Debating the English Language Student-Teacher Condition: practicum, identity and agency

Abstract

The practicum is a stage in teacher formal education usually surrounded by conflicting situations, especially in regard to the positioning of the student-teacher sometimes as a learner andother times as a teacher, particularly when working with teachers of English as a Foreign Language. This text focuses on this process of positioning student-teachers and the conflicts such positioning brings, discussing some of the ideas put forward by Bhabha, Hall and Derrida and advancing the possibility that the practicum, when openly treated as a hybrid locus, canbring forward student-teachers agencies that can improve their building of professional identities.