ABSTRACT Since the disclosure of the PCNs of Portuguese (1998), the prescription that the teaching of activities for reading and production of texts should take textual genres as teaching units has generated a number of researches and publications. However, such works have focused mainly on the relation between the teaching of genres and the development of the students' linguistic capabilities, without taking into consideration the possible development of the teacher herself, who works with genres in her teaching context. Thus, in the present paper the goal is to present and discuss our conception on the role that the teaching of textual genres can play in teaching activities, and on the personal development of the teacher herself, as well as in the betterment of her "métier." In order to reach such a goal this discussion is based on the theoretical assumptions developed within the scene of Vigotskian psychology, especially on what refers to the distinction between artifacts and instruments, and their relation to human development.
Textual genre; Artifact; Instrument; Professional development
