Pre-service language teacher education: Conceptualisations of pedagogical contexts, redefinition of educational beliefs, and development of appropriate pedagogies.

The project will investigate the pedagogical experiences of pre-service L1 Portuguese teachers working in state schools located in peripheral urban areas in São Paulo. Specifically, it will examine the ways these student teachers conceptualise their pedagogical contexts and how this informs their development of appropriate pedagogies, with a view to supporting their professional development, improving the quality of teaching in these contexts, and informing the revision of teacher education programmes in Brazil. The project will thus explore the following research questions:

1. How do pre-service L1 Portuguese teachers conceptualise their pedagogical contexts?
2. How does this conceptualisation impact on their pedagogical decision making?
3. What contextual and cognitive factors facilitate or hinder the development of contextually appropriate pedagogical knowledge?

The study will be exploratory-interpretive in nature and follow a multi-site, multiple-case design. Four case studies of individual pre-service teachers will be conducted, each working in a different state school. The project will involve a multimodal approach to data collection, including, where appropriate, an ecological use of methods which are already adopted as part of the PIBID programme.