Etnografia do cotidiano de uma professora de inglês

Abstract

The aim of this research is to describe and analyze the daily life of an English teacher, her social roles, behaviors patterns and meanings attributed and produced by her and other participants in their many contexts of social acting. The research was done in a Continuing Formation Course in Sorriso-MT and in a school of a rural community which is 60 km from Sorriso. It was developed under the ethnographic perspective through participant-observation and semi-structured interviews. In this approach, the researcher is only a translator of the emic point of view aiming to know the actions and social practices of the daily actions. Three guiding questions were elaborated: What does the English teacher do in her daily life? How does the teacher attribute meanings to the experienced events? How do the other participants – teacher-trainer and students – see the teacher? The data are presented in an ethnographic narrative and organized in descriptions of typical daily life, considering that this reconstruction with the habitual sequence of events allows the researcher to create an atmosphere of understanding of the context. Therefore, the analysis is seen as a transformation of data, in which it is possible to search and discuss relations/relationships, that empower the understanding to something bigger and beyond that local context, through the identification of the routine and behavior patterns. The data of the research were presented in four sections (A school day; From the participation in the Formation Course; The routine beyond the walls of the classroom; Impressions about Isabel), in which demonstrate the local routine practices to make sense of the meaning attributed to these actions. Ergo, in the results were highlighted the multiple facets of the teacher trade, outlining a portrait of the profession and of the daily practices – in the personal and professional sphere – considering that, in this dissertation, the English teacher is not treated as an individual, but that as a representative of a social group: the teacher of the public school. Thus, this portrait also proposes to contribute with the deconstruction of beliefs and as a combat of the discourses about the school failure, understanding the importance of knowing and comprehending the needs and realities of the public school.