Exploración del ethos del docente de español en Colombia

This article presents the partial results of the analysis of a corpus of teaching narratives. The texts were written by elementary-level and secondary-level Spanish language teachers in Colombia. The writing prompt was an open question about their teaching experience. The purpose of the analysis was to examine the teachers’ self-image as shown in their discourses (their ethos). This is the standing point where postures about the social space of education in the country fall into. The paper shows how those self-images move around the discourses of telling and commenting on classroom experiences. These movements prompt three subsidiary images of the teacher as an expert subject: the ethos of the critical professional, the innovative intellectual, and the educator for life. The approach carried out arises questions and suggests possible cross-curricular links with pedagogical studies on teaching identities. It also highlights the need to listen to teachers concerning their entrance and performance in the working-school world after being trained as education professionals, in general, and as linguistic teachers, specifically.