Sustainability of Exploratory Practice: A case study of former ELT pre-service teacher trainees

Studies on teachers’ work and lives worldwide have expressed ‘universal concerns about the conditions for teachers’ well-being, continuing development and commitment’ (Day, 2012). There has been a significant focus on novice teachers’ feelings of unpreparedness and of learning in their first years (Farrell, 2012) but more work needs to be done to understand the connections between long-term teacher education practices and the lives of teachers on their jobs. This paper presents the outcomes of a British Council funded research project (2018-2019), which is inspired in the theoretical amalgamation of the critical work of Freire (1970), Allwright (2003) and other contemporary contributors to the field of Critical Applied Linguistics (Pennycook, 2006; Zeichner, 2008). The project’s main objective is to examine the delayed impact of the principles of Exploratory Practice (EP), the form of practitioner research that inspired part of the language teacher education curricula experienced by over 45 in-service teachers. These have graduated as bilingual teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and Portuguese in two large universities in Brazil between 2008 and 2018. A systematised report will be given on (a) how in-service EP teachers have been surviving in the profession and (b) whether EP has offered them a viable alternative to professional pressures. These two aspects will inform the process of seeking to understand the ‘sustainability’ of the core principles and central notions of EP.