History and Memory
The project Teachers without Borders started from a partnership between the areas of education at UFPR and Otterbein University (Ohio-EUA), in the exchange of teachers educators and graduating teachers of UFPR to learn about and be a part of teacher educating projects that the American university offered during Summer Academy Tesol in 2016.
In the same year, the exchange included cultural and pedagogical activities at local public schools and a theoretical-practical teacher training course for Otterbein postgraduate students and teachers from different areas of knowledge.
The course aimed at developing work with English language literacy projects, especially considering the growing audience of international students in elementary schools in Ohio. With a cooperation agreement between UFPR and the University of Otterbein, as an action for internationalization in both universities, the intercultural teacher education exchange was repeated in 2017 in Ohio, when a UFPR teacher educator, a collaborator of the project, two master’s student teachers of English and Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PLE) at UFPR’s Center for Languages and Interculturalism (CELIN), and two technicians from Curitiba’s municipal education department (SME) traveled and participated in Summer Academy Tesol activities in July 2017. The teacher education exchange also took place in Curitiba, with Otterbein’s teacher trainers at UFPR and a local public school.
In order to expand and enhance the intercultural and international training activities promoted during the exchanges, we created in 2018, with the interaction between the Department of Theory and Practice of Teaching (DTPEN), the Department of Modern Foreign Languages (DELEM) of UFPR and the Department of Education of Otterbein University the proposal of Edition 1 (or Pilot) of this project. The pilot edition promoted, through the course “Shared Teacher Education in Brazil: UFPR – Otterbein”, training focused on teaching English and Portuguese as an Additional Language (PLA) to work with migrant students in multilingual and multicultural contexts. The courses provided an opportunity for intercultural interaction between teachers educators, undergraduate and post-graduate students from both universities, English language teachers from the public Basic Education system who work in Curitiba and the metropolitan region, and teachers from the public system in Ohio (from different segments and areas of knowledge). In addition, the courses have developed pedagogical studies and practices for intercultural collaborative learning among the participants, both locally and internationally.
In the pilot edition, a partnership was also signed with the Municipal Department of Education of Curitiba, with the purpose of offering a course focused on Portuguese as an Additional Language to teachers who work with students non-speakers of Portuguese at primary schools. This course was taught with the collaboration and expertise of Prof. Dr. Clóris Torquato (UEPG) in a theoretical and practical work, together with undergraduates and postgraduates from UFPR and UEPG. Also in 2018, a teacher, an undergraduate and a master’s student from UFPR, and two other teachers from Curitiba’s public school system participated in the third exchange program for teacher education, in Ohio. That year, teacher educator Kristin Bourdage and five teachers from the public school system came to Curitiba as part of the project’s exchange program. They were already part of working groups in the teacher education course composed of English teachers from Curitiba and the metropolitan region and undergraduate students from UFPR to plan and implement Critical Literacy projects in local public schools.
The second edition of the project, which started in 2019 and remains until 2022, aims to expand the actions taken so far by offering the course “Supervised Internship as a Collaborative Space for Teacher Educators” and new teacher education events. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, training exchanges with international travel had to be canceled, and as an alternative, training events became remote. In 2020 and 2021 participants from previous actions worked remotely, and collaboratively, on writing a book to share and disseminate the actions carried out. We offered several international online events in 2021 in the Teachers2teachers across borders remote teacher education cycle, which involved a more interculturally diverse internal and external audience, as the interaction, facilitated by English language communication and new technologies made it possible for teachers and students trainees from different countries and cities to participate, collaborate, teach and learn across borders.
The project has impacted several areas through its actions. In teaching, the project has sought innovative methodological alternatives to improve the students’ education by presenting itself as a space of reflection and articulation between the University and the School, locally and internationally. The project stands out by providing UFPR undergraduates with the opportunity for a teacher education that has as a differential intercultural dialogue and linguistic improvement through collaborative actions that ensure the joint work between teachers in initial and continuing training in favor of shared learning. At the research level, since it was launched, the project’s actions and results have been shared in academic events, inside and outside the universities involved, and also through the publication of articles and a collaborative book – which has generated extensive discussions about shared teaching, professional collaboration, and the continuous updating of education professionals.