A Tail of Hope: Preservice Teachers’ Stories of Expectation Toward the Profession

Abstract

In face of the recent Brazilian socioeconomical panorama, the teaching profession has been experiencing threats of all sources, both in relation to how the Brazilian society views teaching and how teaching professionals view themselves. Research on Language Teaching and Language Teacher Education has reflected this trend lately in papers that deal with the issues of exhaustion, sickness, and “burnout” in language teachers (Allwright 2006; Carlyle and Woods 2003; Medgyes 1994). The results of research of this kind seem to describe the contexts where teachers may experience sickness and burnout only too well, but they hardly offer alternatives. Recent research on hope in the areas of Psychology and Education, however, shows that professionals might find alternatives and reclaim emancipatory, creative ideals through their stories of hope and expectation (Miller and Larsen 2006). This chapter seeks to show how reflecting on hope may help to provide language teachers and teachers-to-be with a sense of new possibilities and expectations that enhance their empowerment toward the profession. Through the narratives of a group of undergraduate EFL¹ teachers, who participated in a course on language teacher education, this chapter tries to show how participants find hope in the profession they have chosen.