Instituto De Literatura Y Ciencias Del Lenguaje

This talk reports on the first exploration of the study English as a Foreign Language teacher education in Chile. The study explores the activity of learning to teach English from a student teachers perspective at a Chilean teacher education program in Santiago, Chile.

This  paper  explores  SLTE  curriculum  and  speci!cally  examines  the  course  structure  of  a  teacher education  program  in  Chile.  This  examination  is  done  through  a  Cultural  historical  activity  theory (CHAT) lens. CHAT is a theory of human development, which sees learning as a collective and mediated activity.  This  study  used  a  qualitative  research  design  analysing  a  complex  data  set.  The  analysis  of documents and participants' perceptions on the course structure revealed a constant tension between a developmental curricular model and a training model in which content knowledge competed with practical pedagogical knowledge. The !ndings also con!rm the tendency of English pro!ciency as the most prominent knowledge in this context.

La sicología cognitiva ha contribuido con una serie de hallazgos en relación con el aprendizaje. Estos logros conciben el aprendizaje como un conjunto de procesos que posibilitan el procesamiento de la información que reciben los seres humanos. La aproximación cognitiva intenta analizar y comprender cómo la información se recibe, se procesa y se estructura en la memoria. Esta perspectiva, a diferencia de aquellas que conciben al aprendiz como un receptor pasivo de información, atribuye gran importancia a las habilidades de procesamiento que los individuos traen consigo a la situación de aprendizaje y, en consecuencia, se visualiza a los aprendientes como participantes “activos, constructivos y capaces de planificar” (Mc Laughlin 1990:113). Se parte del supuesto que cuando los aprendientes reciben información novedosa, la procesan, la almacenan y, posteriormente, la recuperan para aplicarla a nuevas situaciones de aprendizaje.

Research on teachers' beliefs has gained significant attention in second/foreign language teacher education literature in the last 20 years [3]. These studies have highlighted the relevance of teachers' beliefs on teachers' decisions and practices. Although research on beliefs has contributed to our understanding of what teachers think and do, largely these studies have been framed at an individual level [12]. However, more recently research has emerged primarily from sociocultural perspectives exploring the social origin of beliefs [2]. This paper examines English as a foreign language (EFL) pre-service teachers' beliefs about language teaching as part of the activity of learning to teach English in the Chilean context. This paper argues that beliefs mediate pre-service teachers' learning, and that they can potentially develop into concepts. This study suggests that beliefs are shaped and reshaped as pre-service teachers engage in the activity of learning to teach English.

This book explores EFL teacher education in Chile in order
to further understand the nature of teacher learning in
second language education environments. Framed by a
CHAT perspective, chapters use key qualitative research to
determine how specific factors can help and hinder the
effective preparation of teachers, illuminating contradictory
dynamics between local and national policies, teacher
education programs, and pre-service views and classroom
realities. The book makes an important contribution to the
growing debate surrounding the design of EFL teacher
education policy, curriculum and learning strategies, and
will be of value internationally to settings that share similar
challenges.

This is an earlier version of Chapter 3 In Z. Arashiro & M. Barahona (Eds.), Women in academia crossing North-South borders: Gender, Race, and Displacement. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

The concept of identity as a social and political construction has been subject to an emerging body of research in the social sciences over the last three decades (Alcoff, 2006). My interest in social identity is rooted in my own experiences as a Chilean woman, foreign language teacher, teacher educator and researcher. Yet my (in)ability to construct myself as a  seamless identity from multiple contexts has been a long and unfinished (perhaps endless) life journey. In this auto ethnographic work, I engage in processes of critical reflection on my lived experiences in order to explore the concept of identity and decolonise my own beliefs. This ongoing illumination reveals a complex and often conflicting experience of ‘belonging and becoming’ in different spaces and spheres. In this chapter, I examine four key formative influences that have shaped this complex experience of belonging and becoming: from being Chilean to ‘Latina’; from a PhD student to a researcher and from a language teacher to a culture mediator. Through this work, I seek to build on an understanding that identity is a constantly learning and unlearning experience, made up of many often contradictory, self-understandings which are distributed across the material and social environment (Holland, 1998). I envisage that this academic exercise can contribute to the efforts of other academic women who are striving to construct other forms of being and knowing.