ENSINO E APRENDIZAGEM DE INGLÊS

COMO LÍNGUA ESTRANGEIRA

ON REFLECTIVE TEACHING

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Olá!
Ao final desta aula, você será capaz de:

1. Understand what reflective teaching is;

2. Make a distinction between “reflection-on-action” and “reflection-in-action” and recognize the criticism of

Schon’s concepts;

3. Understand the Handal and Lauvas framework about teacher’s theoretical practices;

4. Discuss Vygotsky’s view on language learning.

Introdução

In this lesson, the learners should understand what reflective teaching is. You should make a distinction between

“reflection-on-action” and “reflection-in-action” and also recognize the criticism of Schon’s concepts. You should

also understand the Handal and Lauvas framework about teacher’s theoretical practices. We will also discuss

Vygotsky’s view on language learning.

1 Introduction
During the last decade, the slogan of reflective teaching has been embraced by teachers, teacher educators, and

educational researchers all over the world.

This international movement in teaching and teacher education that has developed under the banner of

reflection can be seen as a reaction against the view of teachers as technicians who narrowly construe the nature

of the problems confronting them and merely carry out what others, removed from the classroom, want them to

do.

The move toward seeing teachers as reflective practitioners is also a rejection of top-down forms of educational

reform that involve teachers only as conduits for implementing programs and ideas formulated elsewhere.

Proponents of reflective teaching maintain that for much too long, “teachers have been considered to be

consumers of curriculum knowledge, but are not assumed to have the requisite skills to create or critique that

knowledge”. Viewing teachers as reflective practitioners assumes that teachers can both pose and solve

problems related to their educational practice.

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2 What are the four lenses which favors critical reflective
teaching?
• Our autobiographies as learners and teachers (self-review)

Consulting our autobiographies as learners puts us in the role of "others". It also very much involves a

"felt" experience, one that touches our emotions in a substantive and remarkably common (shared) way.

In this way we can begin to see our practice from the point of view of what our students experience.

Investigating out autobiographies as teachers, is a logical first reflective step - it often brings into focus

the instinctive reasoning at work; the previously untested assumptions that may bear further

examination.

• Our students' eyes (student review)

Seeing ourselves from our students' perspectives can lead to many welcome and not so welcome

surprises. We may be reassured: students are interpreting and learning in just the way we anticipated.

Equally, we may be quite startled: with students finding a plethora of ways to interpret our actions and

make meanings where we anticipated just one.

Receiving useful feedback from students can also sometimes be challenging to achieve and, even

supposing that we are successful in our efforts, we then need to be prepared to listen to what they have

to say.

• Our colleagues experiences (peer review)

Fostering critical conversations about our teaching with trusted colleagues (cf. "critical friends") can

yield useful insights. It helps break down the "shroud of silence in which our practice is wrapped".

Their experiences will often be broadly similar even while they differ from ours in detail. A sense of

diversity will become apparent that can only be helpful to us in exploring alternatives and opening new

ways of seeing and thinking about practice.

• Theoretical literature (benchmarking)

The Literature and "theory" can often equip us with an enlarged vocabulary to describe and understand

our practice. It offers multiple perspectives on familiar situations.

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 According to Brookfield, consulting the literature can become "a psychological and political survival

necessity, through which teachers come to understand the link between their private troubles and

broader political processes".

3 What’s reflective teaching?

Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom and giving it a meaning by attaching the why

question to what you go through. You also empower your students to ask these why questions to their classroom

experiences.

You start by recognizing that you and your students are key persons in learning environment.

Your being in the classroom must make sense to you and your environment. Your relived/ recalled experiences

as a teacher and those of your students are explored and evaluated to let you fulfill your mission and vision in

the teaching profession.

4 How does Richards see reflective teaching?

Richards (1990) argues that reflective teaching is a move beyond the ordinary to a higher level of awareness of

how teaching and take place. This demands that you and your students be involved in a process of self-

observation and self-evaluation.

Thus you and your students must gather information on your practices and experiences. This information is

organized, analyzed and interpreted to identify what beliefs, assumptions and values are attached to your

practices and experiences.

You and your students end up recognizing, examining and ruminating what you do as a teacher and students,

respectively.

5 Why reflecting teaching?

Reflective teaching informs you that you are in charge of your teaching/ learning and that you have a major

contribution to make towards its success. This is why your behavior must not be taken for granted as it needs to

be continuously evaluated to let your practices and experiences be meaningful.

To you the teacher, reflective teacher is a deliberate move to allow you thinking critically of your teaching

practice so that your students can maximize their learning. Thus, through a change oriented activity, you

contribute highly to your professional development.

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Richards (1990) argues that experience alone is insufficient for professional growth, but experience coupled

with reflection is a powerful impetus for teacher development. Reflective teaching is a mark of a concerned

teacher who is skilled enough to examine his/her beliefs, values and assumptions behind the teaching practice.

The insights derived from this exercise are used to improve your practice.

According to Bailey (1997), reflective teaching is about a skilled teaching of knowing what to do. You examine

your work so that you consider alternative ways of ascertaining that your students learn. This takes place

through searching for deeper understanding of your teaching. So, you are able to monitor, critique and defend

that which you implement and how you implement it.

6 Can a reflective teacher become a researcher?

It is possible that reflective teaching may turn you to be a researcher because of its dimension of self-inquiry.

Through self-inquiry, much of what is unknown becomes clear so that you end up improving your practice and

planning. Thus, your personal experiences are turned into stories which can be shared with your peers.

In this manner, reflective teaching is a professional alternative to action research. It is a personal means of

conducting your own ongoing professional life by solving problems in a systematic manner.

7 What's the significance of reflective teaching on

professional development?
Reflective teaching is seen as a process that can facilitate teaching, learning and understanding, and that plays a

central role in teacher professional development. The significance of reflective teaching is well expounded by

many scholars.

Dewey was among the first to promote reflection as a means of professional development in teaching.

He believes that “critical reflection” is the most important quality a teacher may have and adds that “when

teachers speculate, reason, and contemplate using open- mindedness, wholeheartedness, and responsibility,

they will act with foresight and planning rather than basing their actions on tradition, authority, or impulse.

The significance of reflective teaching on professional development can be shown as follows.

First, reflective teaching increases the degree of “professionalism”. Teachers who are better informed as to the

nature of their teaching are able to evaluate their stage of professional growth and what aspects of their teaching

they need to change.

Reflective practice offers practical options to address professional development issues.

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Secondly, it can help young teachers achieve a better understanding of their own assumptions about teaching as

well as their own teaching practices; it can lead to a richer conceptualization of teaching and a better

understanding of teaching and learning processes; it can serve as a basis of self-evaluation and is therefore an

important component of professional development.

Lastly, as young teachers gain experience in a community of professional educators, they feel the need to grow

beyond the initial stages of survival in the classroom to reconstructing their own particular theory from their

practice.

Reflective teaching has the effects of making teachers more initiative and responsible in pursuing the practical

rationality through exploring teaching and learning activities, taking more informed actions and establishing a

deeper understanding of teaching, which ultimately contributes to their professional knowledge and

competence.

So a process of reflective teaching is a process of teacher professional development.

Without systematically reflective teaching, teacher professional development becomes impossible, and at the

same time teacher professional development spurs teachers to do reflective thinking in their teaching.

8 How does Schön (1983) describe reflection-in-action and

reflection-on-action?
Reflection-in-action helps us as we complete a task. It is that process that allows us to reshape what we are

working on, while we are working on it. It is that on-going experimentation that helps us find a viable solution. In

this, we do not use a “trial-and-error” method. Rather, our actions are much more reasoned and purposeful than

that.

If something isn’t working correctly (doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem to move you closer to the goal) then you

“reflect” (a conscious activity) in the action-present.

Knowing-in-action is often that tacit information that we know about doing something — it is often left

unexplained or unmentioned when we describe what we do. It is revealed in skillful performance.

Reflecting-in-action is generally called forth when a surprise appears in the process of accomplishing the task.

And that surprise causes one to question how the surprise occurred given our usual thinking process.

Reflection-on-action in our design projects is provided by final reflection papers, portions of design documents

titled “lessons learned,” and also any time (written or otherwise) in which you evaluate your own process (this is

actually a critical part of the design process and should well be incorporated into your design documents).

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We reflect on action, thinking back on what we have done in order to discover how our knowing-in-action may

have contributed to an unexpected outcome (Schön, 1983, p. 26).

9 Are there criticisms of Schön’s conception?

Although Schön had a great impact on efforts to develop reflective teaching practice throughout the world, his

ideas have been criticized on several grounds. First, Schön has been criticized for his lack of attention to the

discursive or dialogical dimension of teacher learning. Although he emphasizes the reflective conversations that

teachers have with the situations in which they practice, and the conversations of mentors and novice

practitioners as the mentors attempt to coach the novices.

Schön does not discuss how teachers and other professionals can and do reflect together on a regular basis about

their work. Apart from the context of mentoring, reflection is portrayed by Schön as largely a solitary process

involving a teacher and his or her situation, and not as a social process taking place within a learning community.

Much recent work on reflective teaching, on the other hand, stresses the idea of reflection as a social process and

makes the argument that without a social forum for the discussion of their ideas, teacher development is

inhibited because our ideas become more real and clearer to us when we can speak about them to others.

10 How can teachers develop a critical perspective?

Developing a critical perspective on our own behavior requires the dispositions of open-mindedness,

responsibility, and wholeheartedness that Dewey highlighted a long time ago. Implicit in the type of

collaborative and cooperative environment is the element of trust. Teaching, when approached in the reflective

manner that Dewey recommended and Schön described, can be an intensely personal and challenging endeavor.

To be open to questioning long-held beliefs, to be willing to examine the consequences of our actions and, to be

engaged fully in the teaching endeavor is certainly a rewarding but also a very demanding effort. To be engaged

in this sort of examination with others requires that trust becomes a prominent feature of these conversations

among practitioners. Without those companions and without that trust, our reflection on our teaching will be

severely limited.

Another criticism of Schön’s work is that he focuses on teaching practice at the level of the individual without

sufficient attention to the social conditions that frame and influence that practice. Here, the argument is that by

focusing teacher’s attention only inwardly at their own practice, Schön is encouraging a submissive response to

the institutional conditions and roles in which teachers find themselves.

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Critics argue, and we would agree, that teachers should be encouraged to focus both internally on their own

practices, and externally on the social conditions of their practice, and that their action plans for change should

involve efforts to improve both individual practice and their situations. If teachers want to avoid the

bureaucratic and technical conception of their role that has historically been given to them, and if they are going

to become reflective teachers and not technical teachers, then they must seek to maintain a broad vision about

their work and not just look inwardly at their own practices.

11 What are the basic concepts in Social-cultural Theory?

One of the fundamental concepts of sociocultural theory, according to Lantolf (2000), is its claim that the human

mind is mediated. Lantolf claims that Vygotsky finds a significant role for what he calls “tools” in humans’

understanding of the world and of themselves. According to him, Vygotsky advocates that humans do not act

directly on the physical world without the intermediary of tools.

Whether symbolic or signs, tools according to Vygotsky are artifacts created by humans under specific cultural

(culture specific) and historical conditions, and as such they carry with them the characteristics of the culture in

question.

They are used as aids in solving problems that cannot be solved in the same way in their absence. In turn, they

also exert an influence on the individuals who use them in that they give rise to previously unknown activities

and previously unknown ways of conceptualizing phenomena in the world.

Therefore, they are subject to modification as they are passed from one generation to the next, and each

generation reworks them in order to meet the needs and aspirations of its individuals and communities.

Vygotsky advocates that the role of a psychologist should be to understand how human social and mental

activity is organized through culturally constructed artifacts.

12 Has reflective teacher education supported genuine

teacher development?
According to Handal and Lauvas, the first is question of the degree to which reflective teacher education has

supported genuine teacher development. Here, despite all of the rhetoric surrounding efforts to prepare teachers

who are more reflective and analytic about their work, in reality, reflective teacher education has done very little

to foster genuine teacher development and to enhance teachers' roles in educational reform.

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Instead an illusion of teacher development has often been created which has maintained in more subtle ways the

subservient position of the teacher. There are several ways in which reflective teacher education has

undermined the frequently expressed emancipatory intent of teacher educators.

First, one of the most common uses of the concept of reflection has involved helping teachers reflect about their

teaching with the primary aim of better replicating a curriculum or teaching method that research has allegedly

found to be effective in raising students' standardized test scores.

Here the question in the reflection is how well does my practice conform to what someone wants me to be

doing? Sometimes the creative intelligence of the teacher is permitted to intervene to determine the situational

appropriateness of employing particular teaching strategies and materials, but often it is not.

There are a number of things missing from this popular kind of reflection about teaching including any sense of

how the practical theories of teachers (their knowledge-in action in Schon's language) are to contribute to the

process of teacher development.

Ironically, despite Schon’s (1983) very articulate rejection of this technical rationality in his book The reflective

practitioner, "theory" is still seen by those who use this approach to reside only within universities, and practice

to reside only within schools. The problem is framed as merely transferring or applying theories from the

university to classroom practice (eg. Zeichner, 1995).

The reality that theories are always produced through practices and that practices always reflect particular

theoretical commitments is ignored. There are still many instances of this technical rationality approach to

reflective practice in teacher education programs around the world today.

Closely related to this persistence of technical rationality under the banner of reflective teaching, is the

limitation of the reflective process to consideration of teaching skills and strategies (the means of instruction)

and exclusion of reflection upon the ends of education and the moral and ethical aspects of teaching from the

teacher's purview.

Teachers are denied the opportunity to do anything but fine tune and adjust the means for accomplishing ends

determined by others. Teaching becomes merely a technical activity.

A third aspect of the failure of reflective teacher education to promote genuine teacher development is the clear

emphasis on focusing teachers' reflections inwardly at their own teaching and students, to the neglect of

consideration of the social conditions of schooling that influence the teacher's work within the classroom.

This individualist bias makes it less likely that teachers will be able to confront and transform those structural

aspects of their work that undermine their accomplishment of their educational goals. The context of teachers'

work is to be taken as given.

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While teachers' primary concerns understandably lie within the classroom and with their students, it is unwise

to restrict teachers' attention to these concerns alone.

As U.S. philosopher Israel Scheffler has argued:

Teachers cannot restrict their attention to the classroom alone, leaving the larger setting and purposes of

schooling to be determined by others. They must take active responsibility for the goals to which they are

committed and for the social setting in which these goals may prosper.

If they are not to be mere agents of the state, of the military, of the media, of the experts and bureaucrats, they

need to determine their own agency through a critical and continual evaluation of the purposes, the

consequences, and the social context of their calling (p. 11).

We must be careful here that teachers' involvement in matters beyond the boundaries of their classrooms does

not make excessive demands on their time, energy and expertise, diverting their attention from their core

mission with students.

In some circumstances, creating more opportunities for teachers to participate in school-wide decisions about

curriculum, staffing, instruction and so on, can intensify their work beyond the bounds of reasonableness and

make it more difficult for them to accomplish their primary task of educating students. It does not have to be this

way, but care needs to be taken that teacher empowerment does not undermine teachers' capacities.

A fourth and closely related aspect of much of the work on reflective teaching is the focus on facilitating

reflection by individual teachers who are to think by themselves about their work. There is still very little

emphasis on reflection as a social practice that takes place within communities of teachers who support and

sustain each other's growth.

The challenge and support gained through social interaction is important in helping us clarify what we believe

and in gaining the courage to pursue our beliefs. More research in the last decade using a socio-cultural lens has

focused on the importance of communities of practice in teacher learning (eg. Grossman, Wineburg, &

Woolworth, 2001; Little, 2002; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006), but the emphasis is still on individual teacher

reflection in many places.

One consequence of the focus on individual teacher reflection and the lack of attention by many to the social

context of teaching in teacher development has been that teachers come to see their problems as their own,

unrelated to those of other teachers or to the structures of schooling. Thus we saw the widespread use of such

terms as "teacher burnout" which directed the attention of teachers away from a critical analysis of schools and

the structures of teachers' work to a preoccupation with their own individual failures.

A group of activist teachers in the Boston area argued some time ago that:

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Teachers must begin to turn the investigation of schools away from scapegoating individual teachers, students,

parents, and administrators, toward a system-wide approach. Teachers must recognize how the structure of

schools controls their work and deeply affects their relationships with their fellow teachers, their students, and

their student' families… Only with this knowledge can they grow into wisdom and help others to grow.

In summary, when we examine the ways in which the concept of reflection has been used in teacher

education we find four themes that undermine the potential for genuine teacher development:

(1) A focus on helping teachers to better replicate practices suggested by research conducted by others and a

neglect of preparing teachers to exercise their judgment with regard to the use of these practices;

(2) A means-end thinking which limits the substance of teachers' reflections to technical questions of teaching

techniques and ignores analysis of the ends toward which they are directed;

(3) An emphasis on facilitating teachers' reflections about their own teaching while ignoring the social and

institutional context in which teaching takes place;

(4) An emphasis on helping teachers' to reflect individually. All of these things create a situation where there is

merely the illusion of teacher development of teacher empowerment.

13 How is The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

described?
Lantolf (2002), Wertsch (1985) and Shayer (2002) claim that Vygotsky’s introduction of the notion of the ZPD

was due to his dissatisfaction with two practical issues in educational psychology: the first is the assessment of a

child’s intellectual abilities and the second is the evaluation of the instructional practices.

With respect to the first issue, Vygotsky believes that the established techniques of testing only determine the

actual level of development, but do not measure the potential ability of the child. In his view, Psychology should

address the issue of predicting a child’s future growth, “what he/she not yet is”.

Because of the value Vygotsky attached to the importance of predicting a child’s future capabilities, he

formulated the concept of ZPD which he defines as:

The distance between a child’s actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving, and

the higher level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in

collaboration with more capable peers.

According to him, ZPD helps in determining a child’s mental functions that have not yet matured but are in the

process of maturation, functions that are currently in an embryonic state, but will mature tomorrow.

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Moreover, he claims that the study of ZPD is also important, because it is the dynamic region of sensitivity in

which the transition from interpsychological to intrapsychological functioning takes place.

Vygotsky’s ideas have been widely applied in the field of education. The implications of these ideas in the field of

L2 teaching therefore, are well founded and can be summarized as follow:

The traces of Vygotsky’s ideas can be seen in the process approaches, which appeared as a reaction against the

dominant product approaches in the 1960s and 1970s. The product approaches are grounded on behaviorist

principles and relate language teaching to linguistic form, discrete linguistics skills and habit formation.

They claim that language consists of parts, which should be learned and mastered separately in a graded

manner.

The learner’s role is to receive and follow the teacher’s instructions; an example of these approaches is the audio-

lingual approach. However, process approaches came up with views emphasizing the cognitive aspect of

learning and acknowledge the contributions that the learner brings to the learning context.

According to these approaches, students should be taught what Horrowtiz (1986) terms as “systematic thinking

skills”. As a result, planning, setting goals, drafting and generating ideas became part of teaching strategies in L2

classroom, particularly in the field of writing. Approach believes that language should be made accessible and

accepted as a practical tool for teachers to use in their teaching.

Therefore, the theoretical basis of Genre Approach is firmly premised in the systemic functional model that

refers to the theory of genre as theory of language use, description of relationship between the context in which

language occurs and the actual language being used.

Here, the emphasis is on social uses of language according to context, which tally with Vygotsky’s ideas of the

role of language as a social tool for communication.

14 What’s the importance of meaning construction in the

act of learning?
The importance of meaning construction in the act of learning (reflecting Vygotsky’s claims) is a hot topic in L2

classroom interactions. The rise of approaches such as integrative teaching of reading and writing is nothing but

a recognition of the importance of meaningful interaction of L2 students with texts in classrooms.

Zimmerman (1997) argues that enhancing students’ competency in L2 should not be seen to be located in

mastering skills. Too much concentration on skills could deprive students from engaging with what he refers to

as aspects of literacy such as meaning construction, competency, fluency and flexibility with dealing with texts as

readers and writers.

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Marshall (1987) asserts that if these aspects are ignored, teachers will be inculcating in students what Kennedy

(1997) and Kubota (1998) term as fixed routines and dogmatic treatment of skills (what Vygotsky calls

“fossilization”).They argue that such skills make students develop one-way thinking that rejects whatever does

not conform to the existing knowledge.

Students will develop a convergent type of thinking that will hinder their abilities to deal with tasks that require

complex thinking. This, in turn, could retard students‟ abilities to develop multiple skills required for their

success in their academic life (Spack, 1988).

It is advocated that once the focus of teaching is on meaning construction, students would be able to assimilate,

internalize and integrate the new information with the information they already possess, and thus understand

the new information better and add personal values to it.

A clear application of sociocultural theory principles in L2 classroom is obvious in the task-based approach. This

approach emphasizes the importance of social and collaborative aspects of learning.

Ellis (2000) claims that sociocultural theory focuses on how the learner accomplishes a task and how the

interaction between learners can scaffold and assist in the L2 acquisition process.

Shayer (2002) postulated that collaboration and interaction among peers create a collective ZPD from which

each learner can draw from as a collective pool. Ellis advises teachers to give more attention to the properties of

task that aim to promote communicative efficiency as well as L2 acquisition.

Nunan assumes that task-based contexts “stimulate learners to mobilize all their linguistic resources and push

their linguistic knowledge to the limit” a point that Seedhouse seems to question. However, a more optimistic

view comes from Kumaravadivelu (1993b, cited Kumaravadivelu, 2006), who advocates that task-based activity

is not linked to any particular approach, and is therefore a useful method for the teaching of language-centered

tasks, learner-centered tasks and learning-centered tasks.

He recommends sequencing of tasks in a suitable manner to ensure that the demand on language is compatible

with learners‟ levels of proficiency.

The central focus of task-based approach is on the role of interaction and collaboration among peers and how

learners scaffold each other through interaction, a point that is essential in Vygotsky''s concept of learning.

The issue of internalization is crucial in Vygotsky''s theory as well as in L2 classrooms.

Vygotsky encourages teachers not to concentrate too much on teaching concrete facts but to also push their

students into an abstract world as a means to assisting them to develop multiple skills that will enable them to

deal with complex learning tasks.

Simister (2004) recognizes the importance of the student’s personal voice and claims that emphasis on the

regurgitation of facts and repetition of accepted ideas will only produce dull and uninspired students.

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This implies that students should be taught how to create, adjust their strategies and assimilate learning

activities into their own personal world. As a result of the recognition of the role of abstract thinking in students‟

intellectual development, nowadays there is a call for the introduction of literature in L2 classrooms.

The teaching of literature is believed to enrich students’ vocabularies and support the development of their

critical thinking, thus moving them away from the parrot-like types of learning, instead focusing on language

structure into abstract thinking, whereby students can have personal appreciation of the language, consequently

developing a self-motivated attitude to learning the language.

Lack of motivation experienced by some L2 students could be partly attributed to over-emphasis on teaching

language structure which is ineffective in setting to motion students’ intellectual abilities.

Saiba mais
Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice. Available at. Access at
<http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/reflective-teaching-exploring-our-own-
classroom-practice> Mar. 31st, 2014.

O que vem na próxima aula

Na próxima aula, você vai estudar:
• The importance of self-monitoring for a reflective attitude;
• Dewey"s concepts about the manifestations of the self.

CONCLUSÃO
Nesta aula, você:
• Understand what reflective teaching is;
• Make a distinction between "reflection-on-action" and "reflection-in-action" recognize the criticism of
Schon"s concepts;
• Understand the Handal and Lauvas framework about teacher"s theoretical practices;
• Discuss Vygotsky"s view on language learning.

Referências

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• Bailey (1997)
• Ellis (2000)
• Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth (2001)
• Horrowtiz (1986)
• Kumaravadivelu (1993b, cited Kumaravadivelu, 2006)
• Lantolf (2000)
• Lantolf (2002)
• Little (2002)
• Marshall (1987)
• McLaughlin & Talbert (2006)
• Richards (1990)
• Shayer (2002)
• Scheffler, Israel (?)
• Schön (1983)
• Simister (2004)
• Spack (1988)
• Vygotsky (?)
• Wertsch (1985)
• ZEICHNER, K; LISTON, D. Reflective teaching. L. Erlbaum Associates, 1996.
• Zimmerman (1997).

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