Continuing teacher training and educational measurement:

innovation in elite bilingual education

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze how the educational measurement of a bilingual education system affects the lifelong learning education of bilingual teachers based on events in my daily work as a teacher trainer, working in private schools in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, linked to a bilingual education system, in a context called “elite bilingual” (CAVALCANTI, 1999). The discussion, part of an autoethnographic research (ADAMS, HOLMAN JONES & ELLIS, 2022) for a doctorate, starts from records in a field diary and events related to the educational measurement of the education system, embodied the analysis. As a theoretical-analytical device, Chang's (2016) autoethnographic precepts were observed, as well as the concept of good education (BIESTA, 2012), innovation and constellation of interrelated social practices (SIGNORINI, 2007). The results indicate that bilingual education systems expand based on the discourse that “you don't learn to speak English in school” and, accordingly, on the idea that “teachers don't know how to teach”. Still, educational measurement in the bilingual education system values ​​data that measure what is possible to measure, and not what is desirable in terms of good education. Thus, the existence of bilingual teaching systems and also the orientation based on the educational measurement that the systems carry out undermines the potential critical character of the continuing education of bilingual teachers, and becomes a space for confrontation between the expectations of different institutional agents involved in this structure.