The objective of this research is to identify the contribution and possible limitations of
Letras/English Language academic education in the teaching practice of English Language
Teaching for Children (LIC) at 3 schools of full time period (ETI´s) in the municipality of
Palmas and to identify if there are policies of continuing education offered by the government
as well as what curricular guidelines, methodologies and didactic materials are applied in the
teaching practice of LIC teachers In addition, it seeks to see how teachers are dealing with this
challenge, since most of these professionals with major degree in Letras/English Language
have been prepared by universities to teach only from 6th to 9th grade to Elementary School.
Initially, were presented some considerations about the curricular gaps of Teacher´s initial
Education who works in the first grades (nursery school and first four grades of primary
schools). Next, it seeks to identify aspects of the actions that led to the change of the state of
Tocantins schools curriculum, which also started to offer LIC in their of first grades
classrooms (nursery school and first four grades of primary school) from the academic year of
2017 and identify who are the actors in this teaching process. The theory in which the study
was developed was the Post-Method Pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu, 2001) which consider the
teacher an intellectual that needs a change of posture. In order to do that, teachers need stop
being a simple consumer of theories produced by specialists and must himself theorize based
on their practice, for a more effective language teaching. To support the discussion about LIC
teaching, other authors were selected: Brown (2000, 2007), Leffa (1988, 2001, 2006, 2011,
2013), Tonelli (2017), Almeida Filho (1993, 2000) Doninni, Platero e Weigel (2013), Reis
(2017), Miccoli (2017) e Luckesi (2014). The research participants were three teachers who
work in three distinct ETIs, located in different regions of the municipality: two of them are
located to the north and one to the south. The research showed that the participants in this
study did not receive proper initial training to act in the LIC teaching, while at the same time
the studies pointed out that the university is not the only responsible for all the education
background of teachers, in only four years. In addition, the research revealed a lack of
continuous education offered by the municipal government and also a lack of material
resources. However, despite all the obstacles, such as material resources shortage, limitations
in their initial Education and continuing education absence, ETI´s English language teachers
of Palmas are aware of their role and inspired by the desire to overcome these issues. As a
result, the research demonstrated that it is possible to achieve an efficient LIC teaching at
Palmas municipal public schools, if University, Government and School Management join
forces to fill the needs left on the initial training of teachers who lecture from 1st to 5th grades
of Elementary School.
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