
High School Teaching, which has fostered suggestions for implementing critical
literacies and citizenship education in ELT classrooms at high school level, espe-
cially in public schools.
According to Hawkins (2011), throughout the history of language teaching,
there have been four different types of approaches (Table 1).
As Table 1 summarizes, language teaching has evolved from the more tradi-
tional, structuralist approaches, in which language is taken to be hosted in the
mental apparatus of human beings, to the postmodern view of language as
ideology and as an instrument of power and domination. Critical literacy (CL)
is among these so‐called critical approaches—a relatively recent notion in sec-
ond or foreign language studies. Critical perspectives on language, especially
in the academic milieu, gained momentum during the end of the 1980s and the
1990s, but many teachers of English still do not know what it means in practice.

Table 1  Approaches to language teaching.

Psycholinguistic Sociocultural
approaches Communicative approaches approaches Critical approaches

Language is Language is viewed as Language is Language is viewed

viewed as a set a tool for meaning‐ viewed as a tool for as situated usage
of words and making and meaning‐making, shaped through
structures communication; which is situated in pervasive social,
governed by language rules and specific social cultural and political
particular rules principles are learned encounters that ideologies and forces
and principles through the process of take place in that serve to
and stored in the using the language specific places at empower some
minds of specific times people while
individual learners between or among marginalizing others
specific individuals
Adapted from Hawkins, 2011.

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 4 English Teacher Critical Education in Brazil

In Brazil, a country of continental dimensions, language teaching contexts are

extremely diverse. However, in most of these contexts, traditional perspectives
on language, language teaching, and LTE are still overwhelmingly present.
In terms of the theoretical underpinnings of CL, definitions and conceptions are
a little blurred. For some researchers, the concept derives mainly from the work of
scholars in critical discourse analysis and from the recognition that language is not
neutral. For others, the notion of CL originates in genre theory and in functional
systemic linguistics, with the belief that simply knowing the language and the
several text genres allows for social cohesion, a useful element for language
learners.
The most commonly accepted view assumes that the concept is based on revo-
lutionary values and stems from critical social theory, envisioning any kind of text
(written, visual, oral, multimodal, etc.) as a product of ideological and sociopoliti-
cal forces. CL also originates from critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000) and the Freirean
view of language as an empowering element. CL theories, thus, also emerge from
Freirean notions related to the importance of analyzing ideological relations and
social, cultural, and economic power, which involve language teachers and learn-
ers as well.
However, there are also some fundamental differences between CL and critical
pedagogy (CP), especially in terms of the understanding of language and critical-
ity, the conception of reading and the perception of power relations in each of the
two educational approaches. According to Jordão (2013), CP understands lan-
guage as a code and an ideological tool, while CL perspectives view language as
discourse, as a “space for meaning‐making and for representations of the subjects
and the world” (p. 73). For CP, criticality means to unveil the ideologies in lan-
guage and literacy, whereas for CL criticality is taken to be a capacity to reflect on
“meaning‐making processes and their impacts on the representations we make of
ourselves and others” (Jordão, 2013, p. 81). Menezes de Souza (2011) states that
such reflexivity encompasses a capacity “not only to read, but also to read by read-
ing ourselves, that is, to be conscious all the time of how I am reading, how I am
making meaning, and not to think that reading is a transparent process…” (p. 296,
italics in the original).
Moreover, in CL the conception of reading includes not only the context of pro-
duction of the text (the author, time and place of writing, author’s intensions, etc.),
but also the context of interpretation—that is, the reader, the time, and the context
of reading (who reads, with which interests, from which point of view, which
power relations influence the reading, etc.). Menezes de Souza (2011) explains that
CP is more focused on the writing of the text, whereas CL concentrates more on the
meaning‐making processes of reading. For him, these meaning‐making processes
are not related to the text but to the relationship between the reading context and
the text production context. In terms of their perception of power in society,
Menezes de Souza explains that CP understands power relations as formed by a
dominant group and an oppressed group on opposing sides, but for CL power is
unequally distributed among all.

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 English Teacher Critical Education in Brazil 5

­Future Directions

Critical skills in language learning have lately been fostered as an essential

element  for students and teachers alike. According to Cervetti, Pardales, and
Damico (2001), “through critical consciousness, students should come to recognize
and feel disposed to remake their own identities and sociopolitical realities through
their own meaning‐making processes and through their actions in the world.” CL
is committed to justice and equality and some of its most important objectives are
social change, inclusion of marginalized groups, and education for citizenship
(Mattos, 2014).
CL was most likely introduced in Brazil, in ELT and LTE, after 2006, when the
National Curriculum Guidelines for High School Teaching were launched. Since
then, there has been a boom in the interest in critical perspectives in language
teaching, especially in TEFL. However, in English language classrooms, CL has
been applied only very tentatively, and reports on problems in using CL have been
somewhat recurrent, although it is not difficult to find theoretical and philosophi-
cal discussions on the concept. The term itself has been interpreted in several dif-
ferent ways, and sometimes it may be approached from a very abstract perception.
Moreover, there are several similar perspectives, such as CP (Freire, 2000), critical
practice, critical thinking, critical media education, and critical language aware-
ness, to name but a few. It is not always clear how these terms relate to each other,
to CL, or both.
In all these perspectives, the objective of pedagogical practices, including in CL,
is driven by the apparent need to raise learners’ social critical awareness. According
to Freire (2000), when learners become more critically aware, they are more
inclined to fight against oppressive systems in the world and have more power to
change their reality. In Freire’s view, the best place for students to experience the
social, political, and historical systems that dominate the world is the classroom.
When involving the students in texts and dialogues that enhance their critical
awareness, Freire (2000) believed that students would become not only more criti-
cally informed, but also ethically compromised in transforming their social context
as critical agents.
Most of those now working with CL in language teaching take it to be more a
perspective, or a point of view, rather than a methodology (Janks, 2013). Mattos
and Valério (2010) suggest that CL should be integrated with the communicative
approach to ELT through the teacher’s “conscious and deliberate pedagogical
action, as a necessary link” (p. 154) between the two educational perspectives.
On an inspiring note, Duboc (2013) defends that CL is an attitude of the teacher,
who decides when and how to bring critical issues into the language classroom.
These critical issues mostly refer to relations of power, matters of identity (race,
gender, class, etc.), and general access to knowledge and resources. Nevertheless,
Duboc believes that many trivial topics present in most language textbooks, such
as meals, physical characteristics, and cultural festivals may be turned into critical
discussions depending on how the teacher chooses to approach them. She refers to
this possibility as “curricular attitude”—that is, teaching practices based on

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 6 English Teacher Critical Education in Brazil

critique and agency on the part of the teacher, which could “either emerge between
the cracks within the classrooms or previously be planned by teachers in accord-
ance with a set of conceptual and methodological choices” (pp. 60–1). These
“cracks” are exactly the possibilities of challenging the more traditional views that
come up in language classrooms, as proposed by the texts and activities in the
teaching materials or raised by the participants themselves, which may or may not
be taken up by the teacher in critical ways.
To recognize these possibilities and to use them to foster students’ learning and
critical perspectives, language teachers also have to become critical. Mattos (2014)
states that “language teacher educators in Brazil, and perhaps in other parts of the
world, have not [yet] been able to provide critical models for language teaching”
(p. 143), and suggests that teacher education programs have to create space for
teachers to learn from a critical perspective and help them take on a more critical
stance in language teaching.
Future perspectives for the field of English language teacher education in Brazil
will certainly incorporate these new developments, focusing on preparing teach-
ers to face new challenges in globalized settings and to implement critical
approaches to teaching in their own classrooms, which can better prepare students
to interact in local or global settings and develop a greater sense of participatory
citizenship (Mattos, 2012). These new perspectives have focused on issues of
power, identity, gender, race, and sexuality, for example, but also on more trivial
themes that may be brought into critical views depending on the attitude of the
teacher (Duboc, 2013). These new approaches to English language teacher educa-
tion have followed from recent suggestions for preparing language teachers for
social justice teaching (Hawkins, 2011; Mattos, 2014) and are likely to become an
important focus for the field both in Brazil and abroad.

SEE ALSO: Critical Language Awareness; Critical Pedagogy; Funds of Knowledge

and Critical Pedagogy; Reflective Practice For Language Teachers

­References

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Duboc, A. P. M. (2013). Teaching with an attitude: Finding ways to the conundrum of a
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 English Teacher Critical Education in Brazil 7

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