Research foundation and English teachers preparation

Abstract

This article presents the results of an action-research project financed by Colciencias that pretended to introduce changes into the teaching internship of the Modern Languages Licentiate Program at the University of Caldas. The project was carried out with a group of ten internshipteacher who are preparing themselves to be future English teachers in state institutions in Manizales. Observation, description, refl ection, experimentation, and new actions, emerged as the main research competences that enabled effective changes in the last learning stage of the internshipteachers. The English class requires certain conditions, and the actionresearch spiral offers a theory and method that help the creation of these conditions. If education institutions keep in mind the importance of action-research in curricular plans, they will be able to prepare critical, autonomous, refl exive and transformative teachers.