CLASSROOM RESEARCH AND REFLECTIONS ON EFL TEACHING IN NORTHERN BRAZIL

Research and teaching are arguably part and parcel of the classroom practice of committed educators. In this book, the author presents a panoramic view of his two-and-a-half-year journey through a distance learning master’s programme in TEFL and TESL run by a university based in the United Kingdom. This “voyage” helped him see his classroom as a locus of permanent inquiry into teaching and learning processes. The experience was pivotal for him to shift the focus from his performance to that of his students, and to understand the importance of bringing his students’ learning difficulties to the fore when planning his lessons. Moreover, it made him realise that experimenting with different strategies to tackle classroom problems in an informed way not only enabled him to establish his identity as a knowledgeable other that would assist his students to advance in their studies but also as a co-constructor of knowledge with them. Part of this knowledge has already been shared in the form of papers published in peer-reviewed journals, four of which comprise the bulk of this book. His motivation for sharing the experience and putting the papers together into this single volume is his unremitting desire to encourage other educators living in geographically isolated or politically vulnerable areas of the world to accept the challenge to use their classrooms as a source of continuing professional development. Such an enterprise has the potential to transform themselves, their students and their communities.