Ensino de inglês no Fundamental de Nova Lima - MG: acontecimento e efeitos de sentido nos dizeres dos professores

Abstract

This study investigated the meaning effects of the adoption of the teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) in the elementary municipal school system of Nova Lima. More specifically, we have analyzed the statements of five English teachers who took part in this study to derive their representations about themselves and their teaching, which resonated and still resonate in their identification process. We believe in the relevance of this study to the discussion of teacher education issues, and considering the transversality of the subject matters discussed we also believe in the contribution of psychoanalytic reflections around the subject-teacher as divided and barred by an unconcious and conceiver of imaginary misrecognitions. The subject-teacher is always producing effects, always reinventing themselves. We have revisited the discursive memory of these teacher subjects to reflect upon the issues of TEFL education in general and, in particular, concerning Educonle and ConCol. We problematize the offer of TEFL to children in public schools, as it has been growing in Brazil. However, it still lacks national guiding principles to improve its accessibility to all public school’ students. We also discuss the issue around the concept of the Other as the one that constitutes us discursively. Besides, we also problematize the subjects’ accountability and involvement in this event of TEFL to children. We approach the subject of desire, who has to deal with what they can tell of their desire. Our theoretical contribution is based on the discourse theories developed by Pêcheux (2015), Foucault (1969), Authier-Revuz (1998) and Teixeira (2005). We follow an interface of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis with the freud-lacanian psychoanalytic conceptions, specifically relying on research developed within the field of psychoanalysis and education, as in Vasconcelos (2010), Pereira (2016), Neves (2017). In our methodology, the teachers' statements constitute the corpus of our research, which was collected through semi-structured and unstructured interviews and a conversation round. We also use the logbook proposed by Pereira (2016). We have conceived this adoption of TEFL to children as an event because it has allowed the participants to rediscover the vivacity of TEFL in this circumstance and, from then on, they have become protagonists of this history.