A (re)construção identitária de professores de inglês em serviço: um estudo de caso na educação pública municipal em Manaus (Am) durante a pandemia de Covid 19

Abstract

This dissertation involved research situated in Applied Linguistics from an interdisciplinary perspective, with the overall goal of investigating the identity and ongoing development of in-service English teachers at the Municipal Department of Education of Manaus (SEMED) during the pandemic period from March to December 2020, caused by the COVID-19 disease. The research had two specific objectives: 1) to reflect on the identity of public-school English teachers in Manaus during the pandemic period; 2) to understand the issue of teacher identity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical framework is organized into two chapters. The first chapter deals with Identity, Identity in Applied Linguistics, Construction, and (Re)Construction of Teacher Identity based on Habermas (1988), Ricoeur (1990), Giddens (1991), Almeida (2001), Moita Lopes (2002), Firth and Wagner (2007), Deters (2011), Miranda (2012), Celani (2016), Silva (2019), and Frank and Conceição (2021). The second chapter addresses the ongoing professional development of teachers, English teacher education, and teacher training as intellectual educators based on Kumaravadivelu (2003), Magalhães (2003), Sousa Santos (2007), Lopes (2013), Jordão (2014), and Celani (2017). Regarding the research methodology, it is a study centered on the qualitative approach based on Denzin and Lincoln (2006) and Creswell (2014). It was a case study according to the postulates of Yin (2001), Stake (2003), Chizzotti (2006), and Dörnyei (2010). The research context was the Municipal Department of Education (SEMED) and involved three schools and three participants. For data generation, the research utilized two instruments: profile and investigative questionnaires based on Cervo and Bervian (2002), Gil (2008), and Araújo (2019), and semi-structured interviews based on Laville and Dionne (1999), Kvale (2007), and Qu and Dumay (2011). For data analysis, two theories were adopted: Content Analysis, based on Bardin (2016), and Discursive Textual Analysis, based on Moraes and Galiazzi (2020). The results of the study indicated that the identity of in-service teachers is marked by daily (re)constructions, whether through their position in relation to their professional class or the stigmas associated with the discipline they teach. The data also revealed that teacher identity during the pandemic period was impacted in various ways; however, after this scenario, teachers feel more empowered to face the challenges that surround English language teaching in public schools.