TEACHER EDUCATION EVENTS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING TO TEACH

ABSTRACT This article aims to present teacher education event as a productive concept for research on teacher education. The concept was developed based on an ethnographic study (COSTA, 2013) that examined the in-service teacher practices in teacher meetings and in breaks between classes in a Portuguese as an additional language school. The teacher education practices observed showed elements of practical rationality and technical rationality (PEREZ GOMEZ, 1995) and activities of knowledge-in-practice and reflection-in-action, as proposed by Schön (2000). The approaches to teacher education proposed by these authors are discussed in the light of an ethnographic research perspective (HAMMERSLEY; ATKINSON, 1995). Based on the teacher education events observed, the study shows how the theoretical perspectives on teacher education activities can be described based on ethnographic data concerning the actions, the topics and the more and less experienced roles the participants jointly construct in interaction. The results show that a teacher education event is a moment conducive to learning how to teach, and that it is constituted by the participants’ actions of asking for help and narrating previous experiences, topics dealing with classroom practices, and the participants’ experience both as teacher educators and in-service learners.