Beyond (or not) the Teacher’s Manual
Matheus A. Agnoletto | 2017
Answers to the complexities of teaching are not simply formulated, requiring teachers to constantly reason upon their practices. Since knowing what to do when teaching depends on a variety of aspects, the teacher’s manual stands out as a tool that regulates teachers’ professional activities, especially at the beginning of their careers. With this in mind, this study aims at analyzing the extent to which a novice teacher changes or adapts the classroom practices suggested in the teacher’s manual. In order to do so, three classes of a novice teacher from an English extracurricular program of a federal university in the South of Brazil were observed within one-month intervals. Moreover, interviews were conducted right after each class observation, so as to question the teacher about the reasoning behind his practices. Also, questionnaires were applied to the teacher, as a manner to uncover his perception in relation to the use of both the textbook and the teacher’s manual. The results show that the teacher’s practices are mediated by concepts and beliefs that revolve around the profession and which tend to be unconscious, thus needing to be verbalized and critically assessed so that they reach a level of awareness and thus can be uncovered, manipulated and modified. This finding appears to reveal the importance of reasoning teaching to teachers’ professional development.