Reflective Sessions: A Tool for Teacher Empowerment

Maria Cecília Camargo Magalhães; Maria Antonieta Celani

Authors

Maria Cecília Camargo Magalhães PUC-SP ##default.groups.name.author##
Maria Antonieta Celani PUC-SP ##default.groups.name.author##

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss to what extent reflective sessions can become a tool for teacher empowerment when included as a component of a reflective teacher education in-service course, and understood as a classroom activity which provides the possibility for a new type of discursive organisation to emerge. The discussion will be of a twofold nature: on the one hand it will focus on the need to provide Brazilian state school teachers of English involved in a continuing education programme with a context conducive to reflective practice and, on the other hand, it will focus on the effectiveness of organizing that context as discussion dyads, so as to create a collaborative set up for participants to examine their classes critically. The aim set for the participants is learning how to evaluate each other's classroom practice by looking at it as a locus of investigation and of theory (de)construction. The paper discusses the educational process evolving from the discussions by analysing the dyads' discourses (BRONCKART, 1999), i.e., the linguistic discursive choices that reveal their motives when acting with a pair in order to evaluate their classroom practices critically. This will also shed some light on the level of effectiveness of the tool itself.

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