Studies in the educational field (Kleiman, 2004; Nunes, 1997; Amorim, 1997; Soares, 1998; INAF, 2005; IBGE, 2003; Collelo, 2003; Scholze, 2004; Rojo, 2005, Morais, 2005) indicate that Brazilian students have, by and large, a low level of proficiency in reading. Research concerned about reading/literacy tends to focus on the readers´ performance, on the text itself or on the role of school without paying attention to the beliefs of those who are involved in the teaching-learning process. As it falls to school to promote literacy as decoding and literacy functionally interpreted as the capacity to use language in multiple contexts, we developed an interdisciplinary study in the area of Applied Linguistics based on sociointeractive and sociocognitive principles that allowed us to seek in collocations information to identify Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs - Lakoff, 1987) discursively projected by the teachers about the nature of the reading process. The use of questionnaires, verbal protocols and interviews made possible the discussion about how the teachers´ ICMs may influence their pedagogical practice as well as what the relationship they may have with autonomy, collaboration and social inclusion, as advocated by the PCNs.