English Teaching Assistants in Brazil: conceptions of subject matter, teaching and learning to teach

This paper aims at analyzing the conceptions of subject matter, teaching and learning to teach of two English Teaching Assistants from the United States who work in Brazil at the CAPES/Fulbright Program, named English Teaching Assistants (ETA), which supports Languages Without Borders. The theoretical bases are teacher cognition (or teacher thinking) and conceptions (PRATT, 1992, FREEMAN, 1996, BORG, 2003, LAM & KEMBER, 2006; BURNS ET AL, 2015). The data were collected through interviews and the analysis is based on Freeman (1998), whose elements are naming, grouping, finding relationships and displaying. These elements are used to avoid what is called the "impulse to teach", since the teacher educator is also the author of the study, and intends to do an analysis without any previous interpretations. The results show the way the conceptions of the interviewed teachers are related to each other, revealing aspects of their practices and previous educational experiences.