Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies: Voices from Colombia 3031450507, 9783031450501

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Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies Voices from Colombia Edited by

c a r m e n h e l e n a gu e r r e ro -n i e t o

Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies

Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto Editor

Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies Voices from Colombia

Editor Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas Bogotá, Colombia

ISBN 978-3-031-45050-1    ISBN 978-3-031-45051-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Unauthorized  Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies: Voices from Colombia  1 Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto Part I Setting Up the Warp 2 Disobedient  ELT Research: Breaking the Rules, Finding Alternatives, Invoking Other Ontologies 15 Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina and Yolanda Samacá-Bohórquez 3 Educational  Policies in the Process of Language Teaching and Learning in Colombia: Challenges Emerging from the Implementation of Bilingual Plans in Bogotá 35 Eliana María Rubio-Cancino and Yiny Marcela Martínez-Bohórquez

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4 An  Approach to the Discourse of Standard English: A Disciplinary Power Exercise in the Colombian ELT Curriculum 55 Alber Josué Forero-Mondragón 5 Appropriating  ELT in Colombia: A Critical Call to Localize Language Teaching 77 Jhon Jairo Losada-Rivas 6 Tracking  Colombian Andes Speech: A Decolonial Take on Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language 99 Éder García-Dussán

Part II Crossing Threads and Stitching Textured Fabrics 7 Breaking  the Silence and Empowering English Language Student-Teachers Through Critical Collaborative Autoethnography121 Jairo Enrique Castañeda-Trujillo 8 Challenging  the Master Narratives of the Market and of English in L2 Pedagogy: Striving for a Reorientation141 Ferney Cruz-Arcila and Vanessa Solano-Cohen 9 Colombian  English Language Teachers’ Storied Agency Contesting the Inset of Globalization and Capitalism of Education163 Álvaro Hernán Quintero-Polo and Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto

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10 Deskilling  of English Teachers in Colombia: Neoliberalism, Internal Colonialism, and the Reification of English189 Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto and Álvaro Hernán Quintero-Polo 11 Examining  Racialized Practices in ELT: Enhancing Critical New Horizons209 Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina I ndex229

Notes on Contributors

Ferney Cruz-Arcila holds a PhD in Language, Discourse and Communication from King’s College London. His research interests have centered on bilingual education, the implications of language policies, processes of construction of teacher identity, rural education, and the relations of all these elements with issues of social justice. Recently, his work has also included critical outlooks of language teaching and learning from the view of race and racialization as well as the problematization of taken-for-granted ideas about the relationship between English and socioeconomic development. He is an assistant professor at the School of Humanities at Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. Yiny Marcela Martínez-Bohórquez  holds a Master’s degree in Peace Education from the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas and a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities and Spanish Language from the same university. Her research interests are focused on peace-building processes in schools. She has developed research projects on issues related to schools as armed conflict scenarios. Her interests are also focused on educational research’s impact on teachers’ professional development. She is a primary school teacher in a public school, ascribed to the Secretary of Education in Bogotá.

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Yolanda Samacá-Bohórquez  has been a teacher and teacher educator for about 29 years in public and private institutions in Colombia. Her feeling-­thinking-­doing is linked to critical pedagogies, decolonial perspectives in education, and the coloniality of being, knowing, and doing in ELT processes. The people she has been teaching, learning, and working within their-our territories have influenced her pedagogical and research work into a critical and situated critical teacher education praxis on pedagogical-research practices and teachers’ identities. She is an associate professor at the School of Science and Education, Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia. Eliana María Rubio-Cancino  has been a teacher in private schools and private and public universities; additionally, she has been part of different bilingualism plans in Bogotá. With her experience as a teacher and educational manager, she has raised a deep understanding of the political, social, and pedagogical implications of bilingualism programs in public schools, letting her reconstruct her identity as an English teacher. She also works in the School of Education at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas; there, she has taught the practicum, pedagogy, evaluation, and research teacher courses and has supported different research studies that have contributed to the improvement of ELT in Colombia. Vanessa Solano-Cohen  holds a PhD in Social Studies of Latin America from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. She is interested in the relationship between literature and violence in Colombia, the discursive configuration of migrants in the media, and the social construction of illness. Her interest in understanding language as a modeling force of society has led her to investigate the relationship between race, racialization, and the teaching and learning of foreign languages from a critical perspective. She works as a professor in the Department of Languages at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Alber Josué Forero-Mondragón  holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (Bogotá, Colombia) and a BA in English Language Teaching from the same university. He has devoted his academic and professional trajectory to raising questions

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regarding the role(s) language plays in the constitution of social realities. Thus, his interests have revolved around critical discourse analysis, language teacher identity, hip-hop pedagogies, and democracy and citizenship education in the English class. He is a teacher at Universidad Uniminuto and works as an academic texts copyeditor at Universidad de Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia). Éder García-Dussán  is a full professor in the School of Science and Education at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. He is a faculty in the doctoral program in Education. He is an active member of the Red Distrital de Maestros (District Teachers’ Network) (REDDI) and the Latin American Association of Discourse Studies (ALED). He is a member of the research group Estudios Críticos de Políticas Educativas Colombianas (Critical Studies on Colombian Educational Policies— ESTUPOLI), recognized by the Colombian Ministry of Science. He has authored books about linguistics, cultural semiotics, mother tongue pedagogy, and literary analysis (2008, 2012, 2015, 2018); is a compiler of academic works on research in mother tongue (2014, 2017), and is the author of 70 publications in scientific journals in Colombia, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Mexico, and Chile. Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto  holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and teaching from the University of Arizona. She is a full professor in the doctoral program in Education and in the MA in Communication Education from the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Her research interests and publications are in critical pedagogy, bilingualism, and teacher education and, recently, decoloniality in ELT. Her work has aimed at voicing Colombian English teachers’ concerns, experiences, and interests. She is the main researcher of the group Critical Studies on Educational Policies. She has served as a member of the Board Of Directors at the Colombian English teachers’ association, ASOCOPI (for its initials in Spanish Asociación Colombiana de Profesores de Inglés).

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Jhon Jairo Losada-Rivas is an associate professor in the English Language Teacher Education program in the School of Education at Universidad Surcolombiana. He has been a teacher and a language educator for over nine years. He holds a BA in English Language Teaching and an MA in English Didactics from Universidad Surcolombiana. His research interests are language assessment, professional development, and the study of bilingual policies in education. Recently, his work has also centered on exploring English language teachers’ academic, pedagogical, and personal trajectories as influential aspects that nurture and shape continuously their identities. Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina  is a Doctor in Education from the University of East London. Her research interests have centered on critical perspectives of language education in Colombia, specifically on how this interrelates with issues of social justice. Within the areas researched, she has explored culture, technology, and identity. Her most recent research has included critical outlooks of language teaching and learning from the view of race and racialization as well as the intersection of those with other aspects such as gender or class. She is an associate professor at the School of Education at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Álvaro Hernán Quintero-Polo  holds a doctorate in Education and an MA in Applied Linguistics. He has conducted research that has disrupted mainstream models in the areas of language teacher education, language teacher identity, and critical discourse studies. His disruptive research agendas have involved the creation of a voice of pre-service and in-service teachers about social, cultural, and political issues of the Colombian ELT curriculum. He is a full professor and coordinator of the MA in Applied Linguistics to ELT at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (Colombia). Jairo Enrique Castañeda-Trujillo  is a doctoral candidate in Education at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. His research interests emerged from the analysis of his own experiences as a student-teacher and then as a teacher-educator. His research focuses on the English language student-teachers, who through narratives and autoethnographies

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have allowed him to learn more about their trajectories while being and becoming English language teachers. Recently, his work includes the analysis of ideologies about the teaching profession that have affected the construction of student-teachers’ identities. He is an assistant professor at the School of Education at Universidad Surcolombiana.

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Workflow to write the collaborative autoethnographies. (Source: Own elaboration)

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List of Tables

Table 4.1 Relation between pedagogical models, disciplinary methods, and human action’s mobile mechanisms in Colombian school 6 Table 4.2 Means of correct training in current school 8 Table 4.3 Comparison between the English language components in Colombian statewide examinations and the Key English Test 12

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1 Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies: Voices from Colombia Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto

Language has been a site of struggle for long. Philosophers, linguists, politicians, educators, sociologists, and societies at large have something to say about the role of language, and/or languages, in our lives (Adsera & Pytlikova, 2015; Blommaert & Verschueren, 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas & McCarty, 2008). A great deal of these debates emerge and are spread by the thinkers and practitioners of the Global North (for the most part), where monolingualism is the norm. Ideas about “mother language” vs “second” or “foreign” language (Jordão, 2009), or native speakerism exist in those contexts but do not represent other ways of living and experiencing languages in non-white, non-angloeuropean communities, like India or like African countries (to mention two salient examples), where people conduct their daily lives in many languages without the need to name them as “mother tongue,” “second” or “foreign” (Grosjean, 2019; Yildiz, 2012). The terminologies and the ideologies and practices that arise in

C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (*) Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_1

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the Global North have largely and deeply influenced language attitudes, language policies, language teaching, language teacher education, research on language, and so on and so forth. Within this panorama, the English language has been constructed and reified as the dominant language throughout the world (Ricento, 2012) which has brought up a two-sided consequence: on the one hand, English has become “the” global language, or “the” lingua franca, which, of course has generated great economic benefits to international corporations (Canagarajah, 2013). On the other hand, this very same global growth has provoked scholars around the world to problematize this dominance through a myriad of angles and perspectives (Jordão, 2016; Guerrero-­ Nieto, 2010). Although much of this book addresses issues related to English language teaching and learning, the Spanish language has its own share of dominance as the colonial (and official) language of Colombia. In this context, for the last twenty years, Colombia has experienced a dramatic turn in its language policies, which has given a preeminent place to the English language in all aspects of social life and has produced the exclusion or neglect over other languages that are used, spoken, and learned within the Colombian territory (Correa & Usma, 2013; Mejía et  al., 2022). To this dominant position of English, many Colombian scholars have responded with reflections and research that challenge, problematize, and subvert the ideologies, discourses, and practices that sustain such a place. The ideas presented in the previous paragraphs: the place of language/s in our lives as sites of struggle, the reification of English, and the consequences of global discourses on Colombian recent linguistic policies constitute the grounds to title this book “Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies: Voices from Colombia.” Being the field of English Language Teaching (henceforth ELT) a largely colonized field (Guerrero-Nieto, 2018), not only in Colombia but around the world, where there has been a clear divide between the center (the so-­ called native-speaking countries) and the peripheries (the rest of the world) the authors of this book cannot help feeling it is time for us to speak up. Traditionally, we (ELT Colombian teachers and scholars), have been educated, instructed, and directed from the center. In this scenario, the group of authors who contributed to this book, had the feeling that

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our views on the field were somehow “unauthorized” since all of us are geo-politically located in the periphery. We also talk of “outlooks” because it is not our intention to impose our point of view, but rather, to present the readers with the ways in which we make sense of our field of study from different vantage points, different experiences, different ontologies, and different epistemologies. As such, this book has been constructed like a tapestry that has various textures, colors, threads, and stitches, which as a whole aims to create a collective vision of what the field of second languages education has meant to us as teachers of English or/and Spanish, teacher-educators, and researchers. Following Lakoff and Johnson (2003), this is an ontological metaphor born from our experiences with physical objects (p. 25). In our case, recurring to the tapestry as a metaphor allows us to use the concrete elements of the tapestry to organize our thinking and try to translate the abstractness of our ideas into the concreteness of a cultural object. In Colombia, there is a well-grounded tradition of making tapestries that comes from the Indigenous populations that have remained until today. Each Indigenous group has its own type of tapestry but there are some common elements to them. Tapestries are, for the most part, collective processes; they are characterized by their non-linearity but for their holistic nature; they use different materials and are not uniform although they have to stick to the same main story; besides the main story, there are small stories on the side. Most recently they have been used by some communities as a healing strategy after almost sixty years of internal armed conflict in Colombia (González Buitrago, 2017). Our tapestry, then, has a leading story, our unauthorized outlooks as ELT teachers/researchers composed and enriched by the individual stories of each one of the authors. Following with our metaphor, to put together this tapestry, we weaved, stitched, and sewed, with different materials and threads. The threads that occupy the entire framework of this tapestry are “undisciplined” (as opposed to disciplined/obedient) perspectives on the field; perspectives that we have been building, sometimes individually, sometimes collectively, and that have allowed us to give different colors and textures to this framework. The unauthorized outlooks we present here have to do with epistemological, ontological, and axiological positions that we have embraced throughout our

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professional careers. Thus we find authors who root their perspectives in critical theory, be it critical autoethnography, critical discourse analysis, critical interculturality, critical identity, or critical race studies. Others have found in the decolonial turn, the space that allows them to voice their intellectual inquiries. These two broad perspectives are traversed by another thread: the interrogation about the role of neoliberalism in the configuration of language policies and the different consequences that unfold from it. The end result is a two-face tapestry. One face is made by a group of chapters in which the authors take a theory-oriented stand to challenge or problematize traditional, canonical, or colonial perspectives into the field of second languages teaching and learning. In this “face” the texture is brought by the variety of topics addressed by the authors. Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina and Yolanda Samacá-Bohórquez call for a disruption in the way research is conducted in ELT; Eliana María Rubio-­ Cancino and Yiny Martínez-Bohórquez make a necessary account of most recent language policies which serve as a contextualization to understand where the rest of the chapters come from; Alber  Josué Forero-­ Mondragón centers his discussion around English in the curriculum while Jhon Jairo Losada-Rivas advocates for a more local take on English teaching pedagogy. To add a disruptive pop of color and texture, and in closing this first part, Éder García-Dussán explores the ways in which the teaching of Spanish as a second language has hidden a colonial legacy. While the first part of this tapestry is comprised of theory-based reflections, the second one is made up of research-based texts. To add texture to the tapestry, some authors place their intellectual interest in teacher education to “provoke” disruptions in the canonical ways adopted by schools of education. Jairo Enrique Castañeda-Trujillo uses critical autoethnography with a group of student-teachers, while Ferney Cruz-Arcila and Vanessa Solano-Cohen design a course for in-service teachers to examine pedagogy from a critical perspective. The three remain chapters contribute to the texture by collecting, through the voices of in-service teachers how they experience neoliberal language policies (Álvaro Hernán  Quintero-Polo & Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto); neoliberal institutional policies in language institutes (Carmen Helena Guerrero-­ Nieto & Álvaro Hernán  Quintero-Polo); and the perceptions about

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English of teachers working at a language institute (Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina). This is how, based on each author’s experiences, the book is put together like that great tapestry, where there are continuities and discontinuities, threads that run from beginning to end, and also threads that are cut but that add color and meaning. In what follows I will offer a short introduction to each one of the chapters included in this book.

The Pieces (The Chapters) Tapestry Face One (Part I) The second piece to assemble this tapestry is entitled “Disobedient ELT Research: Breaking the Rules, Finding Alternatives, Invoking Other Ontologies,” written by Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina and Yolanda Samacá-Bohórquez; they draw on their expertise as second language teachers (in this case English) and researchers to present the current panorama of the ELT field in Colombia. While they acknowledge incipient efforts to conduct research from non-canonical perspectives, they also advocate for the need to continue promoting and fostering ways otherwise. The texture of this piece lays in the problematization of canonical approaches to research and of their object of inquiry, which, they claim, revolves around theories on language teaching and their practical realizations. In their (unauthorized) opinion, research in ELT should aim at broadening the scope of the field and explore the intersections of issues like gender, race, and ideology, among others. When doing the last stitches of their piece they offer to look at other ontologies as possibilities for disobedient research, to mainly, bring to the fore the human and subjective nature of research. With a rough stitch, the third piece, by Eliana María Rubio-Cancino and Yiny Martínez-Bohórquez, weave the historic account of the most recent language policies implemented in Colombia, particularly the one called National Bilingualism Plan (which has been given several names along the years) with the critical perspectives provided by several Colombian scholars. A central point of discussion in their chapter whose

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title is “Educational Policies in the Process of Language Teaching and Learning in Colombia: Challenges Emerging from the Implementation of Bilingual Plans in Bogotá,” has to do with the central and privileging place of English language teaching-learning in Colombia, to the expense of Spanish (the mother tongue of the country) and Indigenous languages. A rough texture in their piece brings to the surface how technocrats and governmental institutions have left teachers out of any participation in the design of these policies. They leave their mark in this piece by offering a series of challenges for policy makers along with some recommendations they should take into account to design policies that do respond to the real needs of the society, that do include all interested actors, and that do contribute to provide all with fair opportunities. Picking up the thread left by Eliana María  and Yiny, Alber  Josué Forero-Mondragón, in Chap. 4, weaves the central idea that standard English, within the curricular structure of Colombian schools, constitutes a disciplinary micro-field. His piece “An Approach to the Discourse of Standard English: A Disciplinary Power Exercise in the Colombian ELT Curriculum” starts by problematizing with a heavy patch, how schools, as modern institutions, are created as sites to exert control over students. A major criticism brought by Alber Josué Forero-Mondragón is that schools serve global market interests of educating docile and utile subjects. This context becomes very fertile to consolidate and distribute the discourse of standard English. Alber Josué makes it apparent that the English language curriculum articulates several elements that work together toward a common goal to instrumentalize and homogenize the language to serve the needs and demands of the global market. The following piece builds from the critical view thread left by Alber Josué and by the one on the privileging place of English left by Eliana María and Yiny using pedagogy as its fabric. In “Appropriating ELT in Colombia: A Critical Call to Localize Language Teaching” Jhon Jairo Losada-Rivas starts by problematizing the privilege position national governments have assigned to English language over the years. Through a historical account, Jhon Jairo shows how “bilingualism” became intertwined with discourses on the teaching of English, disfiguring other forms of bilingualism that did not match English-Spanish bilingualism and that has latter come to

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mean only English. He texturizes this fabric, by bringing the voices of several Colombian scholars, to show that the privilege position assigned to ELT in our context has led to major inequalities, like the difference in the type of education offered by public and private schools due to the disparity in human, economic, and linguistic resources. Jhon Losada then goes on to bring another thread to unpack how the label ELF has been problematic in that it has favored a colonial and deficitarian perspective on the teaching of English in Colombia. He proposes a paradigm shift that makes English language teaching more diverse, and more inclusive; a new paradigm that overcomes aspirations like the nativeness while welcomes local epistemologies to inform the field from the “expanding circle” countries. In a very interesting turn, and adding a pop of color to our tapestry, in this piece whose title is “Tracking Colombian Andes Speech: A Decolonial Take on Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language,” the highlighted texture it is not on English, but on Spanish, the official language of the majority of the country (according to the Constitution of 1991 Spanish is the official language of Colombia but Indigenous languages are official within their territories). As Éder García-Dussán explains, Colombian Spanish, and most so the Andean variety, has become very popular among people who want to learn Spanish as a foreign language (ELE for its initials in Spanish). As Éder García-Dussán points out, Spanish is the third most important language on the Internet, which gives it a relevant position. In the field of ELT in Colombia, as can be seen in the rest of the chapters of this book, most discourses place English in an advantageous position in relationship to Spanish and other languages. However, this chapter makes it apparent that ELE is neither an innocent nor neutral field but that, as a colonial language, Spanish carries within it that legacy. This piece serves, then, to show that coloniality has been entrenched in many practices, language being one of them. Éder García-Dussán pulls the thread from Jhon Losada’s piece, to embrace critical interculturality to problematize ways in which discrimination can be naturalized in language usage.

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Tapestry Face Two (Part II) The other face of our tapestry is made of five pieces. The seventh piece of this book, and the first of this second part, by Jairo Enrique Castañeda-­ Trujillo, entitled “Breaking the Silence and Empowering English Language Student-teachers Through Critical Collaborative Autoethnography,” pulls the disobedient thread left by Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina and Yolanda Samacá-Bohórquez, and used as to texturize a fabric with an example of the ways in which Colombian scholars are claiming ownership over the field of ELT and are exploring issues that deviate from the research agendas of the Global North. In this research report, Jairo Enrique Castañeda-Trujillo focuses his interest in “listening” to the voices of student-teachers because they have been long silenced. Curriculum organization, contents, sequences, time, forms of evaluation, etc. have been imposed top-down mirroring the epistemologies of the Global North. In his piece he shows that canonical research agendas have been paying lots of attention to instrumental aspects of teaching (mostly teaching methods) but very little has been said about those who teach. Who are they? How do they feel? What expectations do they have? Through a critical autoethnography Castañeda-Trujillo brings up the voices of his students and invites them to narrate their own selves as EFL teachers-to-be; this research also shows how hierarchized this field is and how the ones who should be main actors in the construction of the field have been marginalized. Introducing the thread of the global market, Ferney Cruz-Arcila and Vanessa Solano-Cohen build their piece around the problematization of prevalent neoliberal discourses that center the teaching and learning of English as an L2 in economic terms only. To them, the grand narrative of English as the language of success, money, and development has led countries like Colombia to implement language policies that in the long run have had negative consequences in three dimensions related to the role of other languages (other than English) in economic accumulation, the limited understanding of “development,” and the relevance to an instrumental linguistic acquisition. By using post-development theory, the authors unfold their chapter “Challenging the Master Narratives of

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the Market and of English in L2 Pedagogy: Striving for a Reorientation” and enrich their discussion with the findings of a research study conducted with in-service teachers in which Cruz-Arcila and Solano-Cohen, as teacher-researchers invite the student-teachers to apply (and reflect on) alternative/critical ways of teaching modern languages in which they challenge instrumentalist views on second/foreign/heritage languages. Provoked by the same urge to problematize neoliberalism (a common thread that comes from the previous piece and expands to the next) and its consequences in ELT, Álvaro Hernán Quintero-Polo and Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto, in the ninth piece “Colombian English Language Teachers’ Storied Agency Contesting the Inset of Globalization and Capitalism of Education” weave the thread by showing the intersection of neoliberalism in education, teachers’ critical identity, and language policies. Álvaro and Carmen Helena give texture to the piece by highlighting the power of research as a vehicle toward the transformation of teachers as intellectuals; a research, that, as it has been claimed in many of the chapters in this book, deviates from the mainstream impositions and emerges bottom up. Picking up a thread from the previous piece, Quintero-Polo and Guerrero-Nieto show how powerful narrative inquiry is into bringing people’s epistemologies to the fore. Giving ourselves, as researchers, the opportunity to listen to teacher-researchers, allows us to know, first hand, how teachers make sense of how neoliberalism plays out in relation to supra national policies and the different shades and textures their critical identities make along with the possibilities they find to contest oppressing practices and discourses rooted in globalization and neoliberalism. The thread of neoliberalism continues to be very salient in this tenth piece where the authors continue the discussion of the pervasiveness of neoliberalism; but this time the authors texturized the subtle effects that neoliberal-inspired institutional policies have on teachers as professionals. In this piece, entitled “Deskilling of English Teachers in Colombia: Neoliberalism, Internal Colonialism, and the Reification of English,” Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto and Álvaro Quintero-Polo explore, through the voices of in-service teachers working for language centers, (which became very popular as a consequence of the recent language policies implemented in Colombia and the legislation that allows them to operate) the various ways neoliberalism, internal colonialism and the

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reification of English interplay in the language centers to deskill, oppress, and eventually domesticate teachers. Through a set of semi-structured interviews, Carmen Helena and Álvaro delve into the hiring and working conditions of these young professionals; their experiences are tangible evidences of submission practices exerted by the owners of language institutes who, sheltered by a lax legislation, exert unfair practices toward their fellow Colombians, in a clear articulation of the three constructs mentioned in the title of the chapter. With piece eleven we wrap this book-tapestry with Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina’s provocative work on “Examining Racialized Practices in ELT: Enhancing Critical New Horizons.” The salient thread in this corner of our tapestry has to do with the role of race and racializing discourses and practices in ELT. Racism is an incipient field of study in our context, in general, and of course in ELT. Ximena starts her chapter by bringing to the surface how ELT has adopted, fostered, and spread racializing practices that, as she points out, go beyond skin color or/and ethnicity. She also brings to the fore the fact that many times racial discrimination goes unnoticed because it has been naturalized. After the theoretical discussion, she presents the results of a research study in which in-service English teachers working at the language institute of a public university talked about their perceptions about ELT. The results confirm, on the one hand, that racism goes beyond the color of skin, and on the other the subtleness of racist and discriminatory discourses that give English, through different layers, a dominant and superior role. Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina sews her piece by making a call about the importance of raising awareness on the different forms that racism takes in the field of ELT.

Conclusion Different pieces make up the tapestry of unauthorized outlooks in second languages education. The theoretical reflections along with the research-­ based ones constitute the fabrics, colors, threads, and textures the authors use to open a small window into the undisciplined/unauthorized outlooks of a group of Colombian scholars that thrive to claim ownership over a field that comprises a great portion of their professional lives, and

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one that they refuse to passively and/or uncritically obey. The chapters in this book show how committed the authors are to nurture and inform the field from situated perspectives which celebrate and value diversity and subversion as well as develop an elaborated invitation to resist dominant power (racialized, north-white-driven practices).

References Adsera, A., & Pytlikova, M. (2015). The role of language in shaping international migration. The Economic Journal, 125(586), F49–F81. Blommaert, J., & Verschueren, J. (1992). The role of language in European nationalist ideologies. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), 2(3), 355–375. Canagarajah, A.  S. (2013). Interrogating the “native speaker fallacy”: Non-­ linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results. In Non-native educators in English language teaching (pp. 77–92). Routledge. Correa, D., & Usma Wilches, J. A. (2013). From a bureaucratic to a critical-­ sociocultural model of policymaking in Colombia. HOW.  A Colombian Journal for Teachers of English, 226–242. González Buitrago, C. A. (2017). El patrimonio cultural como rasgo inherente del territorio, una visión desde los tejidos de Mampuján In: Cátedra Unesco. Derechos humanos y violencia: Gobierno y gobernanza: Debates pendientes frente a los derechos de las víctimas [online]. Bogotá: Universidad externado de Colombia, (generated 27 juillet 2023). Available on the Internet: http:// books.openedition.org/uec/1812. ISBN: 9789587729115. https://doi. org/10.4000/books.uec.1812. Grosjean, F. (2019). A journey in languages and cultures: The life of a bicultural bilingual. Oxford University Press. Guerrero-Nieto, C. H. (2010). Is English the key to access the wonders of the modern world? A critical discourse analysis. Signo y Pensamiento, 29(57), 294–313. Guerrero-Nieto, C.  H. (2018). Problematizing ELT education in Colombia: Contradictions and possibilities. ELT local research agendas, I, 121–132. Jordão, C. M. (2009). English as a foreign language, globalisation and conceptual questioning. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7(1), 95–107. Jordão, C. M. (2016). Decolonizing identities: English for internationalization in a Brazilian university. Interfaces Brasil/Canadá, 16(1), 191–209.

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Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago press. Mejía, A. M., Giraldo, S. V., & Miranda, N. (2022). Critical perspectives on language education in multilingual Colombia: An introduction. In Language education in multilingual Colombia (pp. 1–12). Routledge. Ricento, T. (2012). Political economy and English as a ‘global’ language. Critical Multilingualism Studies, 1(1), 31–56. Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & McCarty, T. L. (2008). Key concepts in bilingual education: Ideological, historical, epistemological, and empirical foundations. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 5(17), 1466–1482. Yildiz, Y. (2012). Beyond the mother tongue: The postmonolingual condition. Fordham Univ Press.

Part I Setting Up the Warp

2 Disobedient ELT Research: Breaking the Rules, Finding Alternatives, Invoking Other Ontologies Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina and Yolanda Samacá-Bohórquez

Introduction Despite the fact that dominant discourses on the appropriateness of research procedures following the line of an objective ontology have been subverted more contemporarily in critical, poststructural, postmodern, postcolonial and decolonial research positionalities, there still seems to be a prevalent tendency to rely on authorized canonical traditions. This has also been criticized as part of the racialized field of intellectuals centred on whiteness and eurocentrism (Banks, 2002) as well as in the colonized ELT panorama (Soto-Molina, 2018; Samacá-Bohórquez, 2021) where dominant discourses of English as success are a common practice. Trapped in the ideologies of those traditional types of research, teachers and

S. X. Bonilla-Medina (*) • Y. Samacá-Bohórquez Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_2

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researchers find themselves homogenized while disregarding power relations, racialization, subalternization, and frequently producing and reproducing standard normalized binaries of research and ethics. Understanding that doing research is a subjective practice that involves rigorous realizations of the phenomena, it is also a human experience involving feelings and emotions. Most of the time, incommodities with the dominant discourses and practices of ELT educational research that follow Eurocentric, white, male views divide the world between good and bad, valid and invalid. In this view, we encourage to assume an unauthorized look to language research by taking alternative views to inspire ELT members to challenge normality in research, so new perspectives are found not only to develop educational research but also to find distinct views of language and language teaching and learning as textures of our tapestry that collectively sew and/or transform through humanizing and healing threads. As language teacher educators and researchers who believe in the socio-cultural, and critical approaches of our profession, we believe it is necessary to be disobedient to advocate for the humanity of the research experience, the value of emotions, the multiplicity of perspectives, the social sensitivity, and the opening to onto-epistemologies that have been disregarded as a consequence of dominant discourses in ELT research.1

ELT Research Tendencies Although in some of the recent publications, ELT appears to have turned to a direction that differs from positivistic and objectivist views of scientific research, at least, in the local context of Colombia, mainly with critical and decolonial perspectives (see, e.g. Castañeda-Londoño, 2021; Posada-Ortiz, 2022; Castañeda-Trujillo et  al., 2020; Guerrero-Nieto, 2020, Samacá-Bohórquez, 2020; Arias, 2020; Cruz-Arcila, 2018,  This chapter is derived from an interinstitutional research between The EAN University, Caro y Cuervo Institute and Francisco José de Caldas University. The name of the study was “Raza y educación en segundas lenguas español-inglés: hacia pedagogías del empoderamiento multicultural y justicia social”. Institutionalized research from Centro de Investigaciones de la Universidad Distrital (CIDC). 1

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Bonilla-­Medina, 2018, Carvajal Medina et  al., 2022; Núñez Pardo, 2022), this does not show to be a prevalent tendency in the general field. When reviewing what the most important local journals of English language learning and teaching have published in recent years, it is visible that there is a prevalence of research addressing language education maintaining language production, proficiency, and improvement as important and relevant goals. Some of these studies comprehend themes such as the focus on language skills (Forero et al., 2022; Becerra-Posada et al., 2022; Wubalem, 2022) while others address the effectiveness of language teaching (Nayernia et al., 2022) in a line that maintains both research interests that underline instrumental views of language and technical views of language teaching.2 This is confirmed by the report established in the editorial of the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal (Bonilla-Medina & Quintero-Polo, 2020) in which it is said that from 1998, the year in which the journal was initiated, the articles reporting on research on the task of teaching English in the classroom are abundant with an emphasis on innovative methodologies, curriculum development and assessment practices. Although, in the same editorial note, there is also a review of the evolution of these areas, in more recent publications showing contributions that deal with a transition from instrumental to more holistic views of language education, it also claims that research appears to keep the focus on language teaching theories in relation with practice as a strong point. Therefore, this claim implies a need to develop research which explores broader areas immersed in language teaching and use, something which is also confirmed in an encouragement to publishers to explore critical areas of language in intersection with aspects such as gender, ethnicity, culture, politics and ideology (Bonilla-Medina & Quintero-Polo, 2020). In addition to the previous content areas, English language education research also appears to have followed traditional perspectives sustaining canonical paradigms that back up Eurocentric understandings of reality and ways of knowledge production. As explained by GranadosBeltrán (2016) graduate, but more emphatically, undergraduate students’ projects tend to follow prescriptive models of research which  To explore the instrumentalization of the ELT profession, see Castañeda-Trujillo in this volume.

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usually take an instrumental perspective of language teaching supported, most of the times, by action research which instrumentalizes the method as well. In the publications of recent articles in the journals, this perspective argued by Granados is present. For example, BecerraPosada et al. (2022) use action research in which through video classroom observations, student-­focused interviews and student’s diaries, the researchers try to identify how task-based approach to teaching English can be used as a way to improve communicative competence, or, González-Reyes et al. (2021) use action research to explore the contribution of visual aids in ELT to teach vocabulary supported on the use of pre- and post-tests in order to evaluate students’ achievement. Equally, Rainey (2011) explains how by exploring the areas of interests of grassroots teachers (active and potential), he found that those areas concentrate on professional development understood as teaching methodologies and learning behaviours, something that brings the need to explore broader understandings to the field pointing to the development of the teaching profession. Beyond the apparent overuse of action research as a way to prove the efficacy of methodologies that validate instrumental uses of language in ELT, research methodology in the field has also followed a long-standing view of traditional and canonical applications that depart from objectivist and positivist epistemologies. This has been seen in the way problematization has been constructed, in the research procedures, as well as in the instruments used, and, in the way the findings are reported. In the case of the problematization, for instance, Méndez López (2022) situates her research interest from a theoretical perspective in which emotions are classified and typified. This view, as stated theoretically, also leads the researcher to observe objectively how the problem is reflected on students’ behaviour that needs to be measured. Consequently, and not strangely, a reliance on achievement scales derived from a quantitative model of research is provided to identify frequencies of behaviour so their report establishes clear, accountable results. In this same study, it is also visible how instruments are used and applied with the intention to validate theories rather than questioning them. Then, by using scales as

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part of the instruments, the study confirms what the theory proposes, and, in addition, it establishes the students’ measurement within the frame of the theory itself. Obviously, the findings, by following this model, also report measured quantities of students’ behaviour regarding emotions that are also characterized by allusion of positive and negative experiences of language learning based on the results and, there is even a reference to a so-called emotion competence which prescribes emotions in a static frame. It is then seen that the problematization, research procedures and findings lead to static formulations derived from research, an aspect which also includes other kind of constructions, such as an accentuated difference the authors made between female and male participants’ performance, something which shown statically appears to be characterized as irremovable human behaviour on the participants of the study. Not differently, other studies that do not necessarily state a quantitative research paradigm appear to follow the same objective ontology and a positivist epistemology as they usually state clear goals that are confirmed throughout the research development or apply research procedures and instruments following canonical standards with the objective to establish judgement directed to achievement or to validate data results. For example, Pérez-García et  al. (2022) carried out a qualitative case study to understand teachers’ professional identity so they problematize a broader perspective of the English language teaching context in research that, could be said, breaks the instrumental view of research content previously critiqued. However, the procedures to develop that understanding employ traditional canonical instruments of research with the purpose to validate pre-conceived theoretical categories of identity and gender and this is not problematized. On the contrary, truthfulness of those categories is taken for granted and revised from normalized static binaries. Having in mind that ELT research continues to have a strong influence on canonical traditions that have been adopted without problematization and, probably even unwittingly, follow parameters of ideal practices, it is necessary to unmask the power relationships involved in these processes and the implications of those in the academic field and ELT research. This is the discussion that follows.

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 anonical ELT Research Constructing C Homogenization in ELT Practices Research and knowledge production are two notions that are associated with one another as the task of research implies the objective of knowledge production. In this vein, knowledge production, in general, has historically been developed worldwide under Eurocentric views and has been taken for granted and replicated without questioning (Banks, 2002). For example, historically, in Colombian education, European knowledge has dominated curriculum development in several areas since these are continuously nurtured with the European idealized images and representative characters (Soler, 2006). Additionally, aspects such as school organizations have been created based on European models and school practices (Helg, 2001). Having in mind that knowledge produced out of the European view (in the periphery) has been diminished, it is not strange that the consumption and application of other types of knowledge production have leveraged hidden discriminatory practices. In other words, knowledge production at the local level appears to be undervalued as this is established under parameters stemming from a monolithic Eurocentric view. In wider areas of social development, knowledge production has also given privilege to Eurocentric perspectives, something that has been the ground to make important decisions at national levels, for instance, in policies and policy development. Ball (2012) has referred to this as policy borrowing which is reflected nowadays on the influence of international organizations such as the World Bank or the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As mentioned by Castañeda-­ Londoño (2019), the struggle with these perspectives is the tendency to a unified concept of knowledge invisibilizing other forms of knowledge in the Global South. Critical race theory has also referred to this as whiteness-centred practices which, beyond reliance on idealized social constructed images based on phenotype and physical appearance, have created dependence from the less powerful to the most powerful entities, bodies and countries. Knowledge production, in this sense, contains Eurocentrism historically

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in different senses and contexts, for example when great thinkers appear to be part of the European tradition while other geographical areas are relegated (Clarke & Garner, 2009; Mignolo, 2000). This also happens in terms of whiteness-centred practices that have shown white figures as important representatives in multiple areas while other ethnicities are invisibilized or silenced (Bonnet, 2000). In this fashion, those practices constitute ideologies that have historically perpetuated power relations until today in terms of knowledge production but have become less visible and imperceptible (Omi & Winant, 1993). In parallel with this, previous studies have also suggested that globalization is another phenomenon that, more recently, has contributed to embed discourses underlying the idea of white (European) as a superior race (Leonardo, 2002; Apple, 1995). These authors also argue that those discourses of superiority are usually invisible because the white privilege remains unquestioned (King, 1991), it becomes naturalized, developed and expanded as a “normal” practice. For example, it appears to be a common accepted practice today that, in tune with globalization, there has been a prominent interest for internationalization and interculturality (Tarc, 2012) and, for some countries, this transformation has represented a reconfiguration of local needs and expected results in order to align with the most powerful countries (Canagarajah, 2005). That is, it appears that local needs were moved to a secondary place while international standards and goals stated abroad centralize priorities. In this construction of homogenization of social practices reflected on knowledge production leveraged with globalization, more recently, ELT research has played an important role (Leonardo, 2002). In this regard, it is well-known that English has been named “the global” language and this decision has involved huge changes at different levels of social life throughout different contexts around the world. In this vein, the discourse of English as success does underlie not only the beliefs of general society but has also permeated English language educational practices sustaining other ideas such as: the ideal language speaker, monolingual ideologies, standard language ideologies, language stratification, etc.; ideals which have exerted power over local cultures where English is not the official language (Guerrero-Nieto, 2009; Samacá-Bohórquez, 2021).

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In this regard, Banks (2000) explains how choosing English as the global language has consequently affected knowledge production too. With the anxiety of becoming part of globalization, many countries nowadays have chosen to develop knowledge production mainly in English and this has situated this language in privilege while others have been undervalued. Therefore, those decisions have also spread discriminatory practices towards other languages and cultures. In company with standardization, not only the fact that institutions and individuals prioritize global goals, local languages and cultures have felt pressures to produce their knowledges in the English language but also, they have felt the need to adopt foreign parameters—produced in English speaking countries, mainly USA and Great Britain—to publish their contributions to knowledge. From this perspective, English has accentuated the ideals of native speakerism and this, at the same time, has accentuated inner discriminatory practices over knowledge production from the ones who are not framed on the characterization of these ideal speakers. As implied before, knowledge produced at local levels has focused on international agendas provoking the local needs to be either forgotten or forcibly adjusted to fit those agendas (De Oliveira, 2022). This focus on international agendas has also brought an implicit exaltation of dominant cultures and countries, undermining the “others” hence, reproducing homogenization or what Maldonado-Torres (2007) calls colonial heterogeneity. This author explains this as modern forms that dehumanize people based on subalternized categories. These ideas develop the understanding of knowledge production highlighting the dominant contexts of the ones in power, usually Anglophone countries. In this vein, English language and culture come to be internal associations of intellectuality and taken privilege for granted. Then, it is not difficult to conclude that the kind of knowledge that is being validated with these practices may lead to establish hierarchies with white-Anglo speakers on the top, consequently putting the ones that are different in deficit. This process of validating knowledge unconsciously and naturalizing injustice is creating what King (1991) coined as dyscounsciousness, that is, the naturalization of discrimination and racism accepting reality as it appears to be. This condition develops a state that seems to be in

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fantasy and illusion as it is difficult for oppressors to recognize their oppression (Sleeter, 2004). As seen in the previous section, ELT research has amply relied on both, instrumental uses of language as well as in traditional canonical views of research which have been constructing homogenization and hierarchies that have most probably been imperceptibly materialized in social and educational practice. We argued that ELT research has been imbued in discourses of English as success as well as globalization that have produced and reproduced discrimination and colonization in knowledge production and this has led to unconscious acceptance of reality as it is presented on dysconsciousness that also constitutes static stereotyped identities and monolithic ethnicities in ELT. As seen before, despite that ELT research has shifted recently in the local publications and, more substantially in the local context, there is evidence that there is a lot of work to do in order to develop research practices that make visible unequal dynamics homogenizing and developing monolithic views on ELT research. This is how now we will turn to discuss our view to build on the need for a shift to ELT research in which objectivized views of knowledge and static constructions of identity configured in asymmetric power relationships attempt to be resisted.

 esearch as a Human and Subjective R Experience and Praxis: Invoking Other Ontologies We must concern ourselves for tracing experiences, instead of doctrines. (Hanna Arendt, 1993)

The point of departure of these insights starts with Hanna Arendt, who denotes that it is not possible to think without personal experience. It is experience what provokes thought on what we live, the things that happen to us and the worlds that surround us. Experience takes us to situate ourselves in the territories we inhabit. It gives us that chance to go back to the ideas we used to think about. It makes us feel comfortable or

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uncomfortable. It confirms certainties but also uncertainties. In this line of thought, we truly believe that experience enriches our comprehension of our worlds and research as a human and subjective experience allows us to deconstruct the knowledges of the ELT profession. This is why, through research, we are interested in disclosing the purposes, interests, inquiries, uncertainties of our second language practices and our subjectivities embedded in them, thus, research becomes a subjective practice. We think our positionalities are situated in critical, postcolonial and decolonial stances from which we intend to destabilize the linear ways the dominant politics of knowledge has installed. In this view, we think ELT teacher-researchers in the Colombian context, for example, have started transformative, dynamic, and situated paths that have disrupted the ways through which our field and profession were constituted. Later we will display these ideas more in detail. Having in mind that experience is lived out through the interactions with multiple layers of our worlds, and located in times and spaces, it also involves subjective positionalities (the ways how experience is perceived, felt, remembered, thought, lived by someone in particular), we acknowledge the value of that experience represented in daily teaching and research practices on, what we call pedagogical and research doings, to interrogate and confront the visions that on the interrelations between language, language teaching and learning, and language contexts have been developed (Quintero Polo & Samacá-Bohórquez, 2018). These interrogations can illustrate for example, the shift from research with and through technical ways of knowledge production, what is evident in some of the studies depicted in the previous section as their purpose relied on technical understandings of teaching methodologies, learning behaviours or students’ achievements. Instead, we highlight the turning transformations of research as human experience localized in walking paths that recognize the diversities of human dimension e.g. emotions, feelings, opinions, or perspectives of our students, colleagues around teaching and learning English, as well as, the territories where these diversities are lived e.g. our classrooms, our, schools, our universities, our regions, our ruralities, in constant interaction and from where our critical reflexivities of education have made it possible to focus on social, historical, cultural and political visions of our realities. Moving through

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dialogical cosmovisions, we vindicate the experiential knowledges otherwise emerged and rescued in the struggle of the particularities of the Global South. In this line of thought, we advocate for being, knowing, feeling and doing otherwise that understands a research-human-subjective praxis in English language teaching, invoking other ontologies, of co-being and coexisting (the African concept Ubuntu: I am because you are), ontologies that point out the disclosing modes of being otherwise (De Sousa Santos, 2018), those who have been subalternized and marginalized by the system, where singularities and collectivities encounter to deploy localized doings and comprehensions of our realities. This praxis questions the linear conceptions about research that have been constituted and the human beings involved in these processes. Arguing for a human and subjective praxis embraces an endeavour to interrogate the status quo of doing research and represent our worlds in our own terms (Santos, 2018; Mignolo, 2000). This is intersected by what Santos (2018) has named demonumentalizing knowledges. An agentive localized term that provokes situated comprehensions of our own realities and personal and interpersonal involvements to disrupt the monolithic conceptions of research and, subvert extractivist models and methods. In this demonumentalizing view of research, we understand the ethical challenge to neutrality: (a) recognizing the experience and subjective involvement, the coexistence of paradigms and approaches, (b) questioning the extractivist methodologies objectifying those who participate or accompany a research journey, (c) subverting this instrumentalized view given to the voice of the expert and the researcher invoking the plurality of voices of those who participate in the research journey. Other ontologies privilege subject-subject relations, valorize diversity, recognize intellectual and political positionalities towards ontological justice of those who have been subalternized, invisibilized or oppressed. They also embody emotions, relationships, interactions, life experiences, ways of knowing and being with and in (Freire, 1985), and be-being (Walsh, 2017) in their worlds. As we have been stressing, locating ourselves within these critical and positionalities otherwise confronts the canon, and provides the possibilities to resist and propose alternatives to interrupt the dominant politics

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of knowledge. This sheds light on the collaborative co-creation of knowledges and ways of knowing in a journey where the subjects involved in a research experience, learn about themselves, about the others, on what they intent to know, the ways to do it and the capacities of knowing as a result of those dialogical interactions (Vasilachis de Gialdino, 2009). This is also a way to combat dominant discourses of English and English instrumentalization that have been present in ELT as mentioned above. Being aware of the existence of those power relationships developed by language would make us able to use the language to transform and highlight our epistemologies rather than blindly follow common beliefs of globalization and the production of knowledge in neoliberal terms. We will now expand on what we mean by this proposal in more practical terms.

 nvisioning Alternatives to Understand E and Do Research As mentioned earlier in this chapter, we have interrogated the understanding of research as an objective practice and have proposed to see it as a subjective practice. We questioned colonial research legacies and advocated for the recognition of the human dimension that resists, contests the universal truth and claims for pluriversal visions, multiplicity of perspectives that also invoke other practices to understand our realities, to construct in the difference because we read the world differently. We propose, opening to epistemologies in our Global Souths. This entails expanding and tracing our feeling-thinking-doings from our loci of enunciation, constituted and constructed through our identities and subjectivities. Thus, research situated “within a more relational, human, collective and dynamic praxis” (Samacá-Bohórquez, 2020) deepens in our ways ‘others’ to raise awareness, develop critical consciousness, call for agency, and, rebread ethical and political positionalities to detach from the modern-colonial paradigm (Walsh, 2017). This embraces a collective work to provoke transformations not only in the journey to develop comprehensions of our research concerns but also in our societies.

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There have been several alternatives intersecting the pluriversal visions of doing research. The works of some teacher-researchers following decolonial lenses have started to contest the ways of doing research outside the dominant discourses as we declared in the beginning of this chapter. For instance, assuming decolonial positionalities have caused personal and professional mobilizations in a genuine interest to value our knowledges, our ways of knowing to understand our realities. This has entailed a process to identify the colonial matrix of power installed in the ELT field, provoking struggles, dissatisfactions, insecurities, and discomfort, but at the same time, hope and expectations in co-creating possibilities for more diverse and situated conceptions of education and language education today in our country in a way for epistemic and social justice. In this context, it has been truly insightful to locate our research interests in recognizing the plurality of voices that through i.e. testimonial, collective, and communal narrativizations have destabilized the canonical ways of doing research. While traditional methodologies have been innovating to provide more contemporary views of research, we want to emphasize that our proposal goes more in-depth into the transformation of research epistemology and perspectives. Several aspects have been considered  in this transformation within  research projects in our area. First, the positionalities of the researchers, as we are part of what we are interested to unveil,  and research companions (traditionally named as participants) within the research process, sharing and working together to understand the situations bing explored and their  research contexts (Posada-Ortiz, 2022; Castañeda-Londoño, 2021; Castañeda-­Trujillo et  al., 2020; Samacá-Bohórquez, 2020). Second,  the research methodological decisions, through which the experiences and narratives  have been constructed. For instance: autobiographies (Posada-Ortiz, 2022) testimonios (Castañeda-Londoño, 2021), relatos (Samacá-Bohórquez, 2020) stories (Castañeda-Usaquén, 2022), autoethnographies (Castañeda-Trujillo et  al., 2020) which reveal the desire to rupture  the conventional approaches to do research and the intention to develop ways ‘others’ of the alternative ways of comprehending different realities, proper to other ontologies. Third, the relational and horizontal interactions with the companions in the research journey  challenge the traditionally entrenched asymmetrical power relationships  that have adhered to

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canonical parameters. Fourth, the collective analysis developed in these projects, in coherence with this break of power relationships, acknowledges intersubjectivities and Knowledge is co-constructed in this collaborative process. Those aspects are part of what we proposed as looking at research from a different gaze, embracing a praxis for social, epistemic responsibility and justice in the co-creation of a pedagogy of research, research paths, collective and situated constructions of knowledges. Furthermore, we would say that attempting to develop these alternative ways of doing research encourages the rescuing of knowledges that have been marginalized due to the forces of the canon and also enhances the appreciation of plural diversity by which the world is composed. This would open the view not only to understand research but understand the world and human relationships as flexible, changing and mutable.

Closing Remarks As has been discussed before, ELT research appears to have followed traditional “authorized models” that have been perpetuating canonical views that have undermined our role, not only as teachers or learners but also as subjects. This way of assuming research has also been mediated by the global economic forces of English and its neoliberal underlying discourses. In these two conditions, research has enhanced the reproduction of dominant discourses that disregard other subjectivities and identities. From this view, we propose to use research disobediently from other perspectives which stress subjective experience as humanizing threads helping us dismantle issues of power, superiority, and control, those that invisibilize and subalternize our ways of thinking-feeling-doing. That is, weaving of a tapestry and unauthorizedly, but fairly reclaiming our ways of knowing and be-being second language teachers and teacher educators and researchers. Additionally, to our proposal, we would say that an unauthorized look, creating alternatives to fracture the western tradition, does not mean to bring up a new set of rules, on the contrary, it means detaching from the traditional ways of knowing, developing harmonic spaces to dialogues

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that connect people around who we are, what intrigues us, what questions us, what calls our curiosity or what worries us, what causes struggle being a language educator. That would be a new disobedient way of doing research but a feasible manner to favour understanding and constructions of meaning that have probably been invisibilized because of the power of dominant Eurocentric discourses.

References Apple, M. W. (1995). Education and power. Routledge. Arendt, H. (1993). La condición humana. Ediciones Paidós. Arias, C. A. (2020). Palabrear the Colombian ELT field: A decolonial approach for the study of Colombian Indigenous EFL teachers’ identities. In H. Castañeda et al. (Comps.), Methodological uncertainties of research in ELT education I (pp. 163–182). UD Editorial. Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education Inc.: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. Routledge. Banks, J. A. (2002). Race, knowledge construction, and education in the USA: Lessons from history. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 5(1), 7–27. Becerra-Posada, T., García-Montes, P., Sagre-Barbosa, A., Carcamo-Espitia, M. I., & Herazo-Rivera, J. D. (2022). Project-based learning: The promotion of communicative competence and self-confidence at a State High School in Colombia. HOW Journal, 29(2), 13–31. https://doi.org/10.19183/ how.29.2.560 Bonilla-Medina S. X. (2018). Racial identity in educational practices in the context of Colombia. Doctoral thesis in Education. University of East London. Bonilla-Medina, S. X., & Quintero-Polo, H. (2020). Editorial: CALJ in a trajectory of commitment to enlighten language teaching practices towards social transformation and hope. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 22(1), 7–12. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.17045 Bonnet, A. (2000). White identities: Historical and international perspectives. Prentice Hall. Canagarajah, A. S. (2005). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Routledge. Carvajal Medina, N.  E., Hurtado Torres, F. Á., Lara Páez, M.  Y., Ramírez Sánchez, M., Barón Gómez, H. A., Ayala Bonilla, D. A., & Coy, C. M. (2022). Entretejidxs: Decolonial threads to the self, the communities, and EFL

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Teacher Education Programs in Colombia. Íkala, Revista De Lenguaje Y Cultura, 27(3), 596–626. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v27n3a02 Castañeda-Londoño, A. (2019). Revisiting the issue of knowledge in English language teaching, a revision of literature. GIST – Education and Learning Research Journal, 18, 220–245. https://doi.org/10.26817/16925777.452 Castañeda-Londoño, A. (2021). Traces of knowledge otherwise. English teachers’ experiences of knowledge. Doctoral Dissertation Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación con Énfasis en ELT Education. https://repository.udistrital.edu.co/ handle/11349/26322 Castañeda-Trujillo, J. E., Carrasco, G. A., Castañeda-Peña, H., Guerrero-Nieto, C. H., Rivera, P. M., Londoño, A. C., & Castañeda, J. E. (2020). Untangling initial English teaching education from pre-service teachers’ collaborative autoethnographies. In H. Castañeda-Peña et al. (Eds.), Methodological uncertainties of research in ELT education I (pp. 219–239). Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Castañeda-Usaquén, M.  E. (2022). ¡El inglés entre nos…! Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación. UD Editorial. Clarke, S., & Garner, S. (2009). White identities: A critical sociological approach. Pluto Press. Cruz-Arcila, F. (2018). Recognising invisibility: The positioning of rural English language teachers in the Colombian context. Doctoral thesis in language, discourse, and communication. Kings College London. De Oliveira, G. M. (2022). Políticas lingüísticas para la Ciencia y la Educación Superior: la construcción del multilingüismo y de la ecología del conocimiento en el siglo XXI.  En 3er simposio internacional. Contactos Lingüísticos e interculturales. Universidad del Valle-Colombia. Santos, B. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press. Forero, M, Moreno, L. J., Bernal, J. F., Torres, J. D., & Martínez, A. L. (2022). Los subtítulos integrados deícticos favorecen la comprensión oral en el aprendizaje de francés como lengua extranjera cuando se usan en material didáctico audiovisual. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 24(2). https://doi. org/10.14483/22487085.18070 Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. Bergin & Garvey. González-Reyes, N., Ibáñez-Acevedo, P., Inostroza-Araos, M.-J., & Strickland, B. (2021). Exploratory action research: Teaching EFL vocabulary to deaf

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s­ tudents through the use of visual aids. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 23(1), 94–116. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.16125 Granados-Beltrán, C. (2016). Critical interculturality. A path for pre-service ELT teachers. Íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 21(2), 171–187. Guerrero-Nieto, C. H. (2009). Language policies in Colombia: The inherited disdain for our native languages. HOW Journal, 16(1), 11–24. Guerrero-Nieto, C.  H. (2020). 2. ELT research from the global south: Uncertainties in a rarely-walked road. Énfasis, 47. Helg, A. (2001). La educación en Colombia, 1918–1957: una historia social, económica y política. Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. King, J. (1991). Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and the miseducation of teachers. The Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 133–146. Leonardo, Z. (2002). The souls of white folk: Critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, and globalization discourse. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 5(1), 29–50. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). Sobre la colonialidad del ser: contribuciones al desarrollo de un concepto. En S. Castro, R. Grosfoguel, El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global (págs. 127–167). Siglo del Hombre Editores; Universidad Central, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos y Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Instituto Pensar. Méndez López, M. (2022). Emotions experienced by secondary school students in English classes in Mexico. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.18401 Mignolo, W. D. (2000). La colonialidad a lo largo y a lo ancho: el hemisferio occidental en el horizonte colonial de la modernidad. In E. Lander (Ed.), La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas (pp. 55–86). CACSO. Nayernia, A., Nosrati, R., & Mohebbi, H. (2022). The factors contributing to language teachers’ effectiveness in an EFL learning context: A questionnaire validation study. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 24(2), 63–79. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.93571 Núñez Pardo, A. (2022). Indelible coloniality and emergent decoloniality in Colombian-Authored EFL textbooks: A critical content analysis. Íkala, Revista De Lenguaje Y Cultura, 27(3), 702–724. https://doi.org/10.17533/ udea.ikala.v27n3a07 Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1993). On the theoretical status of the concept of race. In C. McCarthy & W. Crichlow (Eds.), Race identity and representation in education (pp. 3–10). Routledge.

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Pérez-García, E., Serrano-Rodríguez, R., & Pontes-Pedrajas, A. (2022). Building EFL preservice teachers’ professional identity: Does gender matter? Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 24(2), 117–131. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v24n2.95186 Posada-Ortiz, J. (2022). English language preservice teachers’ identity construction within academic and other communities. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 24(1), 247–260. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v24n1.93110 Quintero Polo, A., & Samacá-Bohórquez, Y. (2018). La sensibilidad hacia el lenguaje como una práctica social y cultural: la intersección entre la pedagogía, la investigación e innovación en la formación de maestros-as de inglés. Memorias del III Congreso Nacional de Investigación y Pedagogía. Tunja. UPTC. https://repositorio.uptc.edu.co/handle/001/5942 Rainey, I. (2011). Grassroots action research and the greater good. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 13(1), 31–54. https://revistas.unal.edu. co/index.php/profile/article/view/20548 Samacá-Bohórquez, Y. (2020). Towards a decolonial project: A quest between ELT colonial ideologies in the ELTP and the interrelations among its subjects. In H. Castañeda et al. (comps.), Methodological uncertainties of research in ELT education I (pp. 163–182). UD Editorial. Samacá-Bohórquez, Y. (2021). Exploring the landscape of researching the Teaching practicum in the ELT Context. Enletawa Journal, 14(1), 71–113. https://doi.org/10.19053/2011835X.13116 Sleeter, C.  E. (2004). How white teachers construct race. In D.  Gillborn & G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), The Routledge Falmer reader in multicultural education (pp. 163–178). RoutledgeFalmer. Soler, S. (2006). Racismo discursivo de élite en los textos escolares de ciencias sociales en Colombia. Revista de Investigación, 6(2), 255–260. Soto-Molina, J. E. (2018). Interculturalidad y descolonización en la adquisición del inglés como lengua extranjera. En J.  E. Soto-Molina, & J.  J. Trillos-­ Pacheco, Lenguaje, interculturalidad y descolonización en América Latina. Latina (pp. 72–93). Universidad del Atlántico. Tarc, P. (2012). The uses of globalization in the (shifting) landscape of educational studies. Canadian Journal of Education, 30(3), 4–29. Vasilachis de Gialdino, I. (2009). Los fundamentos ontológicos y epistemológicos de la investigación cualitativa. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(2), 1–26.

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Walsh, k. (2017). Entretejiendo lo pedagógico y lo decolonial: luchas, caminos y siembras de reflexión-acción para resistir, (re)existir y (re)vivir. Alternativas. Wubalem, A.  Y. (2022). Enhancing Oral Academic English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) through self-regulated listening to authentic educational podcast. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 24(2). https://doi. org/10.14483/22487085.17789

3 Educational Policies in the Process of Language Teaching and Learning in Colombia: Challenges Emerging from the Implementation of Bilingual Plans in Bogotá Eliana María Rubio-Cancino and Yiny Marcela Martínez-Bohórquez

Introduction In the different research projects on language teaching, it becomes visible that English plays a predominant role over other languages, including Spanish and the native languages existing in Colombia; this has led to a colonial and Eurocentric view that makes our linguistic context and

E. M. Rubio-Cancino (*) Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] Y. M. Martínez-Bohórquez Secretaría de Educación del Distrito, Colegio Confederación Brisas del Diamante I.ED., Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_3

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realities invisible, understanding the language from an instrumental perspective and not as a vehicle for constructing knowledge. Thus, in many educational institutions, both official and private, in our country, the foreign language (English) has become the central axis of educational projects, responding to global guidelines, and ensuring the prestige that certifies this language in terms of economic and social welfare within the framework of the processes of commodification. Regarding the above, in the educational sector has emerged a notion of quality for foreign language teaching and learning in Colombia, different bilingualism programs have arisen from a policy created to generate strategies to strengthen the use of a second language within educational institutions at every level. However, various studies addressed by scholars in the area of foreign language teaching have revealed that the goals set out in the different programs have been poorly achieved due to the reduced participation of teachers and school administrators and the submission to global policies where the context and the reality of the school are neglected. Thus, some challenges are consolidated to improve these plans within the educational institutions. The texture that we want to add to the tapestry throughout this chapter consists of a critical review of the different bilingual policies such as the National Bilingualism Program and the Bilingualism Plan implemented in educational institutions in Bogotá through programs whose main objective is to strengthen the learning of a foreign language and to show how these have affected teachers’ work. The first step is to review the bilingual education programs in Colombia, and more specifically in Bogotá, where it has been widely demonstrated that English is predominant over mother tongues and other foreign languages which have been relegated during the implementation of those programs. From this, teachers’ voices about these policies are examined, as they are responsible for the implementation of the policies and mainly because they know students ‘contexts and needs. Finally, a reflection is carried out on the challenges arising from institutionalizing these plans which are aligned to the National Bilingualism Program within schools, and promoting academic disobedience that seeks to end the silencing of many teachers in the face of national, local, and institutional bilingualism policies.

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 Look at Foreign Language Education Policies A in Bogotá: The Preponderance of English To begin with, different authors such as Bonilla Carvajal and Tejada-­ Sánchez (2016), Fandiño-Parra (2014), Fandiño-Parra et  al. (2012), Miranda (2016), Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016), Gómez Sará (2017), and Ortega (2023) have demonstrated that bilingualism policies in our country have gone through different stages, according to the government in power interests, and the Colombian education system has always been the reproduction of foreign educational models that have been responsible for imposing bilingual language policies that respond to macro interests that ignore local contexts and all their cultural peculiarities. These policies have been permeated by the hegemony of powerful global groups and how education systems are geared toward them to respond to particular needs through international entities, as British Council, United Way Colombia, and the French Embassy, that impose linguistic guidelines without considering the communities’ necessities and contexts. One of the first aspects to be taken into account is that in Colombia, until 2004, no bilingualism plan had been established, even though the General Law of Education established Humanities, Spanish language, and foreign languages as mandatory and fundamental areas (L.G.E. 115, 1994, art. 23) and in 1999 the Curricular Guidelines for the area of foreign languages in basic and secondary education were established, in which primary education played a preponderant role in the foreign language learning process. These guidelines also set out the teaching of foreign languages from an interlingual perspective, which seeks to ensure that students “can speak as well or almost as well as a native speaker” (Ministerio de Educación Nacional, 1999, p. 6) and an intercultural perspective, which involves two factors: the first is internal, involving one’s language and culture and expectations of other cultures and languages, and the second is external, involving the interactions between languages and cultures (Ministerio de Educación Nacional, 1999, p.  8). These guidelines suggest methodologies for teaching foreign languages, and provide a first approach to the Basic Standards of Competences in Foreign Languages: English (2006), which determine “the guidelines in respect to

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the knowledge young English learners should have to know and to know to do in order to achieve the expected quality level during the educational processes” (p. 9), taking into account sociolinguistic and cultural aspects of language, establishing macro learning achievements in foreign languages. Intending to strengthen the teaching and learning of foreign languages in preschool, primary, and secondary education, the Ministry of National Education (MEN) created the National Bilingualism Plan (PNB by its initials in Spanish), which had three entire lines of action, namely: ethno-­ education, which sought to include bilingual education for indigenous and raizal communities for whom their second language would be Spanish; the second corresponds to the flexible models of education, which regulated the teaching of languages in schools; and finally, English for schools, whose premise was to improve communicative competence (Cárdenas & Miranda, 2014, p. 55). In its initial stage, the PNB did not have the expected results, so the Colombian Government had to rethink its name and focus on teacher professional development and the design of materials to support educational processes. At this stage, educational policies were strengthened responding to the demands of globalization and commoditization processes whose central axis for communication is English; therefore, the importance of native languages and the possibility of learning a language other than English in official schools were made invisible within the program. In this sense, Ospina Bozzi (2015) states that minority languages are being displaced by majority languages, which are more dominant, prestigious, and found in different areas such as the media, the education system, the use of technologies, and others (pp.  2–6). Even though there is a concern, no concrete actions have materialized to allow for the revitalization of these languages within the classroom and even more so when in these spaces, there is a population from different ethnic communities. In this line, schools can contribute positively to support the efforts of speakers to recover, maintain, and transmit their languages (Reyhner, 1999, as cited in Ospina Bozzi, 2015). On the other hand, the interest in the professional development of Colombian English teachers and the improvement of learning environments was highlighted by the educational community at this stage, but specific agents of the system overlooked the orientation for their design

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and implementation, which caused these commitments to be forgotten on the shelves of the libraries and warehouses of educational institutions. Moreover, in the framework of its implementation, the PNB has been and will be widely questioned by academic communities, Bonilla Carvajal and Tejada-Sánchez (2016), Fandiño-Parra (2014), Fandiño-Parra et al. (2012), Miranda (2016), Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016) and Gómez Sará (2017), for its lack of consistency and its decontextualized practices in relation to the reality of the school, which seek to obey external policies that are related to globalization processes to strengthen world economical processes, and are only concerned with figures, which are measurable through standardized tests created by entities such as the Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education—ICFES (by its initials in Spanish), beyond the improvement of teaching-learning processes and international exams whose objective is the level of performance of learners in terms of communicative competences. Under this national guideline, different bilingual action plans have been implemented in many educational institutions in Bogotá. They are projected and executed based on the commitments of the mayors’ offices and their government plans. Through Bogotá’s District Education Secretary, these programs are carried out through the Secretariat of Education of the District of Bogota to strengthen the learning of a foreign language, specifically English, although in the last four years French has been discreetly included. A first step forward in Bogotá was the 2001 Agreement, which arose from the dialogue between the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the Government of Cundinamarca, the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, the Regional Advisory Committee for Foreign Trade of Bogotá and Cundinamarca (CARCE) and Bogotá’s Chamber of Commerce, to promote bilingual education. After this space, an agreement of wills was signed to launch the Bogotá and Cundinamarca Bilingual in Ten Years Project (Fandiño-Parra, 2014, p. 220). The 2004–2008 Sector Plan for Education “Bogotá: a great school for children and young people to learn more and better” established a program called “Articulación Educativa de Bogotá con la Región Central” which included the project “Strengthening of a second language,” specifically English, for students and teachers. The aim was to provide schools with specialized resources for the teaching and learning of a second

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language and to have teachers with a B2 level in English according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The 2008–2012 Education Sector Plan, “Quality Education for a Positive Bogotá,” was established in the Mayor’s Office of Samuel Moreno. One of the objectives of this plan, based on the program “Quality education and relevance for a better life,” was to intensify the teaching of English since the globalized world requires citizens who are competent in a second language, and the way to achieve this is to promote the teaching and learning of English. In this line, teacher training and qualification were planned in order to be able to certify the B2 level of English according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and thus generate spaces for communication with students in this language. As for the Sectoral Plan for Education 2012–2016 of Bogotá Humana, of Gustavo Petro’s mayoralty, reference is made to the second language through the programs “Construction of knowledge, inclusive, diverse and quality education” and the Single Day Program, which aims at the improvement of the institutional projects and the integral education of the students based on the expansion of the school shift (Fandiño-Parra, 2014, p. 220). Regarding this, the plan established 100 schools with language centers and the intensification of second language learning from preschool onwards (Bases para el Plan Sectorial de Educación, 2012, p. 49). Likewise, this plan showed, through test results, the gaps that exist in the public and private sectors concerning English. For its part, the Sectoral Plan for Education 2016–2020, “Towards an educating city,” established in the project “Strengthening the competence of the citizen of the twenty-first century” the necessity to strengthen a second language; it was imperative to comply with specific conditions to provide a proper learning environment for students to develop competences in a foreign language other than their native language. Based on this, it was projected that the results of the standardized tests applied to the students of the last grade of high school would be at levels B1 and B+ according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). Three lines of action are also established for the target schools, i.e. schools that have accepted the support of external entities for their curriculum revision and the creation of a bilingual action plan: the first is the

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continuous certification of teachers for the teaching of English, the second aimed at classroom environments and foreign volunteers, and finally, quality materials (p. 92). Additionally, the Sectoral Plan for Education: Education First 2020–2024 indicates that for students to reach level B1, it is necessary to work in a step-by-step manner that reinforces the teaching and learning of English. To this end, three critical lines were created: certification, training, and support for teachers; learning environments based on activities that are carried out inside and outside the classroom, generating motivation in students; and finally, implementation plans in schools that allow goals to be set for the improvement of the teaching and learning of a second language (p. 71). Based on the programs that have been carried out in Bogotá, the following illustration shows the state of the schools in the framework of the strengthening of the second language in 2022:

Source: Academic Network. Secretaria de Educación Distrital (SED), 2022

The number above, which is part of the Bilingualism Program 2020–2024, shows that, of the 400 official institutions, 19 have a bilingual educational model in English, and 17 are part of the District Bilingualism Plan. Likewise, 65 of the 165 schools with a single day

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program are targeted, this means, they are part of the projects designed and implemented from Distrital Bilingualism Plan. Of the 191 institutions that are part of the strengthening program, 138 are linked to the Bilingualism Plan. Finally, of the 25 rural schools, only 3 are involved. On the other hand, the image shows that of the teachers participating in institutions with a bilingual educational model, only 13% teach in preschool and primary school. In comparison, 87% teach in secondary and middle school. In this sense, there is neglect and little training for primary school teachers in these second language teaching-learning plans, as stated by Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016) in their study on the voices of teachers concerning educational policies: What we have observed in our experience as teachers and as researchers is that the voices of teachers are rarely heard, consulted, and taken into account, and among them, those of primary teachers seem to be the most ignored (p. 43)

This invisibilization is not only part of educational policies in general but also the bilingualism plans established in Bogotá. Likewise, the certification of the teacher’s language proficiency level becomes predominant in the definition of the profile of the participants in these programs. However, the importance of teachers’ professional development is not relevant. Additionally, the participation of students in the plan is merely an instrumental issue, because they become a statistical sample of the results achieved. Thus the definition of the lines of action and the planning of program strategies are determined based on the results obtained in standardized tests applied by the State, which, despite the actions made in terms of bilingualism, has not reached the expected level. Another relevant aspect that can be glimpsed from the different regulations and plans to improve foreign language teaching and learning process which have been designed and implemented in the last two decades is the preponderance of English over other languages. This language is integrated into the curriculum areas of District schools as a response to the globalization policies that have been strengthened worldwide. However, the strengthening of the mother tongue and native languages is neglected or fragmented, ignoring students whose first language is not Spanish. Therefore, Guerrero and Quintero (2016) and Garzón (2020),

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have conducted research in which the voices of teachers about educational policies, especially those related to a second language, should be heard to build a more equitable policy for teaching and learning a second language.

Challenges in the Framework of Bilingual Policies The design and implementation of bilingualism programs in our country, and especially in Bogotá, have been the subject of criticism and questioning informed by different research such as Bonilla Carvajal and TejadaSánchez (2016), Fandiño-Parra (2014), Fandiño-Parra et  al. (2012), Miranda (2016), Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016), Gómez Sará (2017), and Garzón (2020) that reveals the voices and visions that members of the educational communities have about the policies, which have been the interference of teachers’ managers in the design of bilingual action plans for the institutions and the role of the English teacher in this process inside and outside the classroom. One of the investigations that voices the concerns to teachers is the work developed by Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016), who analyze teacher’s perceptions of educational policies, and how they consciously or unconsciously obey them. At the same time, they generate resistance in their teaching practice that only remains in an internal discourse since there are no spaces for evaluating these policies from the point of view of the person who executes them. In this sense, in this project, the researchers analyze the discourse of the participating teachers, from which it is determined that the implementation of the policies generates in the teachers a “tension product of horizontal and vertical forces” (p. 43). The horizontal forces have to do with the teacher’s power relations with colleagues, students, parents, and politics itself, which are a response to the teacher’s concern to work for the well-being of the student, even if this means applying the imposed educational plans. It is precisely from here that vertical forces emerge, they are those exercised by the teacher on the part of teams hired only to supervise compliance with the policy and

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which in their dominant role ignore what the teacher has to say about the evaluation and improvement of these policies. Thus, the teachers become responsible for the accomplishment of the policies in the school to benefit the students, as expressed by some teachers: “Not including families and parents in the project feels that it is only the responsibility of the English teacher and the institution is not fully involved either (DO1).”

Likewise, teachers mentioned that in the execution of bilingualism programs in their institutions, they have to adapt to the current government and its commitments: “[…] if this year a new strategy arrives then we adjust, if this year another one arrives then we don’t adjust, but it has happened to many teachers and they get tired of adjusting, adjusting, adjusting because it really changes and the requests are different every year according to the policy that is generated (DO2).”

Moreover, Garzón (2020) conducted a study analyzing the subjectivities of English teachers in Colombia based on the National Bilingualism Plan and how this has been permeated by macro policies that seek to perpetuate colonial strategies in the teaching of a second language in our context. It reveals teachers’ identities as a way of opposing the policies and shows that within the guidelines proposed in the PNB, there is no clarity on the role teachers should play in its implementation, despite being the most crucial figure in any action. Everything that has to do with teachers is being reduced to language-level certification, ignoring pedagogical competencies, which go beyond promoting the development of communicative competencies in the classroom. “The main aim of teacher professional development is for us to be trained to certify our level of English, leaving the strengthening of our pedagogical competences in the background (DO3).”

According to Garzón (2020), it is also important to mention that teachers perceive themselves as professionals who are able to contribute

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with important ideas to improve the programs, so that they respond to the needs of the context. For this reason, as they are not involved in constructing bilingualism policies and programs, even though they find some practices of policy making harmful, they struggle to make the policies work within their classrooms for the benefit of their pupils. Moreover, it is also evident that most of the bilingualism projects in Bogotá are focused on high schools mainly, as a consequence, the initial stages in schools are neglected: “The meetings on the articulated bilingualism project are left only as meetings and/or minutes, but we feel the abandonment of the promises made to help us with study materials for primary school children and to have a closer support for pre-school (DO1).”

To this extent, teachers feel that the design and implementation of these policies have been left in the hands of international entities, such as British Council, United Way Colombia, and the French Embassy, that do not know our educational context and, with their hegemonic essence, have been responsible for designing strategies to strengthen the processes of learning a second language so that teachers follow them to the letter in the classroom, making evident the colonial spirit and the dominant character that underlies the teaching of a second language in Colombia. “[…] there has not been any type of participation but consider that classroom teachers and those of us who have participated, for example in immersion classrooms, which is where I was most involved, I consider that through our class preparations, through the creative ideas we have for different types of activities, somehow or another we indirectly participate in the process, not as such in putting the programme or programmes on paper and writing them down (DO2).”

Finally, based on the perceptions and resistance expressed by teachers, the achievement of the expected results in the implementation of bilingual policies at the local level will depend on how governments take on the challenges represented by the need to make the role of teachers visible in the design and development of programs, recognizing the educational context in order to determine localized guidelines that genuinely respond

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to the needs of the environment, being open to the participation of teachers and students of official university degrees, and recognizing the contributions that academic communities can provide for the evaluation and improvement of the design and implementation of programs. Due to this, in the framework of the implementation of bilingualism plans, a number of challenges arise: • Better management of financial resources for bilingualism programs Bilingualism is a profitable business, not only in relation to the official and private institutes that profit from the prestige of English, but also the high flow of resources allocated by the municipalities through the education secretariats to strengthen the teaching and learning of English, as evidenced in the budget allocated for the Education Sector Plan 2020–2024: Program name

Target description

2020

Pedagogical Accompany 220 schools $3.992 transfor mation with strategies to and improve ment strengthen the English of educational curriculum, within the manage ment. It is framework of the with teachers. District Bilingualism Plan and with an emphasis on closing quality gaps.

2021

2022

2023

2024

$5.740

$6.986

$6.500

$5.643

Source: Education Sector Plan: Education First, Secretary of Education, pp. 164–165, figures in COP

With this budget, projects are developed based on alliances and agreements with different national and international entities to strengthen foreign language teaching; these strategies have not given teachers a leading role in the construction of policies and the design of bilingual programs, but instead, their most crucial role is that of beneficiaries who support the implementation of projects in the institutions. That is why different struggles and challenges arise for schools and specifically for language teachers in the face of these policies that are sought to be implemented in the classroom, as stated below:

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Teachers and their institutions can be critical and proactive actors if they are not limited to being consumers of knowledge and operators of mechanisms but are configured as informed participants in the improvement of the educational situations they experience. (Vieira & Moreira, 2008, as cited in Fandiño-Parra, 2014)

• Leading role of students and teachers based on their realities Based on the role of teachers in bilingual policies, one of the first challenges facing educational institutions is to demand that the development of programs responds to the results of the diagnoses, i.e. that they are aware of the realities of teachers and students in the processes of teaching and learning a second language, as Fandiño-Parra (2014) declares The realities and needs of the District's educational institutions seem to suggest that official actions and decisions in Bogota have neglected both participation and approach to focus on stipulating guidelines for institutional functioning and teacher performance. (p. 225)

• Moving from complaint to action On the other hand, it is also essential to recognize that within the framework of bilingualism plans, teachers should take a critical stance on these policies, in this case, those that have to do with teaching a second language, since it is necessary to move from complaint to informed action so that changes can be generated from there (Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero, 2016, p. 65). In this process, the different governments must recognize the value of teachers and their ideas, as they have the academic training and experience. In fact, teacher researchers have dedicated many of their studies to propose actions to improve bilingualism plans; however, only some of them are considered when designing or evaluating policies (Bonilla Carvajal & Tejada-Sánchez, 2016; Correa & Usma, 2013). Along the same lines, teachers would have much to say about implementing policies. However, these are ultimately an imposition that does little to

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address our context’s academic and pedagogical needs (Bonilla Carvajal & Tejada-Sánchez, 2016; Quintero Polo, 2009). • Recognition and revitalization of Colombian native languages Another challenge that can be seen in bilingualism programs has to do with the implementation of the visibility of Colombian native languages and even more so when we have speakers of these languages in our country. In Colombia, there are approximately 68 native languages spoken by around 850,000 people. Among them, there are 65 indigenous languages, or Indo-American languages, two Creole languages spoken by Afro-­ descendants: English-based Creole spoken in San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina, and Spanish-based Ri Palenque, spoken in San Basilio de Palenque, Cartagena, and Barranquilla, where Palenqueros live. Similarly, there is also, the Rromaní language spoken by the Rrom or Gypsy people present in different departments of the country. (El Tiempo, 2016)

This challenge is in line with the number of students from indigenous communities that are part of educational institutions in Bogotá, which by 2021 had approximately 3500 children and young people. The challenge is to include the mother tongue of these students who are part of indigenous communities in the city’s bilingualism policies so that there is true intercultural inclusion and participation. • Inclusion of other foreign languages in the bilingualism plans Along the same lines, there is also the challenge of including other foreign languages in the bilingualism programs, giving the school the option of selecting the one that most closely matches their interests, especially those of the students. This is because English has become the core language of the bilingual action plans implemented in schools. In other words, the programs should be aimed at plurilingual spaces that allow access to knowledge of other cultures and enable students to become aware of the diversity and importance of languages as a relevant element

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for strengthening intercultural competencies. In this sense, this challenge allows some lines of action that were proposed in the bilingual regulations and whose focus was lost when it came to implementation. • Consolidation of academic communities The strengthening of the second language in Bogotá faces another challenge related to strategic allies, who are responsible for leading these efforts. These alliances are consolidated through cooperation agreements, of which entities such as the British Council, the Centro Colombo Americano, the French Embassy, Fulbright, and the United Way Colombia Foundation, among others, stand out. Through these agreements, the aim is to design and implement programs to respond to the different lines of action proposed. A good number of teachers and school managers have been able to participate in these programs, as well as to focus on schools to restructure curricula and design bilingual action plans. However, the resistance of teachers to these actions is evident, as Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016) state that they are decontextualized: Through the voices of the teachers, the lack of knowledge that policymakers and government agents have of the Colombian context became evident. (p. 68)

For this reason, in the construction and implementation of policies, communities should be created in which teachers also play a leading role, especially when they are the ones who know the realities and needs of educational institutions. In addition, the government should allow Higher Education Institutions to play an active role since it is where teachers are trained, and studies are carried out to improve the processes of teaching and learning a second language. In addition to the participation of teachers, universities with language degree programs should be included in the construction of the programs. This is due to their expertise and critical view of teacher training in second language teaching. Likewise, there are groups and research groups in these scenarios that propose an academic approach to provide solutions

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to the needs of educational institutions in terms of the teaching and learning of a second language. • Professional development for teachers of other subjects Finally, the professional development of teachers of areas other than English should be included in the programs so that they can “encourage interaction and the use of foreign languages in the classroom without leaving aside Spanish as a mother tongue” (Fandiño-Parra, 2014, p. 226), which allows for the strengthening of the interdisciplinary nature of educational processes. In addition to enriching bilingual processes, bilingualism is understood as using Spanish and another language.

Conclusions From the review of the second language policies and programs that have been developed in the District’s educational institutions in Bogotá, it is possible to understand the resistance that English teachers have shown toward their implementation in the classrooms. However, it is also necessary for them to participate more actively in the construction of these programs and not limit themselves to repeating information and activities in the classroom as has been done so far. In this regard, teaching English from the perspective of these policies cannot become a way to perpetuating the policy of subjugation of education to globalization processes that seeks to make docile subjects (Forero-Mondragón, this volume)1 without a critical vision of their reality. In addition, governments should consider all institutions so that the policy is implemented globally and not partially. This is regarding the bilingualism programs in Bogotá that are being carried out in the targeted schools, which by 2022 are 220 out of 400 public institutions in the District. Although it is important to carry out pilot plans in some schools, this measure should be temporary and, on the contrary, the  Forero Mondragón (this volume) states schools serve global market interests of educating docile and utile subjects. 1

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evaluation and improvement of these plans should allow the participation of other educational communities. On the other hand, those in charge of leading the construction of policies should clarify the concept of bilingual education and assume a critical attitude toward it since it will allow them to make fairer and more inclusive policies that promote the strengthening of native and foreign languages other than English. Finally, the designers of the policies may reflect on the program’s pitfalls and avoid the perpetuation of the unfair practices from previous programs, which have been normalized, making the program become a copy from others that do not have anything to do with our educational context. To this end, it is necessary to constantly evaluate and review the expected achievements to achieve a solid bilingualism policy that considers linguistic and cultural diversity within the framework of the multilingual processes that are taking place worldwide.

References Bases para el Plan Sectorial de Educación 2012–2016 Calidad para todos y todas. http://www.idep.edu.co/sites/default/files/SED-­% 20Plan%20 Sectorial%20Educacion.pdf Bonilla Carvajal, C. A., & Tejada-Sánchez, I. (2016). Unanswered questions in Colombia’s language education policy. PROFILE Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 18(1), 185–201. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v18n1.51996 Cárdenas, R., & Miranda, N. (2014). Implementación del Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo: un balance intermedio. Education and Educators, 17(1), 51–67. Correa, D., & Usma, W. J. (2013). From a bureaucratic to a critical-­sociocultural model of policymaking in Colombia. HOW Journal, 20(1), 226–242. https:// howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/32 El Acuerdo de Paz también está en lenguas nativas. (29 de septiembre de 2016). El Tiempo. https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-­16714520 Fandiño-Parra, Y. J. (2014). Bogotá bilingüe: tensión entre política, currículo y realidad escolar. Education and Educators, 17(2), 215–236. https://doi. org/10.5294/edu.2014.17.2.1

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Fandiño-Parra, Y. J., Bermúdez-Jiménez, J. R., & Lugo-Vásquez, V. E. (2012). Retos del Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo. Colombia Bilingüe. Education and Educators, 15(3), 363–381. Garzón, E. (2020). Afirmación de subjetividades de los profesores de inglés en Colombia a partir de sus discursos de resistencia. Acta Hispanica, II, 847–858. https://doi.org/10.14232/actahisp.2020.0.847-­858 Gómez Sará, M. M. (2017). Review and analysis of the Colombian foreign language bilingualism policies and plans. HOW, 24(1), 139–156. https://doi. org/10.19183/how.24.1.343 Guerrero-Nieto, C. H., & Quintero, A. (2016). Las voces de los maestros frente a las políticas educativas: ¿la ilusión de la democracia? Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Ley 115 de 1994. Por la cual se expide la ley general de educación. 8 de febrero de 1994. DO: 41.214. Ministerio de Educación Nacional. (1999). Lineamientos Curriculares para Idiomas Extranjeros. Miranda, N. (2016). Bilingual Colombia program: Curriculum as product, only? Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 31(2), 19–38. https://repository.upenn.edu/wpel/vol31/iss2/2 Ortega, Y. (2023). Symbolic annihilation: Processes influencing English language policy and teaching practice. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2023.2215361 Ospina Bozzi, A. M. (2015). Mantenimiento y revitalización de lenguas nativas en Colombia. Reflexiones para el camino. Forma y Función, 28(2), 11–48. Plan Sectorial de Educación 2004–2008 Bogotá: una gran escuela para que niños, niñas y jóvenes aprendan más y mejor. https://repositoriosed.educacionbogota.edu.co/flip/index.jsp?pdf=/bitstream/id/2dd4ab72-­d6c9-­4fcc-­ a556-­ca119890adc1/SED%20722.pdf Plan Sectorial de Educación 2008–2012 Educación de Calidad para una Bogotá Positiva. https://repositoriosed.educacionbogota.edu.co/flip/index.jsp?pdf=/ bitstream/id/2868140a-­2b78-­4e37-­b5ae-­ceb33d4d3bc0/PLAN_SECTO RIAL_2008-­2012.pdf Plan Sectorial 2016–2020 «Hacia una Ciudad Educadora. https://repositoriosed.educacionbogota.edu.co/flip/index.jsp?pdf=/bitstream/id/e5164000-­ d7f2-­4 d1a-­8 c5b-­1 26d1d84af40/PLAN%20SECTORIAL%202016-­ 2020%20WEB%2030082017.pdf

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Plan sectorial de educación: la educación en primer lugar 2020–2024. https:// repositoriosed.educacionbogota.edu.co/bitstream/handle/001/3375/ Plan%20Sectorial%202020-­2024%20VF.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Quintero Polo, A. H. (2009). ¿Es usted bilingüe? Concepciones y alternativas para la educación en idiomas en el contexto colombiano. El Educador, 7, 4–10. http://es.calameo.com/read/000085494e33c599e8268 Vieira, I., & Moreira, M. A. (2008). Reflective teacher education towards learner autonomy: Building a culture of possibility. In M. Raya & T. Lamb (Eds.), Pedagogy for autonomy in language education: Theory, practice and teacher education (pp. 266–282). Authentik.

4 An Approach to the Discourse of Standard English: A Disciplinary Power Exercise in the Colombian ELT Curriculum Alber Josué Forero-Mondragón

Introduction In line with the claims for localizing and democratizing Colombian language policies and curricula presented in this book, particularly in Chaps. 3 and 5, this chapter offers a problematizing outlook on how the discourse of standard English exercises disciplinary power in the Colombian English Language Teaching (ELT) curriculum. Thus, it adds non-­ conformist stitches, colors, and threads to the tapestry giving rise to this book. This piece argues that the Colombian ELT curriculum sets a disciplinary micro-field that works as a gear of the subjectivation processes at school, a bigger disciplinary field, through means of correct training This chapter is based on my master’s dissertation titled The Discourse of Standard English: An Exercise of Disciplinary Power in International Scholarships? (Forero-Mondragón, 2020).

A. J. Forero-Mondragón (*) Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios-UNIMINUTO, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_4

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(Foucault, 2002) that fosters standard English testing-oriented practices. Precisely, the discourse of standard English holds a representation (Martín Rojo, 1996) of language practices (e.g., learning English for working, traveling, and studying), users (i.e., native-like speakers), and events (e.g., test sitting) that underlies the foregoing means. The discourse at issue is a construct resulting from a critical discourse study (Forero-Mondragón & Quintero-Polo, 2022), and is underpinned by a theoretical review of ten concepts. These concepts are modern school (Álvarez-Gallego, 1995; Chartier, 2004; Saldarriaga, 2003; van der Horst & Narodowski, 1999; Varela & Álvarez-Uría, 1991), discourse (Foucault, 1981; Martín Rojo, 1996), English language testing (Shohamy, 2017; Koláčková & Sikolova, 2017), standard English (Fairclough, 2001; Forero-Mondragón, 2020; Guerrero-Nieto, 2010; Guerrero- Nieto & Quintero Polo, 2009; Milroy, 2001; Razfar, 2012; Spring, 2008), disciplinary power (Foucault, 1977, 1988b, 2002), subject (Foucault, 1988a), objectification (Gruenfeld et al., 2008), field (Bourdieu, 1986, 1989, 1995; Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero Polo, 2009), curriculum (Jackson, 1968; Marsh, 1997), and quality in education (Colella & Díaz-Salazar, 2015). In discussing the foregoing constructs, this chapter seeks to inform and invite English language teachers, teacher educators, and applied linguists to contest the discursive effects of standard English in their professional and research praxes. This chapter is divided into two major sections. The first one prepares the ground for understanding the power exercise in the above-mentioned micro-field. In this vein, I will review some literature regarding school as a social space driven by discipline and tensions among social actors. The second section of this chapter explains how the discourse of standard English inserts into the Colombian ELT curriculum disciplinary micro-­ field and exercises power for the sake of orthodox social actors.

 Social Space Named School: A Field A of Tensions and Discipline “The student’s freedom of mind is dangerous if what is wanted is a group of technically trained obedient workers to carry out the plans of elites who are aiming at foreign investment and technological development” (Nussbaum, 2010, p. 21).

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School is an institution that has historically responded to external demands underpinned by social, economic, political, and cultural agendas that are frequently unquestioned and blindly reproduced. This institution has been constituted as a field of tensions where objectification processes construct utile and docile human beings (i.e., students) by means of disciplinary power. In this train of thought, this chapter endeavors to explain how the English language curriculum sets a micro-disciplinary field in which the discourse of standard English (Forero-Mondragón & Quintero-Polo, 2022; Forero-Mondragón, 2020) exercises power for constructing so-called native-like speakers that meet the expectations of the current global labor market.

School is a disciplinary institution. This is evident in its panoptical architecture (Foucault, 2002) with desks to distribute bodies within closed spaces, timetables for distributing school activities, syllabi, and a group of specialists doing the schoolwork (e.g., principals, supervisors, teachers) (Álvarez-Gallego, 1995; Varela & Álvarez-Uría, 1991). School seems a perfect machine whose doings are meticulously operated by stakeholders who have previously determined them. Yet, school’s ends are not delineated by consensus among social actors. Conversely, it has been appraised or questioned for (not) fulfilling their interests. Who are those actors? What role do they play in school’s power relationships? On the one hand, students, teachers, principals, administrative staff, coordinators, and security guards, among others, are responsible for the embodiment of school’s power dynamics but hardly ever participate in their decisions. On the other hand, politicians, entrepreneurs, technocrats, and religious leaders, etc., exercise power in educational policymaking. Thereby, what school is expected to do, whom it benefits, and how its doings are decided entail tensions. I will draw on the concept of field (Bourdieu, 1995) in order to illustrate how the foregoing social actors relate to one another for constituting school’s social ends. A field is “a network of objective relations (of domination or subordination, of complementarity or antagonism, etc.,) among positions” (Bourdieu, 1995, p. 342, own translation). Likewise, a field is a space of social action mediated by capital, namely available resources in social action (Bourdieu, 1995). Social actors have diverse forms of capital, for instance, economic capital (pecuniary resources), social capital

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(social resources used for one’s welfare), cultural capital (intellectual and academic resources), and symbolic capital (interaction of the former forms of capital) (Bourdieu, 1986; Rincón-Villamil, 2010). People might take three stances in a field depending on their accumulation of capital: being orthodox, heterodox, or doxa actors. Orthodoxy is constituted by actors owning greater capital since they are dominant and hence, set the norms of the field based on episteme. On the other hand, heterodoxy is represented by a group of dominated actors employing arguments to overturn the dominant ones. Lastly, doxa actors draw on popular discourse and have no major impact on the field (Bourdieu, 1995); that is why orthodox actors seek their adhesion. Overall, school is a field inasmuch as it is a tensional social space in which different social actors articulate their interests. Guerrero-Nieto and Quintero (2016) cast light on this tensional relationship, particularly, among teachers, students, parents, educational administrators, and technocrats; the latter being representatives of hidden protagonists, for instance, corporations. Being teachers in the spot of analysis, the authors’ findings reveal that such stakeholders are participants of horizontal and vertical forces. Similarly, other school actors are implied in the ethical ends of education, giving rise to synergies and conflicts, depending on capital ownership. In summation, school is a disciplinary field in which social actors exercise power in order to fulfill their interests. Depending on the accumulation of capital, some benefit by establishing the rules of such a field (orthodoxy) whereas others contest it (heterodoxy), and the rest play a passive role (doxa). What are the historical conditions involved in such power relationships? How have school’s ultimate ends materialized despite the tensions described? School emerged as an event (Álvarez-Gallego, 1995) as it was not an invention from a particular social group but a result of power and knowledge practices that involved different social actors. Its panoptical architecture, rooms, stakeholders, and forms responded to the need to have working-class children learn knowledges, virtues, and work habits of the new capitalist society (Saldarriaga, 2003). Other social ends were attributed to it, for instance, educating Christians and civilized subjects; these ends did not overlap with one another but converged (Chartier, 2004)

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through tensional relations between neighbors, the Government, the Catholic Church, political parties, and parents, among others (Álvarez-­ Gallego, 1995). However, it was not possible—not even today—for school to achieve its ends without the exercise of an array of methods to control students’ actions: discipline. From punishment to corrective measures and honor-based discipline (Saldarriaga, 2003), normalizing students has allowed school to construct amenable subjects, i.e., malleable to orthodox social actors’ interests by means of objectification.1 Accordingly, school has been a target of power (van der Horst & Narodowski, 1999). By power I refer to an exercise that leads the conduct of people (Foucault, 1988a); power, which is neither static nor possessed by a sovereign (Foucault, 2002), is exercised by means of forces in favor or against the rules set, constituting power relationships. School has also been an object of knowledge, which I deem a product of a discipline, the latter being “a domain of objects, a corpus of propositions considered to be true, a play of rules or definitions, of techniques and instruments” (Foucault, 1981, p. 59). In this vein, pedagogy became a discipline devoted to studying education and school’s ethical ends centered on constructing subjects. This intentionality required a school machinery (Varela & Álvarez-Uría, 1991), namely, an array of practices and conditions that lead up to forming utile and docile subjects. Examples of these are the definition of statutes for childhood and adolescence, the adoption of more limited socialization spaces (i.e., conjugal family), the creation of school desks, and the education of a group of professionals such as teachers, hygienists, and physicians (Varela & Álvarez-Uría, 1991). The school machinery, thus, entailed control and order along the schooling process. Disciplinary power then started to be exercised. This is because discipline has allowed for “meticulously [controlling] the operations of the body, which assured the constant subjection of its forces and imposed upon them a relation of docility-utility” (Foucault, 2002, p. 126, own translation). Nevertheless, this does not mean that disciplinary power has been unproblematized by social actors.  By objectification I mean “an instrument of subjugation whereby the needs, interests, and experiences of those with less power are subordinated to those of the powerful, and this facilitates using others as means to an end” (Gruenfeld et al., 2008, p. 111). 1

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As for the Colombian case, Saldarriaga (2003) examines the tensional relationship between knowledge and disciplinary power technologies in pedagogical models adopted by school: the Lancasterian (i.e., mutual education model), enseñanza simultánea (simultaneous education), and active school. The author contends that the foregoing tension occurs because of the two-fold intentionality of school. On the one hand, it seeks to place working-class children in a narrow space and for a certain time; and on the other, it provides them with knowledge, habits, and virtues to boost civilized capitalist societies. This conflictual two-fold purpose of the social space at issue has led to forming students’ subjectivities (ethical end) through human-action mobile mechanisms (Restrepo-­ Mejía, n.d., as cited in Saldarriaga, 2003). Table 4.1 shows the relationship between the three pedagogical models, their disciplinary methods, and human action’s mobile mechanisms. The existence of the above-mentioned pedagogical models implies that neither Colombian pedagogy has only had three major historical moments nor that the elements of these models do not survive in the current school; all in all, “school has to respond to new social demands but without letting aside its old missions” (Chartier, 2004, p. 32, own translation). In these models, disciplinary power has been exercised quite differently, however. Some disciplinary techniques have included exams, honor rolls, school awards, physical punishment, and normalizing sanctions, among others. Moreover, these models have drawn on technologies of the self (Foucault, 1988b) to make students internalize discipline insofar as they foster self-governed citizens. The next subsection elaborates on how the foregoing disciplinary techniques survive in the current school. Table 4.1 Relation between pedagogical models, disciplinary methods, and human action’s mobile mechanisms in Colombian school Pedagogical models

Disciplinary methods

Human action’s mobile mechanisms

The model of Lancaster The model of enseñanza simultánea Active school

Punishment Award

Fear Emulation

Natural consequences of acts

Interest to learn

Note. Source: Restrepo-Mejía (n.d., as cited in Saldarriaga, 2003, own translation)

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 he Current School: Why Refuse to Quit T Disciplining Students? School is originally a project of Modernity (Álvarez-Gallego, 1995; Saldarriaga, 2003; van der Horst & Narodowski, 1999; Varela & Álvarez-­ Uría, 1991). By Modernity, I allude to the age when humanity configures the world as an image (Heidegger, 1977). This configuration obeys a reformulation of the question for the subject; hence, the subject is not divine (i.e., God) as in the Middle Age but human (Heidegger, 1977). In this vein, discovering knowledge by employing the scientific method leads to constructing the world as an image that humans manipulate and harness, which creates statements and rules emanating from disciplines (Foucault, 1981). The Modern Age has brought changes in the social, political, and economic arenas as well. For example, the overthrow of the French monarchy entailed the rise of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of a republic. For these changes to happen, school’s emergence was pivotal because it was oriented to fostering social cohesion, patriotism, and virtues (Saldarriaga, 2003). As for the Colombian school, the creole aristocracy, militaries, and intellectuals imported the French model for the nascent republic to get on the train of the European historic material and democratic progress (Álvarez-Gallego, 1995). The advent of Modern school was not just a bourgeois initiative, though. For instance, Colombian school appeared and has evolved as a field of forces among different groups, for instance, political parties, neighbors, the Roman-Catholic Church, the Government, and the State (Álvarez-Gallego, 1995). During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these groups not only disputed school’s social ends and bodies of knowledge but also adhered to one another as discussed above. Yet, the current school is not solely an effect of Modern school. This is because, while the former still resorts to disciplinary practices, its emphasis is not on adjusting students to normality as the latter has done. On the contrary, it considers learners’ diversity to make them docile and utile subjects (van der Horst & Narodowski, 1999). In such a switch, the mass-media popular culture has been involved, becoming the main

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Table 4.2  Means of correct training in current school Means of correct training

Disciplinary mechanism at school

Hierarchical observation is the Surveillance at all levels: teachers’ surveillance made by a superior over assessment, progress charts, lesson small groups who work together as plans, improvement plans, and gears in order to keep a complete students’ disciplinary records, among system working. This superior has others. control over the disciplinary system. Normalizing punishment is “a Matrícula condicional (i.e., academic technique to coerce the individuals; sanction prior to being expelled from it implements procedures to submit school), prueba académica (i.e., the body with traces it leaves in the warning after failing a maximum shape of habits in the behavior” number of credits), students’ (Foucault, 2002, p. 123, authors’ signatures on their disciplinary translation). records, and the like. Examinations constitute “a Standardized tests and summative normalizing gaze, a surveillance that assessment. permits labeling, classification and punishment” (Foucault, 2002, p. 171, authors’ translation) Note. Source: Serrano et al. (2016)

moralizer for students just like school used to be (van der Horst & Narodowski, 1999). Additionally, different social actors holding globalizing discourses have permeated state institutions, school not being an exception (Forero-­Mondragón & Quintero-Polo, 2022; Spring, 2008). Therefore, school’s initial end of constructing state-nations has been displaced by the idea of educating so-called global citizens for which disciplinary power is still useful. For the new goal of inserting students in global dynamics, the current school recycles disciplinary techniques from the three pedagogical models analyzed by Saldarriaga (2003). In this perspective, Serrano et  al. (2016) exemplify these disciplinary mechanisms in the light of Foucault’s (2002) means of correct training, i.e., procedures to guarantee order and control (see Table 4.2). Table 4.2 allows us to see that the means of correct training employed in the current school are geared toward one another. They set a system of control and surveillance devised to keep track of students’ behaviors and learning (academic performance) and correct them when they do not

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meet social standards. In doing so, teachers supervise and are supervised, therefore, they exercise disciplinary power and such power is exercised over them. Other stakeholders like school coordinators, advisors, principals, secretaries of education, and so on, also take part in these power dynamics. In short, the current school is still designed as a machine with preset procedures and mechanisms to ensure amenable subjects’ construction. How does school machinery constitute a breeding ground for forming subjects prone to satisfy the needs of a globalizing world? Previously, I have contended that school has been a target of power and knowledge. This means that orthodox social actors concerned with school have employed the statements and rules emanated by disciplines (i.e., episteme) to materialize their interests. For this to happen, a third element is paramount: discourses, for instance, those as exitismo 2 (Portocarrero & Komadina, 2001), quality (Colella & Díaz-Salazar, 2015; Forero-Mondragón & Quintero-Polo, 2022), globalization (Spring, 2008), and competitiveness and qualifications (Forero-­ Mondragón & Quintero-Polo, 2022), standard English (Forero-­ Mondragón, 2020), among others. Considering this essay’s scope and space limitations, in the next section, I will thread the ties between knowledge, discourse, and power dynamics that configure the disciplinary field of the ELT curriculum in Colombia.

 he Colombian ELT Curriculum: A Hotbed T for the Discourse of Standard English In one of his masterpieces, Pa′ que se acabe la vaina, Colombian writer William Ospina analyzes various factors influencing the historical, social, economic, cultural, and political crises in this land. One of these is Colombians’ lack of a sense of belonging and their worship to foreign artifacts. In this regard, he says:

 The discourse of exitismo refers to a representation of success, overcoming one’s suffering and exclusion as an aftermath of individual merit (Portocarrero & Komadina, 2001). 2

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The British, French, and North Americans do not mind speaking Spanish with the marked accent of their home countries, because they do not worry if others know where they come from: here we had to speak English and French with a neutral accent to avoid that others, by hearing us, noted that we come from other places, from some provinces that are ashamed of themselves, lying prostrate to venerating distant flares, and that are not so convinced that they have the same right to breath the planet’s air. (Ospina, 2013, pp. 31–32, own translation)

The previous fragment illustrates our tendency to import or replicate foreign models and approaches. Also, it sheds light on the imposed need to sound like a native when it comes to speaking English in our country. In this section, I will propose a discussion concerning how Colombian school, and more particularly, the ELT curriculum, sets a hotbed for the representation of standard English as the language varieties to be taught, learned, assessed, and tested, which I coined as the discourse of standard English 3 elsewhere (Forero-Mondragón, 2020; Forero-Mondragón & Quintero-Polo, 2022). In doing so, this section is divided into two parts. I will first approach the disciplinary micro-field that constitutes the curriculum at issue by characterizing the tensional network of relations among social actors constituting this micro-field. Then I will explain how the discourse of standard English permeates the micro-field and the disciplinary mechanisms it draws on to construct students as subjects that fit in the global market.

 pproaching the Colombian ELT Curriculum A Disciplinary Micro-Field The Colombian ELT curriculum is a gear of the school machinery that aims to educate students as amenable subjects. Before arguing this claim, I will refer to curriculum as “an interrelated set of plans and experiences which a student completes under the guidance of the school” (Marsh,  The discourse of standard English is a representation (Martín Rojo, 1996) of language practices (e.g., learning English for working, traveling, and studying), users (i.e., native-like speakers), and events (e.g., test sitting). 3

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1997, p. 154); therefore, curriculum is not reduced to syllabi. This entails questioning value-free approaches to curriculum that conceive it as equal to sole plans, documents, content, goals, assessment, and methods (Su, 2012). Curriculum is also what is taught implicitly, i.e., hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968): values, subjugation of personal identity and desires, and acceptance of homogeneity. In the following lines, I will discuss how the Colombian ELT curriculum constitutes a disciplinary micro-field inserted in school machinery. The micro-field of the Colombian ELT curriculum is a network of force relations (Bourdieu, 1995) that, like school, is configured as a result of domination and subordination practices. In our country, orthodoxy in this curriculum is made up of social actors such as publishing houses, international governmental organizations, and cultural institutes (e.g., the British Council, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press). These corporations set the access point 4 (Giddens, 2013; Rodríguez-­ Motavita & Osorio-Junca, 2017) of the English language testing system by orienting the curricular doings (i.e., plans, lessons, assessment) to testing-training. Hence, their tests become the benchmark to measure the native-like language use since tests “can lead to differentiation among people and for judging them” (Shohamy, 2017, p. 4). Indeed, the orthodoxy has a direct impact on the design of statewide examinations’ English language component as illustrated in Table 4.3. Overall, Table 4.3 shows the similarities between the Key English Test (KET) and two Colombian statewide examinations tests in terms of topics, layout, and type of questions (i.e., multiple choice and cloze procedures). Hence, the ELT curriculum is permeated by tests, becoming test-centered (Koláčková & Sikolova, 2017), training students to score high. In turn, alternative but isolated efforts of research groups and teacher-­ researchers give rise to heterodoxy. These have questioned the discourses the dominant groups have spread in school (e.g., Escobar, 2013;  By access point I refer to “systems of technical accomplishment or professional expertise that organize large areas of the material and social environments in which we live today” (Giddens, 2013, p. 27). In this sense, people establish a relation of trust with the system of English certifications through the access point. Concretely, the access point is made up of a set of organizations promoting standard English varieties. 4

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Table 4.3  Comparison between the English language components in Colombian statewide examinations and the Key English Test Key English Test Sections samplea

9th grade English testb

11th grade English testb

1

2

3

4

(continued)

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Table 4.3 (continued) Key English Test Sections samplea

9th grade English testb

11th grade English testb

5

Note. Source: aInstituto Colombiano para el Fomento de la Educación Superior (ICFES, 2013, 2018) b University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (2014)

Forero-­Mondragón, 2017; Guerrero-Nieto, 2010; Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero Polo, 2009; Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero, 2016; Samacá, 2012; Méndez-­Rivera et al., 2020). Albeit these authors tackle English language education from different angles, they share a problematizing view. They have focused on how language policies, cultures, policymakers, and practitioners constitute power relations, which yields resistance, subjugation, privilege, and alienation in the Colombian educational system both inside and outside classrooms. Yet, their efforts do not echo as hard as dominant actors’ because they are constrained by dominant discourses exclusion systems 5 (Foucault, 1981). Consequently, heterodox discourses do not adhere easily to others in the ELT curriculum disciplinary micro-field.  Dominant discourses exert a sort of control over other discourses. Foucault (1981) analyzes how discourses are ruled by external and internal systems of exclusion and procedures to control them. The former refers to non-discursive practices to dominate the power in discourse; examples of these are: the forbidden speech (taboo topics, for example sexuality and politics), the division of madness in relation to its opposite (reasoning), and the will to truth (typical of scientific discourses). Internal systems of exclusion and control procedures utilize discourses’ self-control procedures to avert the chance (Foucault, 1981): the commentary (i.e., discourse that disappears as soon as pronounced), the author (i.e., principle of grouping discourses to ensure veracity), and the disciplines (a group of propositions deemed to be true). Finally, Foucault (1981) distinguishes a third group of procedures that control discourses, which are made up of the ritual (qualification of those individuals who speak) and the doctrines (control of the content of the statements).

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At the third level, the doxa is reified in the opinions of parents/caretakers, teachers, students, etc., who welcome, apprehend, and reproduce the discourses from orthodoxy. These opinions revolve around the pros of social mobility opportunities and personal and professional growth that are generally associated with English learning (Guerrero-Nieto, 2010; Spring, 2008). They are constructions of discursive representations that sell the wonders of English to access an imagined community of English speakers (Guerrero-Nieto, 2010). Still, what endorses the dominant positions of access point organizations/corporations in the ELT curriculum disciplinary field? Where do the wonders assigned to the English language come from? The next subsection approaches these questions.

 he Discourse of Standard English: T A Functional View of Language for the Global Market In this subsection, I will characterize the discourse of standard English, which departs from a conceptualization of this discourse based on Fairclough (2001), Milroy (2001), and Razfar (2012). Then I will explain three main features of such discourse by drawing on Guerrero Nieto and Quintero Polo (2009), Guerrero (2010), and Milroy (2001). Lastly, I will discuss how the discourse at issue serves the global market. The term standard English refers to both an ideology (Milroy, 2001; Razfar, 2012) and a discourse (Fairclough, 2001). As an ideology, standard English is a view of language connected with a capitalist belief system, for example, the pursuit of effectiveness. In this vein, this linguistic variation is functional since it boosts effective communication for economic purposes (Milroy, 2001). Likewise, as it unifies the interactions of people, standard English has been useful for the consolidation of political systems like nation-states at expense of marginalized groups and their so-­ called dialects (Razfar, 2012). On the other hand, looking at standard English as a discourse, i.e., language as a social practice (Fairclough, 2001), entails that dominant groups such as bourgeois classes represent social reality aligning it to their interests through language. Both ideology

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and discourse relate to one another insofar as the former uses the latter as a mediator for restricting access to discursive practices. Since this manuscript is concerned with the disciplinary power exercised by the discursive practices of standard English, the ideological is not emphasized. Discourses are language-related social practices that “construct representations of society, social practices, social actors and the relations established among them” (Martín Rojo, 1996, p. 2, own translation). In this light, the discourse of standard English emerges from the assumption that standard English varieties are more prestigious than others for their uniformity (Milroy, 2001) concreted in “few differences in grammar between them” (Cambridge University Press, 2020, para. 1). Similarly, this discourse is sustained by English neutrality (Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero Polo, 2009) in the sense that English is represented as neutral in sociopolitical struggles. Finally—and perhaps—its most relevant feature is its aforementioned representation as a gatekeeper for people to access modern wonders (Guerrero-Nieto, 2010). While this characterization is not exhaustive, it allows for identifying the main social function of the discourse of standard English: ensuring the quality of English language teaching, learning, and assessment by orienting them toward testing. Quality in education is also a discursive group of practices. This discourse derives from claims for the progress of nations through measurable indicators (Colella and Díaz-Salazar 2015). These researchers contend that the discourse of quality of education is built as a lack that enables states to intervene in school to make education what it should be through reforms; for these reforms, states hire specialized agencies/organizations. In the case of English language education, the Colombian State draws on those organizations of the access point of the English language testing system for policy delineation. As an example, the British Council counseling has led to foreign language educational reforms, for instance, the National Bilingual Program (2004–2019) (Colombian Ministry of Education, 2006), which comprises the previously mentioned Basic Standards of Competence, and Basic Learning Rights: English (Colombian Ministry of Education, 2016a, b). In summation, the discourse of quality in education validates the boosting of standard English across schooling. In Colombia, measurable indicators (Colella & Díaz-Salazar, 2015) for guaranteeing the quality of English language education are provided by

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the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001). As its title suggests, the CEFR unifies the criteria for European languages education. This unification supposes an array of communicative competences (i.e., sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and linguistic), levels of proficiency that label language users, i.e. A (basic user), B (independent user), and C (proficient user), and language skills both receptive and productive, among other elements that set “a common basis for the explicit description of objectives, content and methods” (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 1). The adoption of the CEFR was concreted by the Colombian State through the creation of the booklet Guía 22: Basic Standards of Competence (Colombian Ministry of Education, 2006). Accordingly, the ELT curriculum is primarily based on this framework and statewide examinations are the instruments that allow the Colombian Ministry of Education to monitor the proper language teaching, learning, and assessment throughout schooling. Still, who benefits from these fine-grained control of quality-oriented language practices in the Colombian ELT curriculum? How do they articulate the paraphernalia of school disciplinary techniques to fulfill the interests of a few orthodox social actors? Forero-Mondragón and Quintero-Polo’s (2022) critical discourse study on how the discourse of standard English exercises disciplinary power in international scholarship concessions sheds light on these questions. Based on Fairclough’s (2001) CDA model, the authors analyzed five calls for applicants from the alliance between Instituto Colombiano de Crédito Educativo y Estudios Técnicos en el Exterior (ICETEX) and Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (AIESEC). Findings reveal that multinational corporations like Apple, Nike, Electrolux, Accenture, and Nokia, among others, sponsor AIESEC in order to recruit workers. As for the scholarships offered, applicants had to meet preset profiles as global leaders, competitive and qualified professionals looking for career upgrades. Yet, a sine qua non condition for them was certifying English language mastery through so-called valid tests (i.e., IELTS, TOEFL, MET). By examining the discursive practices of production, consumption, and distribution of the language requisite, they found that the latter emanated from the discourse of standard English, which in turn, constitutes and is constituted by three more discourses: globalization, quality in

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education, and competitiveness and qualifications. This implies that this discursive entanglement targets school, and more specifically, the ELT curriculum to form utile and docile subjects that become proficient in standard language varieties throughout schooling by means of test-­ centered instruction. Similarly, school’s honor-based discipline paves the way for students to look at scholarships as something to compete for relying on their qualifications. The foregoing study is only the beginning of an academic enterprise to unveil the pervasive effects of the discourse of standard English on the ELT curriculum in Colombia. It helps cast light on the complex nature of this micro-field in which hidden orthodox social actors exercise power over others to satisfy their interests.

Conclusion The discussion proposed in this chapter offered a review of research- and theory-based literature to understand how the discourse of standard English exercises disciplinary power in the Colombian ELT curriculum. In this sense, it allowed for understanding its disciplinary roots in a bigger field: school. This manuscript explained some sociohistorical conditions that elicited the emergence of school. Also, it shed light on the tensional relationships among the positions of social actors related to this educational institution. By the same token, it posited that school disciplinary practices are the result of an intersection among the discourses of orthodox positions, school being a breeding ground for their social ends and school disciplinary mechanisms construct utile and docile subjects that fulfill their expectations. Accordingly, the discussion intended to cast light on how these mechanisms are part of a power exercise that circulates among the individuals that participate in school daily life: disciplinary power. Framed in the bigger school machinery, the Colombian ELT curriculum is also a disciplinary field. Inside it, the synergies and disputes among social actors result in disciplinary practices such as examinations akin to the language tests powered by the access point of the English language testing. In this vein, this micro-field serves as a hotbed for the discourses produced by orthodox social actors. The discussion let us comprehend that such dominant actors circulate a representation of language that

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fulfills their interests, namely, the discourse of standard English. Likewise, it allowed noting that this discourse is entangled with other discourses like globalization, competitiveness and qualifications, and quality in education. The latter takes shape in the CEFR and its adaptation to the Colombian context, e.g., Basic Standards of Competence (Colombian Ministry of Education, 2006), and Basic Learning Rights: English (Colombian Ministry of Education, 2016a, b). The chapter also evidenced that the insertion of the discourse of quality of education in Colombian ELT curriculum micro-field has permitted the access point of English language testing to assist the Colombian State make reforms to achieve the expectations of a globalized world moved by the dynamics of the global market (Spring, 2008). Finally, the chapter lets us see that doxa social actors constitute the target of orthodoxy; the doxa is then convinced to reproduce the dominant discourses. Simultaneously, heterodox social actors contest the agendas of the powerful, but their efforts are invisibilized by the exclusion systems of dominant discourses. However, heterodox research agendas continue to gain momentum in the ELT field. They amplify the voices of those who have suffered the exclusion of standardized views of language, casting doubt on monolithic ways of teaching, learning, and assessing English. Take the tapestry offered here as a case in point. Considering William Ospina’s word on worshipping distant flares, such agendas invite us to critically look and harness foreign models, respecting who we are and making English language education an arena to make choices in favor of social equity and democracy. In bringing up the voice of some critically oriented scholar agendas, this manuscript cast doubt on various givens in the Colombian ELT curriculum and added another perspective to the tapestry woven in this book.

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5 Appropriating ELT in Colombia: A Critical Call to Localize Language Teaching Jhon Jairo Losada-Rivas

Introduction The process of teaching and learning English in Colombia has been historically promoted based on language varieties coming from “the inner circle” (González, 2010; Guerrero-Nieto, 2008; Usma, 2009), which has certainly avoided the development of local methodologies based on the needs of our particular contexts (Mora et al., 2019; Ordóñez, 2011). In light of this, in the following chapter I pick up the thread left in previous pages and enrich the design of this contesting tapestry by analyzing the characteristics of ELT in Colombia, weaving strands of local fabric advocating for a paradigm shift in our ELT processes that start to (a) problematize the approach toward ELT; (b) raise pedagogical awareness of the importance of bilingual Colombian teachers; and (c) reduce the gap between private and public education. Initially, I cross a thread to provide

J. J. Losada-Rivas (*) Universidad Surcolombiana, Neiva, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_5

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an overview on multiple scholars’ perspectives on ELT and untie knots to make a distinction between English as an International Language (EIL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and World Englishes (WE). Subsequently, I unroll one of the corners of this resistant canvas and describe a set of challenges concerning language teaching in Colombia as well as a series of possibilities that can be knitted together for the paradigm shift, where the pedagogical role of Colombian bilingual teachers is truly recognized and valued. In the end, I secure this piece to the rest of the tapestry by suggesting the development of a more critical perspective concerning the historical dependency on Inner circle teaching models, with a view to fostering local models that allow us to advance on the creation and adoption of methodologies and teaching practices as well as teacher education programs which respond effectively to the real needs of our context. Colombia is a country where multiple languages converge in different parts of the territory. On the one hand, in this multicultural and multilingual nation (República de Colombia, Consitución Política de Colombia, 1991), there is an estimate of sixty-five languages (Landaburu, 2004; Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia, 2015) pertaining to a similar number of indigenous communities that have historically owned these lands since colonial times (Guerrero-Nieto, 2009). Nevertheless, such languages have unfortunately not been properly acknowledged as they deserve, thus leaving these communities aside, promoting inequality and abandonment. On the other hand, due to globalization and the current dynamics of capitalism, Colombian governments have been promoting English as a way to access the global market and take part in trade agreements with other countries. This has given way to discourses that provide a questionable value to education and the policies around it, where goals are set toward enhancing competitivity among Colombians and their institutions to increase the so-called development and investments we have been told the country needs to grow (i.e., anglonormativity). The former has had a direct impact at an economic, social, and educational level. Throughout this book chapter, I intend to describe the characteristics of English language teaching (ELT hereafter) in Colombia from a critical perspective with a view to enriching the debate on the challenges and

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opportunities we have in the country to advance on a paradigm shift I believe necessary in our field, one that reorients our view of ELT, values our local knowledge(s), and lowers the breach between public and private education. This may certainly help us all (writers and readers of this book) reflect upon the present and find alternatives to the current language policies. Hopefully, these reflections may be materialized in the near future through new actions geared toward designing fairer policies and more equitable education opportunities for everyone.

 LT in Colombia: From Policy Implementation E to the Resisting Voices of Language Educators In order to understand the ELT dynamics in the country, it is worth putting the matter in perspective from the voices of scholars and researchers who have also pondered upon these issues in the past and have contributed significantly to unmasking the realities behind language teaching and policy implementation in Colombia. To begin with, let us start this conversation by acknowledging the increasing historical interest of governments to promote English as a necessity for communication; a language sold (for many) as a synonym of development and opportunities in this part of the globe (Cruz-Arcila et al., 2022). This is indeed evidenced in the efforts made to bring a narrow notion of bilingual education (i.e., Spanish—English bilingualism) as one of the cornerstones of education systems in the continent. According to King (2005), there are two prevailing models of bilingual education in South America: (a) enrichment and (b) transitional models. Enrichment models are often implemented in private schools in which families come from high socio-economic strata and whose choice is to learn a foreign language (i.e., English) to study abroad, grow their businesses, and have access to better job opportunities in other countries. Conversely, there are also transitional models of bilingual education. Conceptually, it resembles a transition from one’s first language (L1 henceforward) to the second target language (L2/ English, in this case), and students are initially schooled through their L1 and are gradually led to using the L2 only. Across South America, this

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model is usually aimed at students whose first language is an indigenous language. Students immersed in such implementations “tend to come from societal groups that have long been economically and socially marginalized within the national context” (King, 2005, p.  2). Clearly, the former model mostly benefits the elites while the latter mainly affects the oppressed, the often forgotten, and the abandoned communities. In Colombia, the situation is somewhat similar and has historical roots that can be traced back to the independence period. However, I will refer here to our most recent era. In De Mejía’s (2005) view, the prevailing notion of bilingualism and bilingual education has a twofold reality: (a) a visible and (b) invisible form of bilingualism. The first can be evidenced with majority language groups (mostly Spanish L1 speakers) who associate bilingual education with “foreign language teaching … connected with input from foreign-based organizations” (De Mejía, 2005, p.  48) that promote languages such as English, French, or German. On the other hand, invisible forms of bilingualism are associated with minority language groups (i.e., students coming from indigenous communities, peasant, and misplaced family groups) whose native language (often different from Spanish) is minimized and connected with poverty (De Mejía, 2005). Such a notion began to be strengthened with the support of other agendas (e.g., marketization and standardization of education). Around mid-twentieth century, language teaching in the Colombian context began to surge strongly from governmental efforts to open the country to new economic and political horizons (De Mejía, 2005). This opening brought about changes in education that would materialize in official documents later around the 1990s. The Constitution of 1991 (República de Colombia, 1991) and the General Law of Education (Congreso de la República, 1994) paved the way to structure education as we now know it (Pineda, 1997). Despite recognizing (in paper) the need to protect the ethnic and cultural diversity in the country, the narrow notion of Spanish-English bilingualism became stronger, situating English at a privileged position over the rest of languages converging in the country. This became more evident when an initiative known as the Colombian Framework for English (COFE hereafter) project took place, connecting scholars, institutions, and the government to define a policy for language teaching in the country (Mora et  al., 2019). This project

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constituted an alliance between the Colombian government and the United Kingdom, which involved the participation of the Colombian Ministry of Education [MEN] with twenty-six universities and the British Council to enhance better informed practices in teacher education programs. A few years later, the government would promote other integrated initiatives that placed English as “the de-facto foreign language of instruction” in the country (Mora et al., 2019, p. 61). Chronologically speaking, a set of documents were published to clarify such intentions. The first among these was the Curricular Guidelines for Foreign Languages (MEN, 1999). It provided a general contextualization of the Colombian sociocultural context from a local and a global perspective, remarking the necessity for Colombian citizens to learn the main international language used in communication and technology around the world: English. The document also introduced curricular approaches to language teaching, a set of strategies for professional development, and an account of the role played by new technologies in curricular design. Later on, the government would launch the National Bilingual Program (MEN, 2004), a strategy aimed at developing a more competitive country through bilingual education. Such a proposal suggested teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL hereafter) at preschool, basic, media, higher education, and other public education programs for work and human development.1 Additionally, it proposed teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at bilingual schools, and ethnoeducation programs for minority communities in the country. Overall, the program intended to promote English as a language that represented competence and competitiveness available for all Colombian citizens through the development of communicative skills in this language. Two years later, the “Estándares Básicos de Competencias en Lenguas Extranjeras: Inglés. Formar en Lenguas Extranjeras: ¡el reto! Lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer” (Basic standards for competences in foreign languages: English. Teaching in foreign language: the challenge!, MEN, 2006a) would be presented as a complementary document of the  These programs aim at complementing a person’s academic or working skills through integral and flexible curricula based on the needs and expectations of the market and the society at large. 1

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aforementioned policy. The rationale behind the standards highlighted the necessity of unifying the educational system around the purpose of developing bilingual citizens who were capable of communicating in English with international standards. It provided the academic community with the knowledge-base and competences that students should attain at the end of each academic level, which seemed rather contradictory given the lack of authenticity found in the standards and their distance with the realities of the Colombian educational context. A few years later, documents such as “Visión 2019” (Vision 2019, MEN, 2006b) and the “Orientaciones para la implementación de proyectos de fortalecimiento de inglés en las entidades territoriales” (Orientations for the implementation of projects that strengthen English in territorial areas, MEN, 2013) would underscore the aforementioned necessities, with the common purpose of strengthening the economy and inserting the country into the globalized world. Afterwards, the Basic Learning Rights for preschool, primary (MEN, 2016b) as well as secondary levels (MEN, 2016a) were introduced along with a Suggested English Curriculum for secondary education (MEN, 2016c), setting the parameters for the teaching of English in the nation. Nonetheless, the policies and the realities concerning both language teaching and learning in Colombia are greatly disjointed (Correa et al., 2014; Fandiño-Parra et  al., 2012; Guerrero-Nieto, 2009; Roldán & Peláez Henao, 2017). Multiple local scholars have highlighted these issues in an attempt to make the ELT community aware of the disparities that exist between the ‘theory’ and the ‘practice’. In this regard, Usma (2009) analyzes language policy implementation in Colombia, underscoring the difficulties evidenced throughout the process. By studying initiatives such as The English Syllabus, The COFE project, the General Law of Education, and The Curricular Guidelines for foreign languages, he suggests that despite their original intentions to boost English language teaching and learning in the country, several difficulties such as teacher’s lack of oral proficiency and methodology acquaintance, low time allotment for English classes, inadequate and unequal working conditions for teachers, and lack of materials evidenced the disparity between the educational reality in the country and the policy propositions mandated by the government.

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Similarly, other authors have problematized the focus given in the policies. Guerrero-Nieto (2010) points out that the Colombian Ministry of Education has established as one of its primary goals having students achieve certain proficiency levels in English based on the guidelines set in the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFRL from now on) (Council of Europe, 2001). Nonetheless, she analyzes the numerous needs that remain ignored (i.e., lack of resources, difficult geographical access, conditions of violence), which ultimately widen the gap “between the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor” (p. 175). In the same line of thought, Usma (2009) agrees that adopting the CEFRL as the preferred norm to control language programs at Colombian schools and universities is rather controversial and ends up being “the international answer to local problems in schools” (p. 130). In the same vein, Fandiño-Parra (2021) questions language policies in the country, as they infuse colonializing discourses that “segregate and minimize subjectivities, knowledges and autonomies” (p. 178). The aforementioned aspects have contributed to broadening the gap between public and private education, where students from public schools struggle to access language learning resources, qualified teachers and learning opportunities, while most private schools count on enough resources, prepared teachers in the field, and spaces to promote bilingualism inside and outside the classroom. The gap can also be analyzed between urban and rural schools (Bonilla & Cruz-Arcila, 2014). Differences in resources and human capital devoted to this language teaching labor have had very different results in both scenarios. The way bilingualism is promoted in both places is far from being equal and far from reaching the same results. In this vein, Ramos-Holguín and Aguirre-­ Morales (2016) describe “isolation, cultural adaptation, misconceptions that rural families have about education, motivation, infrastructure, and violence” (p.  213) as other challenges that teachers encounter when deciding to work at rural schools. Additionally, other local scholars have studied and made visible the realities that communities live in the rural areas and that the government continues to ignore through the current policies (Bonilla & Cruz-Arcila, 2013; González, 2010; Guerrero-Nieto, 2008). Consequently, the proposed policies have widened this gap, thus allowing the spread of inequality and disparity in education.

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 nglish as an International Language (EIL), E English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and World Englishes: An Opportunity As previously mentioned, the English language has been labeled as the main language of communication among cultures in the world. Different aspects such as the growing global economy, politics, colonization, technology and development in general, have contributed to characterizing English as the world language “par excellence” (McKay, 2002). The spread of English worldwide has generated a constant debate on the ownership of the language. A good number of countries from the Outer and the Expanding circle have come to outnumber the quantity of native speakers who still claim certain ownership on the language. To understand this, it is worth considering the following categorization of the role of English among different cultural settings. In Kachru’s (1992) view, this categorization is established in three circles: (a) the Inner circle; (b) the Outer circle and; (c) the Expanding circle. The first one refers to those countries where English is the first language (e.g., the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia), while the Outer circle refers to those countries where English has been established as a second language and where non-L1 varieties of English can be found (e.g., India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore). Thus, the Expanding circle is the one where English is conceived as a foreign language (e.g., Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Colombia). The truth is, however, that more and more people from the Outer and the Expanding circles are using English to communicate among themselves and thus, they have allowed English to get the status of an international language which serves the purpose of enhancing “wider communication” (McKay, 2002). Nowadays, the tendency of learning English has changed from learning the language to communicate with native speakers to using the language among cultures and communities whose first language is not English. As Crystal (2003) points out, “if there is one predictable consequence of a language becoming a global language, it is that nobody owns it anymore. Or rather, everyone who has learned it now owns it” (p. 2). In this same line of thought, Smith (1976)

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defines an international language as “one which is used by people from different nations to communicate with one another” (p. 38). In Colombia, English has the status of a foreign language. This has led to a greater influence of Inner circle varieties, generating important implications in ELT methodologies, policy design, and implementation. The process of learning English has been generally assumed as a matter of learning the language based on these norm-dependent agendas which have somehow avoided the adoption of a more ecologic perspective toward language teaching and the development of local practices based on the needs of our particular contexts. It seems to me that students do not recognize yet other varieties of the language but the American and British ones, since language instruction in general is still focusing on encouraging students to achieve a native-like proficiency of the language (Kubota, 2012), and the addressing of contents that promote decontextualized realities. Indeed, one perceives that there has always existed a direct influence from the Inner circle in such a way that these varieties control the ELT field through norms, standards, and contents adopted within the country. All of this leads us to think about alternatives that represent an inclusive and broader understanding of this: teaching English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Concerning the relationship of ELF and EIL, Seidlhofer (2005) suggests that ELF takes part in the so-called phenomenon EIL or World Englishes (WE hereafter). This author further elaborates this idea by providing a clarification among these two concepts stating that “the traditional meaning of EIL thus comprises uses of English within and across Kachru’s ‘circles’, for intranational as well as international communication” (p. 339). Nevertheless, she defines ELF as an adequate term for situations where English is used for communication between people whose first language is different from English. Likewise, Jenkins (2009) advocates that ELF denotes a context where English is used for communication among speakers of different first languages. This process of communication and interaction among people from diverse linguacultural backgrounds invites us all to acknowledge variations in the way that non-­ native speakers use the language, where the main aim is centered on achieving effective communication rather than using perfect linguistic forms in English. It is in this manner that a more inclusive notion of ELF

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shall be conceived, where speakers from diverse linguistic backgrounds are taken into account and are not left aside from the role of English in their communicative processes. In spite of this, some scholars have regarded the concept of ELF as ‘faulty’ or ‘imperfect’. Jenkins’ (2009) analyzes those positions as follows: According to this second perspective, ELF lacks any standards and by default exhibits errors wherever it departs from certain Inner Circle Englishes (usually British and American). According to this position, ELF and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) are one and the same. No distinction is made between English learnt for intercultural communication (ELF) – where native English speakers may be, but often are not, present in the interaction – and English learnt specifically for communication with English native speakers (EFL). (p. 202)

What is continuously observed across the Colombian context is that the British and the American dominant variations of the language influence how the teaching and learning English process is perceived among Colombians. The use of materials designed by American and British publishing houses, the adoption of foreign models for the teaching of English are among the aspects that have favored and perpetuated the dominant hegemony of such Inner circle varieties. Following Macías’ (2010) assertion, “most people may be unaware that English does not belong exclusively to the United States or Great Britain any longer; that it has taken a new broader dimension” (p.  183). Therefore, changing the view from EFL to ELF in Colombia would greatly reduce the hegemonic role imposed by Inner circle countries toward the achievement of the so-called standard English. Regarding the concept of ‘standard English’, Strevens defines it as “a particular dialect of English, being the only non-localized dialect, of global currency without significant variation, universally accepted as the appropriate educational target in teaching English” (as cited in McKay, 2003). In this regard, Graddol affirms (1997) that the overuse of the term ‘native speakers’ has imparted the notion of ‘standard English’ as the ideal focus in L2 learners and as a result, “native speaking countries [are generally placed] at the center of the global use of English” (p.  10). In this

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regard, Kachru and Smith (2009) advocate a change concerning the concept of ‘standard English’ as nowadays, there are different variations of the language around the world. From their view, “a socially realistic approach to language has to recognize that variation exists within a national variety … and the same is true of Englishes in the Outer and Expanding Circles” (p. 6). Once again, a change in the perception of ‘standard English’ and the type of competences we are aiming at developing in our students is necessary to start recognizing the importance of other English varieties and enhancement of critical and intercultural perspectives around the language. What is more, moving to a broader and ecologic view of language teaching may enhance local initiatives that re-signify the idea of learning a language such as English in a context like Colombia, where the local strengthens our understanding of the global and reforms the policies from within. In light of this, a paradigm shift becomes meaningful in our country.

Toward a Paradigm Shift in ELT In Colombia, we have generally evidenced an inclination and acceptance toward reaching a native-like proficiency of the English language. As a country from the Expanding circle, Colombians have been labeled as L2 learners or EFL learners, and pedagogical confidence in native teachers and their methodologies is still remarkable. Direct influence from the most common Inner circle varieties (American and British English) has definitely shaped the way English has been taught in this South American country. This has enabled a common trend of using materials for language instruction which include information and cultural aspects from these countries. Different types of materials such as textbooks, posters, videos, and audio files reinforce a culture to which Colombians do not belong to (Carvajal, 2012; Fandiño-Parra, 2021; Patarroyo, 2016). Instead of including worldwide issues aimed at developing a cross-­cultural awareness which links local issues with the international concerns that are currently faced, these materials enhance the hegemonic domination of varieties from the so-called Inner circle. Nonetheless, the issue is not only

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evident in the use of materials, but also in the adoption of methodologies and standards for language teaching. Under these circumstances, a paradigm shift in ELT becomes paramount to enhance a more realistic analysis of our current teaching practices, the role played by dominant English varieties and the real needs and purposes of our students to learn and use English in our context. Initially, part of the paradigm shift would first imply overcoming the concept of ‘the native speaker model’ in ELT. In other words, it would entail stopping the idea of educating students to be like native speakers. To do this, it is essential to take a look at Cook’s (1999) description of the terms native speaker and the L2 user/L2 learner distinction. The first concept refers to those people who speak a particular language since childhood. The author goes on to identify L2 users as people who are capable of using a L2 and connects L2 learners to those who are still learning a second language. This distinction appears to be of great importance since bilingual learners are usually viewed as ‘deficient native speakers’, when in reality we should all conceive them as ‘multicompetent language users’. In Cook’s (1999) words, “multicompetence covers the total language knowledge of a person who knows more than one language, including both L1 competence and the L2 interlanguage” (p. 190). In light of this, a pertinent emphasis on focusing students on becoming L2 users of the language rather than achieving a native-like competence seems to be adequate to identify the valuable qualities of learning a language different from their mother tongue. For this to happen, it is not only crucial to be aware of the importance of learning other languages, but also to give our own language(s) the place it/they deserve. As stated by Samacá Bohórquez (2020), “in a pluralistic world, we should have the right to speak the way we do; that for sure, represents where we are proudly coming from” (p. 133). Apart from this, another aspect that must be taken into account when considering a paradigm shift in ELT is the importance given to bilingual teachers and the position of native-speaker teachers in Colombia. In reference to this, Macías (2010) suggests that “most English language learners and even teachers across all levels of education still consider the native English speaker as the perfect model or norm to emulate” (p. 186). By the same token, Widdowson (1994) states the following:

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So if you give authenticity primacy as a pedagogic principle, you inevitably grant privileged status to native-speaker teachers, and you defer to them not only in respect to competence in the language but also in respect to competence in language teaching. They become the custodians and arbiters not only of proper English but of proper pedagogy as well. (p. 387)

Afterwards, this author suggests that a shift in this commonly given emphasis would lead to a ‘special advantage’ to non-native speaker teachers. In the same way, McKay (2003) highlights the significance of recognizing the qualities of bilingual teachers. She especially remarks the connection bilingual teachers have with the local culture; culture in which they are deeply involved. Some additional reasons why non-native speaker teachers appear to be important in the learning process when being appropriately recognized is that they are indeed able to identify the particular needs of a specific context, the type of cultural contents that might be included within the school curriculum, the kind of methodologies that serve the special purposes of a given number of students, the anticipation of learning difficulties along the learning process and most importantly, the image of a successful English learner that they project as bilingual teachers (McKay, 2003; Medgyes, 1992). One additional factor I consider vital to develop is critical interculturality among teachers and teachers-to-be. This term was coined by Catherine Walsh (2010), and she regards it as a concept under construction. It is a strategy, a process that involves constant action to change relationships, structures, and power conditions that prolong inequality and discrimination (Walsh, 2010, p. 78). For this to happen, I believe it is paramount to reform teacher education programs from their foundations to empower future educators to be able to question the sociocultural realities in the country and find liable solutions that benefit the implicated communities. In this line of thought, Granados-Beltrán (2016) underlines the value of recognizing ourselves as professionals “who are able to construct rather than consume knowledge” (p. 184) and who embrace the epistemic break needed (Kumaravadivelu, 2012). Developing materials, bringing activities based on contemporary topics of the students’ cultural background, and having contact with people from other local places are some of the ways which teachers can use when conducting this task.

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It is worth mentioning though that a paradigm shift implies great changes in the use of materials, the design of school curricula and the adoption of new perspectives toward the role of English in the Colombian context. This chapter is (hopefully) one step forward to make teachers and researchers aware of these necessities so that they start making changes within the classroom and contributing to embracing a change in ELT policies. In consequence, I will proceed to review some of the challenges and possibilities of the Colombian context based on the aforementioned considerations and the current reality of our educational system in the country.

 hallenges and Opportunities: Developing C a More Critical Perspective in ELT Acknowledging the growing importance of English within the Colombian context, it is now pertinent to discuss a set of challenges and possibilities that arise from the analysis of the previously mentioned aspects. I have identified four different challenges and possibilities that I deem essential to be taken into consideration so as to encourage a paradigm shift in ELT. The challenges will be mentioned first and the possibilities will be further explained when elaborating on the challenges. They are stated as follows: (a) Problematizing the traditional approaches to ELT in Colombia; (b) using English as a way to recognize local knowledge(s) and core cultural values; (c) raising pedagogical awareness of the importance of bilingual Colombian teachers; (d) reducing the gap between private and public education. Firstly, to problematize ELT approaches in Colombia requires a purposeful reduction of the influence of native speaker models and varieties to teach English. This is related to the already explained change-in-­ perspective from conceiving English as a language to communicate with native speakers (EFL) to the acceptance of multiple varieties of English (ELF) which allows communication among speakers from diverse cultural backgrounds to happen. As supported by Moeller and Nugent (2014), “rather than pushing students toward using a foreign language like a native speaker, language teachers should guide students toward

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using language that structures new discoveries about the ‘other’ and about themselves” (p.  8). Furthermore, problematizing ELT in Colombia implies questioning the top-down policies adopted, working collectively on changing the curricula and therefore, our teaching practices. As supported by Fandiño-Parra (2021), it is essential to commit to decolonizing policies, curricula, and research practices “to open new opportunities with knowledge and to find alternative ways of being and acting in the world” (p. 179). Secondly, the challenge of using English as a way to recognize local knowledge(s) brings up the possibility of promoting local core cultural values proposed by Colombian scholars and implemented in the language classrooms. So far, this possibility has been rejected, though. González (2007) claims that not only is the adoption of the CEFRL inconvenient in Colombia given the unmet necessities of its implementation in our context, but also problematic due to other derived aspects such as the pertinence of resources, teachers’ and students’ needs and curriculum design. She suggests that giving value to foreign language frameworks and standards hinders the possibility of enhancing local knowledge in the country, thereby “[holding] back the development of a local community with enough validity to construct language policy” (p. 313). Being able to use and promote English to talk about contemporary issues of our own context would allow the chance to tackle the students’ needs and interests toward learning another language. What is more, it would allow us to preserve our identity and increase awareness of cultural aspects typical of our region. Thirdly, boosting pedagogical awareness of the importance of bilingual Colombian teachers raises the possibility of developing and implementing context-based pedagogies based on the particular needs of a given environment. It has been argued that in the Expanding circle countries, it is a common phenomenon to adopt methodologies that have indeed shown positive results among the Inner circle countries. However, as Kramsch and Sullivan (1996) state, an appropriate pedagogy should attempt “to revise native-speaker language use and make it fulfill both global and local needs” (p. 211). Adopting appropriate pedagogies and methodologies would enable teachers to meet the needs of a specific context, the students’ particular interests and purposes using a given set of

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resources which often vary among places. In turn, this implies important changes stemming from the structure of teacher education programs that empower pre-service and in-service teachers “to become producers rather than consumers of knowledge” (Granados-Beltrán, 2016, p. 173). Fourthly, the challenge of reducing the gap between private and public education comes into play. While it is true that the standards provided by the Ministry of Education apply for both Public and Private Institutions, something which cannot be hidden is the big gap found among the level handled in both situations. While most teachers from the private sector are indeed prepared to teach English as a formal subject at school, there are teachers in the public sector who have not been prepared to conduct this task (i.e., they do not have a degree in ELT) and therefore, take responsibility for its results. To cite an example, González and Montoya (2010, as cited in Correa & González, 2016) conducted a study in the state of Antioquia inquiring about language teachers in this area. They reported that around 85% of their participants did not have a degree in language teaching. As supported by Clavijo (2016), “national educational policies have mistakenly given elementary school teachers not necessarily certified as English teachers the responsibility of teaching English to elementary school children” (p.  7), which negatively impacts students’ learning process and teachers’ view of their profession. Similarly, Correa and González (2016) describe some of the challenges that primary school teachers face in Colombia, ranging from a clear lack of licensed English language teachers in primary schools, poor quality design of professional development programs, and teachers’ poor working conditions related to resources, large class groups, and few hours devoted to language instruction. Therefore, the possibility that arises from problems such as the lack of resources, overcrowded classrooms, and lack of preparation for teachers is the consolidation of professional development programs aimed at preparing teachers from both the public and the private sector aiming at improving the quality of their teaching practices. For this to happen, the government shall open spaces for teachers, teacher educators, students, researchers, and policy makers to have an open dialogue in an attempt to create a collective vision of the goals to be set for the upcoming years, thus establishing an alternative yet wide-­ ranging emphasis on teacher preparation.

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Conclusion As we have seen in these initial pieces, there are contrasting views around the position given to English in education, which is why it is a must to question the emphasis given to ELT in Colombia. As language educators, becoming aware of our linguistic diversity needs to help us bring alternative practices to the classroom that create new spaces for students to recognize English as a language that enables them to express, preserve, and promote their cultural values within and outside the country. Likewise, such new spaces shall pave the way to acknowledge English as an additional tool for communication, and not as the language ‘in charge’, that provides privileges to the wealthy ones that can afford it. In order for this to happen, it is imperative to join the pieces together and do some detailed needlework illustrating a paradigm shift that meets our contemporary needs. I support the idea of enhancing situated practices that recognize the value behind local knowledges and heighten a pluralistic view of language teaching and learning that meets the demands of our own context. This may undoubtedly have a disrupting influence on the discourses that teachers, policy makers, and institutional stakeholders alike have concerning ELT, their pedagogical practices, and the learning outcomes resulting from these new processes. Collectively, these opportunities will get us closer to appropriating ELT practices and policy reform that resist the traditional agendas.

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Macías, D. F. (2010). Considering new perspectives in ELT in Colombia: From EFL to ELF. How Journal, 17(1), 181–194. McKay, S. L. (2002). Teaching English as an international language: Rethinking goals and perspectives. Oxford University Press. McKay, S. L. (2003). Teaching English as an international language: The Chilean context. ELT Journal, 57(2), 139–148. Medgyes, P. (1992). Native or non-native: Who’s worth more? ELT Journal, 46(4), 340–349. Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (1999). Lineamientos curriculares: Lenguas Extranjeras (Curricular guidelines: Foreign languages. https://www. mineducacion.gov.co/1759/articles-339975_recurso_7.pdf Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2004). Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo: Colombia 2004–2019. http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/ articles-132560_recurso_pdf_programa_nacional_bilinguismo.pdf Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2006a). Estándares Básicos de Competencias en Lenguas Extranjeras: Inglés. Formar en Lenguas Extranjeras: ¡el reto! Lo que necesitamos saber y saber hacer. Revolución Educativa. Colombia aprende. Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2006b). Visión 2019 - Educación: Propuesta para discusión. http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/cvn/1665/articles-110603_archivo_pdf.pdf Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2013). Orientaciones para la implementación de proyectos de fortalecimiento de inglés en las entidades territoriales. http://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/lenguasextranjeras / www.mineducacion.gov.co Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2016a). Derechos básicos de aprendizaje inglés: Grados 6° a 11° (Basic English learning rights: Grades 6 to 11). https://santillanaplus.com.co/pdf/DBA-ingles-espanol.pdf Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2016b). Derechos básicos de aprendizaje de inglés: grados transición a 5° de primaria (Basic English learning rights: Preschool to 5th grade). https://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/sites/default/ files/files_public/2022-06/DBA-TRANSICI%C3%93N-Y-PRIMARIA_ Ingl%C3%A9s-min.pdf Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN]. (2016c). Esquema curricular sugerido Inglés: Grados 6° a 11°. https://eco.colombiaaprende.edu.co/2021/09/07/ esquema-circular-sugerido/ Moeller, A. J., & Nugent, K. (2014). Building intercultural competence in the language classroom. In S. Dhonau (Ed.), Unlock the gateway to communica-

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tion (pp. 1–18). Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at University of Nebraska  - Lincoln. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/teachlearnfacpub/161/ Mora, R. A., Chiquito, T., & Zapata, J. D. (2019). Bilingual education policies in Colombia: Seeking relevant and sustainable frameworks for meaningful minority inclusion. In B. G. Johannessen (Ed.), Bilingualism and bilingual education: Politics, policies and practices in a globalized society (pp. 55–80). Springer. Ordóñez, C. L. (2011). Education for bilingualism: Connecting Spanish and English from the curriculum, into the classroom, and beyond. PROFILE, 13(2), 147–161. Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia. (2015). 65 lenguas nativas de las 69 en Colombia son indígenas. Retrieved from https://www.onic.org.co/ noticias/636-65-lenguas-nativas-de-las-69-en-colombia-son-indigenas Patarroyo, M. (2016). Textbooks decontextualization within bilingual education in Colombia. Enlatawa Journal, 9(1), 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1905 3/2011835X.7541 Pineda, R. (1997). La Constitución de 1991 y la perspectiva del multiculturalismo en Colombia. Alteridades, 7(14), 107–129. Retrieved from https:// www.redalyc.org/pdf/747/74745549008.pdf Ramos-Holguín, B., & Aguirre-Morales, J. (2016). English language teaching in rural areas: A new challenge for English language teachers in Colombia. Cuadernos de lingüística hispánica, 27, 209–222. https://doi.org/10.1905 3/0121053X.4217 República de Colombia. (1991). Constitución Política de Colombia (Colombian Political Constitution). Retrieved from http://www.secretariasenado.gov.co/ senado/basedoc/constitucion_politica_1991.html Roldán, A. M., & Peláez Henao, O. (2017). English language policy relevance in a Colombian rural area: A case study in Antioquia. Íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 22(1), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v22n01a08 Samacá Bohórquez, Y. (2020). A self-dialogue with the thoughts of Paulo Freire: A critical pedagogy encounter. HOW Journal, 27(1), 125–139. https://doi. org/10.19183/how.27.1.520 Seidlhofer, B. (2005). English as a lingua franca. ELT Journal, 59(4), 339–341. Smith, L. (1976). English as an international auxiliary language. RELC Journal, 7(2), 38–42.

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Usma, J. (2009). Education and language policy in Colombia: Exploring processes of inclusion, exclusion, and stratification in times of global reform. PROFILE, 11, 123–141. Walsh, C. (2010). Interculturalidad crítica y educación intercultural. In J. Viaña, L.  Tapia, & C.  Walsh (Eds.), Construyendo interculturalidad crítica (pp.  75–96). Instituto Internacional de Integración del Convenio Andrés Bello III-CAB. Widdowson, H.  G. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), 377–389.

6 Tracking Colombian Andes Speech: A Decolonial Take on Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language Éder García-Dussán

Introduction Teaching a language, either as a mother tongue or as a foreign language, implies the knowledge and perspectives teachers might have in relation to their theories of learning a foreign language; for example, from a psycholinguistic point of view, it would have to do with their beliefs on how new elements are processed, represented, and organized in the brain. These aspects have given way to different language teaching approaches, which are associated with methods (Rodgers & Richards, 2003). Now, we can mention at least four mainstream guidelines that focus on different objectives like the development of comprehension and/or production skills in the foreign language, the emphasis on how a foreign language is learned, the development of applied communication skills or the attitudes of the

É. García-Dussán (*) Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_6

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speakers of that foreign language, as well as their historical way of being and acting. That is why in language pedagogies it is important to know that the objective of learning a language is to assimilate a communication tool between social and cultural subjects, where grammatical training should not be the priority anymore. This point of view, which highlights the cultural dimension of learning, gives relevance to everything that happens among the speakers, which implies a reflection not only on the culture of the student who is learning but also on the culture that they will find in the other language. Therefore, language teaching should aim at promoting cultural awareness of oneself and of the other. Having said that, this chapter attempts, on the one hand to examine some theoretical and methodological foundations involved in teaching Spanish as a foreign language (ELE, for its abbreviation in Spanish) within the principles offered by the pedagogical model references of the intercultural speaker, in which you must integrate both languages instead of opposing them (Sánchez, 2008); and, on the other hand, to build a reflection that ties the sociolinguistic study of Spanish with the knowledge of its cultural identity, reflected in different linguistic forms that take into account a past that becomes current in many communicative scenarios. As an example of this, there now is the case of the Andean dialectal version of Colombian Spanish, showing that in linguistic practices used in Spanish language, its users do not always have an intercultural consciousness of the origins and effects of the behaviors staged; and, also, that thinking about language teaching pushes us to reaffirm that it involves a reflection on how elements of the ‘coloniality of being’ suffered in Colombia from the sixteenth century up to now. In addition, this effort becomes valuable because of the growing interest in speaking Spanish, taking into account that because of the number of its speakers worldwide (493 million), it is the second mother tongue in the world, the third most important language on the Internet, after English and Mandarin, and it is spoken in more than 20 countries. This has caused the teaching of ELE to become a cultural and academic industry which has turned Colombia into “un referente en América Latina no solo en la enseñanza de ELE, sino también en la formación de docentes,

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así como en la creación de materiales didácticos” (Nieto, 2019, p. 3)1; in the case of Bogota (the capital city of the country), for example, there are nine universities that have worked together in this pedagogical field since 2005. All this will also allow to account for some forms and formulas used in cultural and/or communicative interactions among Spanish speakers who hide a ‘coloniality of being’ in conditions that reflect little or no equal condition. It means, the domain of the powerful other impacting on a language (Maldonado, 2007), and turning the dialects of Spanish language into a vessel where the traumas of remote and current history are recorded. This history of cultural clashes in which the different linguistic signs and stereotypes used by the conqueror over the colonized dragged and communicated the future of that ‘encounter’ between cultures that occurred 530  years ago. An event that the Argentinian philosopher Enrique Dussel calls ‘covering up the other’, instead of ‘discovery of America’ (Dussel & Merçon, 2010). Therefore, the reflection here unfolded, is put in as a constituent of this book which, like a huge tapestry, serves as an epistemological floor in the pedagogy of languages, and promotes new ways of understanding the didactics of Spanish as a foreign language from decolonial keys. In this case, it is the fragment of the tapestry whose function is not to be an ornament that covers the irregularities of the floor; that is, of the cultural foundation, but to remove the impurities that, usually, hide underneath to disengage us, as a culture, of what causes us discomfort.

 he Intercultural Speaker T and Language Learning Current cultural conditions confirm that the monocultural monolingual speaker is a species that is slowly disappearing, or a nationalist myth (Cfr. Kramsch, 2001, p. 45). That is why the goal of all language teaching is to train an intercultural speaker. For this reason, a pedagogical environment  “A benchmark in Latin America not only in the teaching of ELE, but also in the training of teachers, as well as in the creation of didactic materials” [hereinafter, translations by the author]. 1

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should include aspects related to social organization and interactions in that target language; interactions such as the contextual analysis of greetings, celebrations, ways to congratulate or insult, what to say to thank, to invite, to start a dialogue, ways to make humor, etc., but not only that, also elements of non-verbal communication such as gestures, management of body distance, and social conventions of how to behave and physically relate in a group (Cestero, 1999). And finally, attention to cultural markers, where the typical expressions of interaction are found, in addition to proverbs, idioms, and phraseology (Penadés, 1999). Seen in this way, the general objective of language teaching supposes the integration of a cultural ‘to know how to be’ and an intercultural ‘to know how to do’ that allows, at least these possibilities: * The incorporation of linguistic-cultural learning to structural learning to simplify communication. This is based on interdisciplinary resources, including decolonial studies understood as approaches that talk about domination and exploitation of one group of people over others, with the consequent naturalization of human, group, and epistemic hierarchies (Quijano, 2000; Escobar, 2005). * The comparison of other cultures based on the comparison of the phenomena of the mother tongue and the target language, including those formulas in which the other is enunciated and minorized or located in a place of deficit, following Manichaean logics such as white-black, civilized-­ barbarian, Christian-atheist, etc.

About Language Teaching Approaches We all know that the Second World War forced us to maintain relations with the allies and to develop espionage activities. This circumstance made some linguists to start reflecting about language teaching, especially German and Japanese. This was the situation that led to the creation of foreign language didactics. Applied linguistics emerged, then, exclusively in relationship with the teaching of modern languages (Payrató, 1998).

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Over the years, applied linguistics became the basis for reflection on didactics for teaching and learning foreign/second languages taking into account the linguistic knowledge over the nature of the language as a system. It is based on cognitive functions related: on the one hand, with naturalist positions like Chomsky’s (1998), who admits that foreign languages are learned from the unconscious knowledge of the acquired language; and, on the other, with the socio-cultural hypothesis which says that languages are vehicles of a culture, as well as its past and future (Pastor, 2006). However, from these naturalistic theories, the Language Acquisition Device takes different ‘internal states’; it means that if there are 6000 living languages in the world, the speaker can affiliate 6000 internal states. This is because the organ of language, common and equal to all, provides the options of the principles responsible for that linguistic variation, taking into account that all languages are governed by the same laws; linguistic diversity is only an appearance (Chomsky, 1988). And, although, no theory is able to explain these processes in a universal and total way (Cf. Santos, 2004, p. 22), from some of these theories, new approaches have been created that have varied depending on scientific discoveries, but also on trends in each historical phase (Cfr. Payrató, 1998, pp. 87–88). Indeed, the aproaches proposed for teaching a foreign language has gone through many stages; thus, for example, the grammar translation method, which prevailed in the nineteenth century; the audio-oral method, which reached its maximum expansion in the 1960s but did not work because it was a memoristic and decontextualized learning; alternatives for teaching foreign languages can also be listed, such as the Total Physical Response, the natural approach, community learning, the silent method, suggestopedia, and the communicative approach, being an application of this the language teaching through tasks (Rodgers & Richards, 2003). However, living in this current social context and the new global interrelationships among subjects, it is not right to think in terms of a language because people acquire skills throughout their cultural contacts that allows them to adapt to different contexts. So, it is difficult to know about their comprehension and production aptitudes from fixed standards.

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As can be inferred from all this, an intercultural speaker is characterized by performing in different languages, using their abductions to be able to play linguistically in the communities where they interact, even in a territory where the same language as the speaker is spoken (Tuts, 2007). For example, there are phonetic, semantic, and pragmatic differences between the 15 Spanish dialects that are currently recognized in Colombia. Consequently, the most frequent fact is that a language teacher can have students of many nationalities in the same classroom, which supposes linguistic-cultural conflicts, because such hybridization characterized by cultural mixing and the fall of physical borders gives rise to multiculturalism which, in turn, brings with it interculturality, an irrepressible fact due to the panorama of migration, uprooting, and exile worldwide (Lee, 1997).

The Intercultural Approach This seems to suggest that in the field of teaching ELE, the linguistic-­ grammatical approach has decreased over the years, generating a concern in the two main characters of the communicative model (students and teachers): first, the heterogeneous cultural origin of Spanish learners and their cultural and cognitive qualities; and then, what the teacher should teach more in order to make the student understand what is driven behind when certain dialectal expressions of that target language are used. So, there is a clear interest in checking the interculturality from decolonial theory; and, if we want to take this theory, it would imply paying attention to what is transmitted between the lines when speaking in Spanish. This language was an imposition from the colonizers and did not arrive to contribute to the communication with native communities, but to perversely replace it with a new linguistic system, avoiding what promotes interculturality itself: impartial exchange and recognition of diversity (Walsh, 2007); as William Ospina says in this regard: “La lengua española nació lejos y no vino a dialogar con este mundo, sino a

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imponerse sobre ella como el sello se impone sobre el papel oficial, con un golpe, y dejando una mancha” (2003, p. 45).2 When teaching Spanish either as a mother tongue or a foreign language, it is difficult to disconnect the daily presentation of the language with what it reveals of the culture. For Halliday (1994), language is a socio-semiotic practice in which the cultural part is the most important issue of its composition, which, in this case, is the language of four centuries of Colony (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries), whose agents are outsiders, many of them kicked out, exiled, and persecuted for centuries in Europe (Castro-Gómez, 2005; Serrano, 2016). Kramsch (2001) argues that language teachers should create a ‘domain of interculturality’ in the classroom, where they can reflect about the culture they are knowing through the language learned, locating in the same range of importance language and cultural evolution. From a decolonial vantage point, it is possible to demonstrate, that in terms of communication practices, that elements such as the survival of inherited prejudices, value systems and stereotypes come to light, and that in turn, these can be read as symbolic alternatives that support discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and rejection. These practices, together, reduce all interculturality with social validity to an excluding sameness. In this approach the objective is to ‘go beyond’ and look for strengthening sociolinguistic competence associated with the ability to “adaptar a las personas a las características del contexto y la situación” (Lomas, 2017, p. 63).3 The ‘goes beyond’ implies linguistic abilities and cultural knowledge that are evident in the language to be recognized or learned which should be manifested in educational practices that see conflicts related to social, political, and power differences (Walsh, 2007) that make part of the formal and functional structures of that language; in this way, the classroom is a place for everyone where “múltiples voces, posturas y experiencias están juntas y donde a través de la educación se potencian y fortalecen diferentes formas de ser y habitar el mundo” (Lara, 2015, p. 227).4  “The Spanish language was born far away and did not come to dialogue with this world, but to impose itself on it as the seal is imposed on official paper, with a blow and leaving a stain”. 3  “Adapt people to the characteristics of the context and the situation”. 4  “Multiple voices, postures and experiences are together, where through education different ways of being and inhabiting the world are potentiated and strengthened”. 2

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Furthermore, this works to promote commitment with cultural awareness and experience; and, also the need for an analysis of the construction of a society in search of its identity and equality. This target would be achieved by motivating socio-cultural research, which has roots in inheritance, tensions, and social differences. Roots based on segregation that have allowed the manifestation of phenomena worked as a breed system (Esterman, 2009). From all this, we could see that the student in the Spanish as a foreign classroom (ELE) could be seen as a beginner in archaeology and ethnography, who could be skilled in linking cultural knowledge and awareness to the progress of their own communicative competence. Moreno (2004) summarizes what is involved in ‘getting into’ an intercultural language classroom by giving some advice. For example, putting into practice affective factors such as motivation, self-esteem, or respect for learning styles; acceptance of diversity; to be aware that each language is the vehicle of a culture that is neither better or worse, just different; not taking negative evaluations to those who do not master a language; keep out the belief that any language is inferior or superior; fight to transform cultural stereotypes, and create a flexible and plural environment. From these recommendations is possible to draw a pedagogical-­ didactic sketch on the didactics of languages that allows the model to be applied in real and concrete spaces, highlighting at least two elements, namely: 1. The teacher of ELE as a creator of a link between the student and the Ibero-American culture in which they are trying to be introduced, building a multilingual and diversified education, but at the same time unified (Comboni-Salinas, 1996). In this sense, interculturality is an attitude of openness that frees us from prejudices and drives us to a deep understanding of the historical certainties that explain stagnation, conduct, and collective profiles. 2. The teacher proposes interculturality as an integrality. Every educability of ELE must be done with conscious communicative acts or ‘communicative culture’ (Serrón, 2002), evidenced by the presence of linguistic, cultural, and historical knowledge.

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In that connection, Paricio (2010) talks about four abilities of intercultural awareness and, if students acquire them, they would be able to strength their sociolinguistic competence. (i) the capacity to create relationships between the culture of origin and the foreign one; (ii) cultural sensitivity and the ability to use strategies to establish interaction with people from other cultures; (iii) the ability to play the role of cultural intermediary between one’s own culture and another, and to resolve conflict situations and cultural misunderstandings; (iv) the ability to overcome both simplified opinions and beliefs about otherness, as well as prejudices or attitudes not justified by experience in relation to other cultures; and, finally, (v) to build citizen ethics which means the breaking of domination and control and the opening of diversity.

 f the Intercultural or the Decolonial: O Language, Cultural Identity, Miscegenation It is right to say that language is one of the basic elements of the cultural identity of a nation, taking into account that language is created by using daily speech (Atienza & van Dijk, 2010). Having said that, cultural identity is not an ahistorical reality, but the changing result of a continuous process of production and transformation of meanings created when people are part of ways of saying and giving meaning (Hall, 2003). From this, the speaker and social group confirm the thesis ‘Tell me what you speak and how you speak and I will tell you who you are, and how much you are worth’, since the linguistic use employed by the speakers is a reflection of the socio-cultural diversity, characteristic of human communities (Lomas, 2017). In this sense, teaching Spanish (as a mother tongue or as a foreign language) drives the student to know evidences of a crystallized identity in the communicative practices of those who are users of this language;

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but also, to reveal how part of that identity is manifested in communicative scenarios to make explicit the historically social inequalities ordered by the ‘coloniality of power’ (Grosfoguel, 2011). Communication is not only an exchange of information, but also a display of identity and social values that are together within cultural practices; language is not simply a way of referring to what exists in the objective world, but rather carries shared connotations that help the speaker to maintain their sense of belonging to certain social groups. Spanish language, like any other, reflects its own cultural characteristics, with all its inherited social complexity (García-Dussán, 2015), as same as Quijano says (2014) when he speaks about the ‘coloniality of being’, in which the nomination used by the powerful dehumanizes and inferiorizes the other-different with the help of offensive or pejorative concepts or expressions, or with discursive strategies of exclusion such as generalization, abstraction, or naturalization (Bourdieu, 1985). Now, in the case of Colombian Andean Spanish, the racial-cultural qualifier of breeds system, typical on Colombian history, being stronger since the sixteenth century, breaking up people and social spaces into Whites Vs. Others and Centers Vs. Periphery (Páramo & Cuervo, 2009), has been deposited in the structure of Spanish language through linguistic mechanisms such as religion, cultural knowledge, courteous treatment with others, or political attitudes (Garcés, 2009). A central point of this project is to recognize the cultural and linguistic profile of the colonizers of the small towns in Colombia and Venezuela: the Jews and the converted Arabs (or Christianized, Mudejar, Moorish, etc.). As it is widely known, during the fifteenth century there was pressure for non-Christians to convert to this new belief, carried out through forced baptism, actions which began in Granada (Spain) from 1500. Since then, they began to call the Christianized Jews, ´Marranos’ (Pigs), and the Christianized Muslims, ‘Moriscos’ (Moors). In fact, throughout the sixteenth century, Christians closely watched each other, taking into account the way they ate, how they celebrate festivals, and how they pray their dogma (Rincón, 2002). However, this population (Marranos and Moriscos) in Spain was killed, expelled, or converted by force, while others, going away from radical intolerance, traveled secretly to America just when many Europeans were

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moving to inhabit the new towns in America. Indeed, between 1493 and 1600, 55% of the settlers came from Andalucía and Extremadura (Marimón, 2010), where Jews and Muslims lived together after the expulsion ordered by the Catholic kings in 1492, because “esta política afectó tanto a los árabes como a los judíos, que compartían condiciones sociales e intelectuales similares, y obligó a muchos de ellos a emigrar al Nuevo Mundo” (Rincón, 2002, p. 99),5 that was why they went secretly through the Antilles and the Caribbean (Curaçao) to settle and survive in lands where the control of Christians would not disturb them anymore; and many times they achieved it by buying Basque surnames, or getting a false identity as Portuguese (García de Prodián, 1966). This annual illegal migration from Spain to the mainland was about fifteen thousand Iberian villagers (Lucena, 1992), of which there were many converts or new Christians with new and multiple identities, since the license system was not always strict and there were many fraudulent practices and ways of infringing the law (García-Arenal, 1992). The low immigrant demography, plus the huge Colombian geography (three mountain ranges and diverse tropical landscapes), were the reasons that many of these newcomers settled in small towns, with an average of one hundred and fifty inhabitants (with some exceptions); but, due to this territorial condition in scattered towns, built up their places in sparse villages stopping a linguistic unity. Even more, in order to survive, the Moriscos, with their doubtful condition as new Christians, developed the value of Taqiyya, which means a sneaky and covert attitude; an attitude that allowed them ‘to go unnoticed’ and do everything ‘on the sly’. Something similar happened with the Marranos, who suit themselves in the Colombian populations as apostates-hypocrites (Liman, 2002). So, this is the story of how these two groups hid their identity in order to not be exiled again, because as the laws of Castile said, they were ‘servants of the devil’, and they did not want them to ‘contaminate’ the new lands, since they set a bad example for the Indians (Borja Gómez, 1998). Then, as it is known, this ‘diabolical image’ would be extended to the American Indians themselves  “This policy affected both the Arabs like the Jews, who shared similar social and intellectual conditions, and forced many of them to migrate to the New World”. 5

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(Sanabria, 2004). This is the profile of the founders, characterized by being persecuted and camouflaged, and were the ones who made this new land prosper, mixing black slaves, Indians, and Spanish soldiers. Thus, the Colombian urban ancestors were Iberian peasants, with Christianized Arab or Jewish likes and looks (Todorov, 2007); people who brought the history for centuries and conformism to their wandering destiny; some homeless muleteers adaptable to any place and surviving with a low profile under the economy of home cultivation (Serrano, 2016); and, at the same time, they maintained an openly Christian behavior, but in the inside they kept Saturday as a day of mandate, they cleaned themselves and changed their clothes weekly (on Friday nights), and they maintained their religious ideologies even with the lacking of synagogues-mosques or clergymen-rabbis. Another characteristic of these first settlers was that they had a lack of awareness of the Law; which meant they were tricksters who lived in closed communities but with different identities, which allowed them to be and not to be in the great society (Klick & Lesser, 1998). In addition, they were crafty, sagacious, and cunning, all this as necessary strategies to hide their true identity and thus avoid the danger of another exile because the converts trapped in America were sent to the Holy Office of Seville or to the Inquisition in the city of Cartagena de Indias which was installed in 1610. Likewise, since the Middle Ages, both the Mozarabs and the Jews were bilingual in different ways, as a result of the cultural and linguistic contact in the Iberian Peninsula. Andalusian or Mozaribic romance were the languages spoken by the Moriscos, characterized by the frequent use of courtesies, by moderation when speaking and by rhetorical accuracy, all this trying not to be surprised and expelled again. All of these syntagmatic aspects that connote the preservation of a historical and cultural identity against the dominant culture, are tangible. In the same way, the Marranos or Jewish converts (after 1492, Sephardic), spoke Judeo-Spanish or Ladino, derived from Old Castilian, with the exception of some Hebrew lexicon, especially the use of religious words and first names (e.g., Hallelujah, Amen, Christ, Eden, Golem, Jehovah, Yod, Satan; Ana, Davis, Esther, Elijah, Joshua, Michael, Rachel, etc.) and spoken, until the expulsion of 1492, even a century later, along with other dialects of

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Spanish languages, such as Castilian, Catalan, or Aragonese (Cfr. San Román, 2015). Now, these situations and ways of being of the expatriates that made them act, use the language, and behave in particular ways, left hints of them in the traditions and in certain objects (e.g., many families still keep the mezuzah and the menorah), but above all in the language, up to the present days because a language is a cultural treasure that inherits elements from those first-born itinerant people. And we do not talk only of Arabisms, of wich about four thousand survive today, e.g. almojábana, alcázar, arroz, azúcar, zanahoria, and manzana (almojábama, rice, sugar, carrot, orange, etc.), and words and proverbs of Judeo-Spanish, Sephardic, or Ladino (V. gr. El ke se eça kon kriaturas se alevanta pişado: Who with children goes to bed, gets wet), but also less obvious expressions, which are disguised to suggest cultural heritage and everything that it seeps into the unconscious constitution of national identity. All this is established in the semantic-pragmatic level of current Spanish through bad words, proverbs, popular expressions, some colombianisms, and the use of polite formulas, used more frequently in the center part of Colombia, the Andean zone (between the central and eastern mountain ranges), in which we can find Colombian Andean super-dialect (Montes, 2000). This language does not come from anywhere because the main cities created by the colonizers are located, above all, in the Andean region, colonized before by indigenous tribes, from where they would be expelled or killed (Yunis, 2019), building Santafé as a center of the first order in administrative, military, and economic matters (Cfr. Williams, 2018, p.  47). Also, as Rincón (2002) says, many of these Jews and Moriscos participated in the colonization and commercialization of cereals in the mountainous areas of the country, especially in the coffee region and Antioquia. Subsequently, it is confirmed that “el hijo se rebela contra el padre con el lenguaje del padre, y luego construye su propio lenguaje” (Dussel & Merçon, 2010, p. 102).6 To support this idea, some of those linguistic ‘bad words’ could be mentioned here; for example, there are insults that unconsciously refer to the identification of the converted Jew with the  “The son rebels against the father with the father’s language, and then builds his own language”.

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devil, with the figure of the witch or using the word ‘marrano’ or ‘puerco’ with the jijuepuerca (son of the pig). In the same way, it is a frequent insult in the heart of Colombian territory to a person who is dirty (inmundo, hediondo o muérgano), in the same way that there are insults that refer to someone racially and culturally degenerate-perverted, such as the usual ‘corrupt’. This last idea is also reinforced by sayings such as “ando como el judío errante” (I am like the vagabond Jew) or “más falso que el beso de Judas” (faker than the kiss of Judas), that reveal the exclusion of ethnic minorities and the elimination of foreigners, Indians, blacks, women, children, etc. For this reason, the saying “indio y mujer, si no te la han hecho, te la van a hacer” (Indian and woman, if they haven’t done yet, they will) is significant, makes sense and points to segregation as well as an unfaithful characteristic. In this same sense, popular expressions such as “Más o menos” (so so) are common in Andean speakers, a sign of lack of ambition; or also expressions like “Me toca hacer” (I must do it), instead of “debo hacer” (I should do it), are an evidence of deviation from social law, typical of the Moros and their evasive way of speaking and acting the Mozarabic in these lands; and that brings one of the inherited problems that we have today, namely: disrespect for the law. This is also confirmed by the use of some Colombian expressions such as the verb “envolatar”, which means to confuse and comes from “volate” which also means eagerness, confusion, hubbub that is getting involved in flyers or confusions (Cfr. Montes, 2000). We also can add another very popular expression: “dar papaya”, with the sense of avoiding a situation that can be potentially dangerous or bad for oneself; that is, to be caught; something that quickly brings to mind the conditions of the illegal people in America since the sixteenth century. According to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (DRAE) “dar papaya” (give papaya) is a colloquial expression that means giving opportunity for someone to take advantage or abuse of someone, locution very common in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia, settlements of Marranos and Moriscos.

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Conclusion As a result, Colombian Andean speech seems to find out a specific I-cultural: the mestizo. That person called the ‘son of sin’ who keeps inside the ‘pure and impure’ European, African, and Indo-American legacy and their individual mixes in the language. It thus emerges that the speaker with whom this reflection has focused at the end has a hybrid cultural identity, summarized in a I- mestizo sinister who, in order to survive in a hostile world, had to adapt a strategic language against the tricks of the conquerors, and behaviors based on simulation and dissimulation, which currently converts the identity profile of our communities into cheaters and tricksters people, culturally notable in Colombians as a succession and legacy: el mestizo es el astuto, el que tiene leyes que seguir, el que no puede participar, pero aún lo hace, el que no se casa pero produce mestizos todos los días, el que no se puede blanquear porque no se lo permite, pero se blanquea constantemente, que sigue la ley, pero también se aprovecha de ella, que engaña, que contrabandea. (Dueñas, 1998, p. 17)7

In the same vein, it is possible to say that the dialectal Spanish referred here obeys an enunciative mestizo logic; that is, a logic that mixes elements cultivated for centuries, and ordered by an enjoyment that admits segregation which occurs in a social link that leaves that other and the other-­ constitutive into a linguistic game that exists to deny the interlocutor. Discursive logic, then, characterized by the state of objectification in which the person takes the floor over the Other and leaves as an effect a disappearance, that is to say, a fall that entails in the middle an amnesia about the common past that founds the current community. In this way, the idea of this reflection that contributes to this book in order to find other ways of conceiving the teaching of a language, is based on some decolonial principles, in which coloniality centers the idea that  “The mestizo is the sly, the one with any laws to follow, the one who cannot participate, but still do it, the one that do not get married but produces mestizos every day, the one that cannot be whitened because it is not allow, but is constantly whitened, who follows the law, but also takes advantage of it, that cheats, that smuggles”. 7

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work, knowledge, authority, and communicative ways of interaction are Eurocentric legacies that emerged in the cultural shock 531 years ago that includes the mark of inequality, mediated by the concept of superior race versus dirty or impure races. All this has forced to specialize certain formulas of recognition oriented by social comedy and dissimulation. In our case, the teaching of Colombian Spanish reflects being a pot of discursive falsehoods that have formed the basis of a ladino culture, the one that for Emilio Yunis (2019) is characterized by violation of the law and the use of any advantage. The tapestry, then, hides, to the extent that it allows to shake its tissues and leave with the mouth open to its users.

References Atienza, E., & van Dijk, T. (2010). Identidad social e ideología en libros de textos españoles de Ciencias Sociales. Revista de Educación, 353, 67–106. Borja Gómez, J. H. (1998). Rostros y rastros del demonio en la Nueva Granada. Indios, negros, judíos, mujeres y otras huestes de Satanás. Ariel. Bourdieu, P. (1985). ¿Qué significa hablar? Economía de los intercambios lingüísticos. Akal. Castro-Gómez, S. (2005). La hybris del punto cero. Ciencia, raza e ilustración en la Nueva Granada. PUJ. Cestero, A. M. (1999). Comunicación no verbal y enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. Arco. Chomsky, N. (1988). El lenguaje y los problemas del conocimiento. Visor. Chomsky, N. (1998). Minimalist Program and the philosophy of mind. An Interview. Comboni-Salinas, S. (1996). La educación intercultural bilingüe. Una perspectiva para el siglo XXI. Nueva Sociedad, 146, 122–135. Dueñas, G. (1998). Familia, mestizaje y formación de Estado. Post-data, 3, 14–29. Dussel, E., & Merçon, J. (2010). Entrevista a Enrique Dussel por Juliana Merçon. Sul-americana de Filosofia e Educação, 14, 102–112. Escobar, A. (2005). Más allá del Tercer Mundo. Globalización y diferencia. ICAH. Esterman, J. (2009). Colonialidad, descolonización e interculturalidad: apuntes desde la filosofía intercultural. In D. Mora (Comp.), Interculutralidad crítica y descolonización: fundamentos para el debate (pp. 52–66). III-CAB.

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Moreno, C. (2004). La enseñanza de español como lengua extranjera en contexto escolar. Un enfoque intercultural de la enseñanza de la lengua. Catarata. Nieto, V. (2019). El desarrollo del español como lengua extranjera en Colombia. Colecciones Encuentro ELE-PUCP, 71–89. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/ index/handle/123456789/177007 Ospina, W. (2003). “El renacer de la conquista”. Encuentro de Revista Número en la 16° Feria Internacional del Libro de Bogotá, 26 de mayo de 2003. Revista Número, 37, 40–47. Páramo, P. Y., & Cuervo, M. (2009). La experiencia urbana en el espacio público de Bogotá en el siglo XX. Una mirada desde las prácticas sociales. Javegraf. Paricio, M. S. (2010). Dimensión intercultural en la enseñanza de las lenguas y formación del profesorado. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación. https:// rieoei.org/RIE/article/view/3002 Pastor, S. (2006). Aprendizaje de segundas lenguas. Lingüística aplicada a la enseñanza de idiomas. Universidad de Alicante. Payrató, L. (1998). De profesión, lingüista. Panorama de la lingüística aplicada. Ariel. Penadés, I. (1999). La enseñanza de las unidades fraseológicas. Arcolibros. Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social. Journal of World-System Research, 2, 342–386. Quijano, A. (2014). Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina. CLACSO. Rincón, N. (2002). Árabes y judíos en Colombia: un modelo de integración social. Memoria y Sociedad, 7(13), 97–115. Rodgers, T., & Richards, J. (2003). Enfoques y métodos en la enseñanza de idiomas. Lavel. San Román, T. (2015). Ladino, una lengua ‘castellana’ que lucha por sobrevivir. https://www.inclusion.gob.es/cartaespana/es/noticias/Noticia_0484.htm Sanabria, F. (2004). La virgen sigue apareciendo. Un estudio antropológico. UN. Sánchez, M. (2008). A vueltas con la interculturalidad: hacia una lingüística intercultural para estudiantes alemanes de ELE. Revista de Didáctica Español Lengua Extranjera, 7, 1–13. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/921/92152390010.pdf Santos, I. (2004). La lingüística aplicada a la enseñanza-aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera. Arco libros. Serrano, E. (2016). ¿Por qué fracasa Colombia? Delirios de una nación que se desconoce a sí misma. Planeta.

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Serrón, S. (2002). El Enfoque Comunicativo y sus implicaciones. Una visión desde la enseñanza de la lengua materna en un marco democrático. Letras, 63, 73–108. Todorov, T. Z. (2007). La conquista de América. La cuestión del Otro. Siglo XXI. Tuts, M. (2007). Las lenguas como elementos de cohesión social: del multilingüismo al desarrollo de habilidades para la comunicación intercultural. Revista de Educación, 343, 56–78. https://redined.mecd.gob.es/xmlui/ handle/11162/68703 Walsh, K. (2007). Interculturalidad, colonialidad y educación. Educación y pedagogía, XIX, 48, 25–35. Williams, J. (2018). De la ciudad hidalga a la metrópoli globalizada. Una historiografía urbana y regional de Bogotá. UN. Yunis, E. (2019). ¡Somos así! Temis.

Part II Crossing Threads and Stitching Textured Fabrics

7 Breaking the Silence and Empowering English Language Student-Teachers Through Critical Collaborative Autoethnography Jairo Enrique Castañeda-Trujillo

Introduction The tapestry of English language teacher education and language teaching in Colombia unfolds as a complex and intricate panorama, woven together by threads of thought-provoking and disruptive perspectives. At its core lies a sociocultural understanding of language teacher education as a “dynamic process of reconstructing and transforming [the existent social practices] to be responsive to both individual and local needs” (Johnson, 2009). This tapestry is composed of interwoven threads representing various concepts and challenges. The stitches that bind them include critical collaborative autoethnography (CAE), a transformative This chapter is derived form an initial stage of my doctoral dissertation title “Collective narrativizations of the experiences of pre-service English teachers and their transition to professional practice in the department of Huila.”

J. E. Castañeda-Trujillo (*) Universidad Surcolombiana, Neiva, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_7

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approach enabling English language student-teachers to explore their journey toward becoming professional educators. This method seamlessly blends the self (auto), culture (ethno), and research (graphy) (Chang et al., 2013), fostering a fabric of self-awareness and critical engagement. The resulting patterns of this method reveal silenced voices and expose issues like discrimination, racism, and mental health within English language teaching (ELT) programs. The overarching pattern reflects a shift in ELT research, departing from instrumentalization toward embracing issues of race, gender, and differentiated learning experiences. The vibrant colors of student-teachers’ autoethnographic narratives reveal the contours of their experiences, highlighting challenges like commodification, native speaker ideologies, and epistemic silences. Through CAE, these narratives break student-teachers’ silences, (re)claim their voices, and promote them to write to right in the process to unveil the complexities of their identities and educational contexts (Holman Jones et al., 2013). This richly textured tapestry is a testament to the power of collaborative autoethnography, revealing the potential for disruption and transformation within English language teacher education in Colombia. Breaking the silence implies recognizing that some sensitive issues are not included in the research studies, although they deserve to be explored. For example, in the English language teaching (ELT) field, some issues could be related to discrimination due to personal or cognitive conditions, racism in educational institutions, heteronormativity, depression, and other illnesses student-teachers’ suffer, etc. Additionally, when these issues are included in research studies, the individuals (in this case, English language student-teachers) gain a space for their voices to be heard and show how their experiences are valuable to many others (Holman Jones et al., 2013). Although trends in research in ELT continue to be toward the instrumentalization of the profession by establishing what and how to do it in the classroom (Castañeda-Trujillo, 2019b; Macías & Hernández-Varona, 2022), more and more scholars are delving into sensitive topics such as racial identities (Bonilla-Medina et  al., 2021), gender in ELT (España Delgado, 2021; Vásquez-Guarnizo, 2021), and differentiate learning experiences in ELT (Cuervo-Rodríguez & Castañeda-Trujillo, 2021). Throughout these research studies, some of the silences that circulate

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around ELT have been broken, allowing the dynamics of teacher education programs to be questioned. These silences have also been broken through the writing of CAE, elaborated by English student-teachers from different Colombian Universities (Ariza-Quiñones et al., 2022; Peynado et al., 2022; Victoria Hernández et al., 2021). These research studies have given an account of the difficulties they have perceived in becoming English teachers. For example, Peynado et al. (2022) focused on reviewing their trajectory as student-teachers and revealed some of the issues they encountered within the ELT program in which they were enrolled (e.g., discriminatory practices and practices that reify the self ). On the other hand, Victoria Hernández et  al. (2021) focused on their personal situations and how these affected their process of becoming English teachers. Likewise, Ariza-Quiñones et al. (2022) looked at their pedagogical practice, revealing the challenges, opportunities, and transformations as student-­teachers before and after Covid-19. These papers have in common CAE as the means for opening and expressing themselves and collecting data for research simultaneously. CAE was the main research methodology used by these student-­ teachers, who found that it allowed them to show themselves as knowing and known subjects simultaneously (Vasilachis, 2009). Additionally, they found that the writing of these autoethnographies permitted them to share and discuss common experiences, issues, and struggles in which any other student-teacher could see themselves reflected and identified (Castañeda-Trujillo, 2020; Chang et al., 2013). Furthermore, this methodology, CAE, has been used for research purposes and can also be implemented as a pedagogical strategy (Alexander, 2013; Yazan, 2019). This chapter intends to show the experience of opening spaces for English language student-teachers to become aware of individual and local needs by using a methodological and pedagogical strategy such as CAE as part of a seminar in an ELT education program in Colombia. Then, the first section of the chapter will go deeper into why it is necessary to open spaces to break the silence in ELT programs. The second section will explain the rationale for using autoethnography as a research method and as a pedagogical strategy to open spaces to write to right (Bolen, 2012). The third section will be focused on explaining the

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analysis of what English language student-teachers found while implementing the pedagogical strategy oriented toward writing a CAE. Finally, the last section will describe some conclusions and implications from the results of the pedagogical experience.

 hy Is It Necessary to Break the Silence W in Initial ELT Education? “Colombian teachers and scholars are voicing their concerns and their achievements; they are finding ways to validate their epistemologies (of the South) in a field largely dominated by a Eurocentric view of the world. But despite these important developments in the field of ELT education in our country, there are still many areas that need to be problematized.” (Guerrero-Nieto, 2018, p. 127)

The previous quote indicates a need to delve into ELT education, especially now when social and cultural problems make the gaps between what is established by canonical institutions and what is possible in scholarly contexts more evident. Therefore, to start this section, I consider it relevant to review some aspects of initial ELT education that lead to the silencing of teacher educators and student-teachers. Initial education in ELT is in charge of the Faculties of Education of the different public and private universities located in different cities of the country. These programs have in common that they follow the guidelines of the Ministry of National Education (henceforth MEN) for the construction of their study plans and curriculum. In this way, each ELT educational program is structured similarly to meet the requirements that guarantee it to continue operating under a high-quality certification according to the regulation of the CNA (National Quality Commission). However, in many cases, this quality is seen in administrative and financial terms but does not necessarily have repercussions within the programs at an academic or pedagogical level. In the case of bachelor’s degrees, the insertion of mercantile policies produces an alienation of education actors, mainly teacher educators and student-teachers, which could be translated as the commodification of

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higher education. Along the same lines, academics such as Gonzalez (2007) warns that this commodification, which also involves foreign agencies and center-based textbooks industries, displaces the local knowledge of teacher educators, turning them into invisible agents without an audible voice. Additionally, the commodification of language leads to the commodification of teacher labor, creating more job opportunities for language workers than for language professionals (Petrovic & Yazan, 2021). This invisibilization of teacher educators also affects the teaching processes of student-teachers who enter undergraduate programs with the expectation of becoming ELT professionals. Additionally, some of the most frequent student-teachers’ concerns are related to the perpetuation of teaching methods and techniques that are disconnected from real contexts (Castañeda-Trujillo, 2019a; Peynado et  al., 2022). In this line of thought, student-teachers would become consumers and reproducers of others’ knowledge (Guerrero-Nieto, 2008; Kumaravadivelu, 2003). Furthermore, some ideologies and practices around the ELT world also contribute to this alienation and invisibilization of student-teachers. For example, MEN demands that student-teachers get a C1 proficiency level once they finish their major. This requirement brings to light one of the ideologies that most affects English language student-teachers, the native speaker ideology. This ideology proposes the existence of an ideal speaker of English, who becomes the model and the goal to be reached for those who are considered non-native speakers (Philipson, 1998). The discourses created around this standard speaker or native speaker position those considered non-natives at a level of inferiority, dispossessing them of any attribute or contribution they bring with them that is linked to something that is not related to the standard (Selvi & Rudolph, 2017). The essentialization of the concept of the native speaker directly affects the identity of non-native speakers, plunging them into an epistemic silence by invalidating locally produced knowledge related to language, teaching, learning, etc. (Philipson, 1998; Selvi & Rudolph, 2017). Going toward a micro level in ELT, these ideologies connected to native speakers influence what happens in the classrooms leading English language student-teachers to adjust to what is correct and accepted for the standard in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, preventing them from seeing or accepting English varieties. Furthermore,

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English language student-teachers have to adapt to didactic practices designed to strengthen these ideologies connected with the native speaker, removing the possibilities of innovating their methodology based on the requirements of the glocal contexts (Castañeda-Trujillo, 2018; Kumaravadivelu, 2006). The epistemic silence is also reflected in the research carried out in the ELT programs, where the instrumentalization and objectivization of language teaching predominate (Magrini, 2014, see also Bonilla Medina, this volume). In formative research, English language student-teachers are conducted to follow certain ways of doing research connected to validate or confirm hegemonic knowledge and silencing the voices of those who try to explore beyond those discourses (Castañeda-Trujillo, 2019b). In formal research, scholars have turned to look at ELT education from different angles, leaving the instrumentalization of language teaching aside. These research studies are commonly under some umbrella terms such as decoloniality, social justice, critical pedagogy, gender studies, and critical race theory, among others. However, despite the effort to change the perspectives in ELT research, the invisibilization of the individual is very common by using their voices to report the findings, that is student-­ teachers are taken as informants, story narrators, participants, and so on. It is clear that all the information these research studies bring is pertinent for ELT education; it is also true that some strategies are needed to allow student-teachers to become researchers and participants to understand the issues circulated in the ELT world firsthand. So, it is when CAE appears as an option to break the silence in ELT (Castañeda-Trujillo, 2020).

 ow Does CAE Contribute to Open Spaces H to Break the Silence and Write to Right? “[Autoethnographers] use personal experiences to promote social change by compelling readers to think about taken-for-granted cultural experiences in astonishing, unique, and often problematic ways and, further, to take new and different action in the world based on the insights generated by the research.” (Ellis et al., 2011)

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The quote above shows how powerful autoethnography is. It is not only a reflective method on isolated personal experiences but a way of making visible those phenomena that destabilize the being and make it necessary to change them. In this section, I will try to explore that idea more by establishing a theoretical rationale that helps to understand why CAE could be used to open spaces that break the silence and promote writing for what is correct (writing to right). In the first instance, it is necessary to clarify that autoethnography has been a research and a writing method that tries to give a performative account of the intersection of the self from the inclusion of autobiographical stories and the culture where that self enacts (Chang et  al., 2013; Hernandez et al., 2022). This performative act is reflected in writing charged with emotionality, intellectuality, and creativity, trying to transpose the personal and individual plane to the collective and social; that is it questions the emotion and intellect of the other who recognizes themselves and their personal issues through this autoethnography (Hernandez et  al., 2022). This interaction between the autoethnographers and the other through an ethnographic lens makes it possible to stand against positivist methodologies that try to detach from the self and establish the truth about social and personal phenomena (Yazan et al., 2021). Additionally, the rigor in data collection and analysis makes this method valid and contradicts its detractors, who affirm that the lack of rigor and the fact that the researcher and the researched are the same person undermine what is achieved through autoethnographic research (Ladapat, 2017; Méndez, 2013). However, in recent years, autoethnography has gained a place in research, demonstrating its value in understanding social and political phenomena based on the biographical facts the researcher has experienced (Yazan et al., 2021). In the same line of thought, CAE is defined by Chang et al. (2013) as “a qualitative research method in which researchers work; in a community to collect their autobiographical materials and to analyze and interpret these data collectively to gain a meaningful understanding of sociocultural phenomena reflective in their autobiographical data” (p. 24). This recognition of CAE as part of qualitative research makes it possible to carry out research that does not seek to generalize but rather delves into the particularities of the phenomena from a critical point of

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view that leads to the transformation of the social contexts where the research occurs and of those who they feel appealed by them (Castañeda-­ Trujillo, 2020). Writing a CAE implies that the research must be started from one’s own experiences, focused on oneself (Chang et al., 2013), and reviewing in depth each of the instruments used to evoke those critical moments that one wants to include within the analysis. From a constant self-­ interrogation, an interaction with the context that one wants to understand must be established. During this process, the researcher will have to make his thoughts, experiences, and perspectives visible within a dynamic and critical reflection process that constantly goes between the past and the present. Once these steps are accomplished, it can be ensured that the result is a personal autoethnography (Hernandez et al., 2022). Based on this input, the team of co-authors of the autoethnography meets to analyze and interpret the data collectively. It implies that each researcher exposes themselves to the group by discussing their autoethnographies. It is important to highlight that this process of exposing within the autoethnography team their experiences, thoughts, feelings, expectations, insecurities, sufferings, or any other aspect they wanted to highlight in the personal autoethnography can be repeated as many times as deemed necessary. The dialogical element of CAE allows each aspect to be reconstructed and co-constructed so that all group members are satisfied with what is expressed in the writing. In this way, the CAE allows a broad understanding of sociocultural phenomena by revealing the particularities of each of the co-authors. It is then understood that from autoethnographic writing, authors can express themselves openly, without any restrictions, so it can be said that this is where they break their silence, knowing that they will be heard and understood by their peers. This breaking of the silence has a cascading effect in such a way that those who read the autoethnographies feel identified and often driven to say what they did not feel capable of saying or that they were not allowed to say (Chang et al., 2013; Ellis et al., 2011; Hernandez et al., 2022). Likewise, when “autoethnographers use personal experiences to describe cultural experiences with the explicit goal of changing the

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experience; ‘write to the right’ and go ‘against the current social order’” (Holman Jones et  al., 2013, p.  36). This liberating act empowers the autoethnographers and makes them recognize that what they write in collaboration with others has as much value as what is contained in the canonical literature in ELT.  In this sense, it is possible to achieve that through the CAE, the English language student-teachers learn to explore their being and their context and to write it to express what is correct, what they could not have expressed in another way.

 hat Did English Language Student-Teachers W Gain from Participating in a CAE Project? Autoethnography and CAE are likely to be applied as pedagogical strategies (Alexander, 2013; Yazan, 2019). For example, I did this with a couple of groups of English language student-teachers from a public university in Bogotá in 2021. To do so, I designed a course entitled “Narratives of the Self as Decolonial Possibility in ELT,” which was intended to explore some colonial aspects tied to ELT and bring them into the context of ELT education through CAE work. In this way, the beginning of the course focused on discussing some readings that showed how coloniality affects aspects of professional development in ELT, and later the student-teachers were invited to form groups for collaborative work. This course was an elective course, so student-teachers from different semesters enrolled, and work groups were made up of second, fifth, and eighth-semester students, for example. Each group followed the procedures shown in Fig. 7.1 to finish their collaborative autoethnographies (Yazan, 2019): Once each team delivered the third installment, I proceeded to do a cross-sectional analysis to identify how they managed to break silences, write to right, and their perceptions about the strategy used. Below I will explain the findings on each of these points.

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Writing of individual autobiographies as studentteachers. Writing of cultural issues within the program

Writing individual autoethnographies

Writing a collaborative autoethnography: First installment Share individual autoethnographies with the team. Identifying intersection of cultural aspects.

Identifying individual experiences that could relate to the cultural aspects. Identify themes that are transversal in the stories of the team.

Writing a collaborative autoethnography: Third installment Writing implications and conclusions of the collective analysis of the autoethnographies.

Writing a collaborative autoethnography: Second installment

Fig. 7.1  Workflow to write the collaborative autoethnographies. (Source: Own elaboration)

Breaking the Silence Through CAE English language student-teachers intended to break some silences through the collaborative autoethnographies they wrote. In the first instance, one of the teams identified and thoroughly discussed the discrimination suffered by student-teachers for not being considered native speakers. Another example we found in common is that we have all seen or felt minimized by native English speakers for having a Latino accent. In Vanessa’s case, she experienced this using the app Tandem for exchanging languages, and she noticed some people avoided the English exchange with her because they were looking for a native speaker. In the same vein, some English learners have a high level of proficiency, making them feel superior and with authority to correct others contemptuously. This is also the case for Vanessa and her classmates at [ELT] program because she often has been discriminated against for her fluency, accent, and level of proficiency in English from the very beginning of her major. That experience created in Vanessa a feeling of inferiority in her program, and it increased the lack of confidence she had when she started her bachelor’s (CAE 5:2).

Some of the experiences in this excerpt are located outside the ELT program. However, they directly affect the identity of the student-teachers by positioning them as inferior because of their accent or origin. Although

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this aspect has been explored and discussed recently (Bonilla-Medina et al., 2021), it is important to note how the process of collective autoethnography allowed students to express these experiences and how they feel about them. Another case that student-teachers highlight is the invisibility to which ELT programs have subjected them. They express that the spaces they have to express their opinions or make their voices heard exist, but they are not enough. Although many ways of participation are involved, it can be said that teachers’ identity compiles personal knowledge influenced by political, ideological, and cultural conditions of their work and lives. Some factors would also affect teachers’ identity construction, such as their pedagogical function, belonging to professional networks, and individuality and self-­ perception (CAE 3:1).

Another group adds, We witness that there are voices that are not yet heard in our career and that we consider important in the learning process to be future English teachers. Therefore, we consider it crucial that the same students unite in groups within the university to talk about how we see our project being carried out and how we see ourselves in it, whether as agents or receivers (CAE 12:3).

The two excerpts above demonstrate that there are silencing mechanisms within ELT programs. Although it is true that some entities of participation are recognized, the student-teachers here show that there is also an imbalance of powers that does not allow equal and active participation by everyone. Another example of breaking the silence has to do with student-­ teachers’ future. First, they explain how being a teacher is seen by society: Even though a bachelor’s degree in Colombia is not seen as the most important or profitable career, a bachelor’s degree in English Language Teaching has a superior position in terms of globalization. That is why English is seen as the lingua franca, and people are almost forced to learn it

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either for job opportunities, master’s, studies abroad, or even an aspect of personal development. Despite this, a bachelor’s degree in ELT is seen as the opportunity to learn English and be proficient in it, but not as the will to be a teacher (CAE 5:1).

This team’s explanation of the English teaching profession reveals a reality experienced by many student-teachers. Some of them do not see the teaching profession as an option. In fact, many student-teachers are pursuing two things: a high level of English and a university degree. All to have a good job opportunity because, as they explain in the following excerpt, they are at a disadvantage with those who are considered native speakers: Considering the “native speaker” term, we also notice that it is a way of segregation in the sense of dividing some people from another according to their nationality and mother language. Hence, this phenomenon becomes a hierarchy of the English language, which excludes some parts of the World population that are minorities in terms of English empowerment. It can be seen, for instance, in pedagogical hiring processes, causing an impact both on students and on the professional staff. The first one due that native speakers attract students more as they think they represent the culture of the language they are learning in a better way, but also, students feel on a lower level since they feel attracted rather than oppressed by the native American speakers, instead of the second ones, who feel in disadvantage by not taking precedence in importance when hiring. English skills have positioned us in a higher place for some acquaintances and family members in terms of “superiority” just because we are studying English which is funny because almost no one is interested in or omits the fact that we are also preparing to be teachers since they do not think in pedagogy as a good job (CAE 5:3).

This clear disadvantage is a social reality, and student-teachers perceive it even before graduation. Possibly, this is because many of those who participated in the collaborative autoethnography writing teams are already working. Some of them have had to sell their language skills to call center companies and others to the service of language schools, where salaries depend on their English level. These circumstances are not openly

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discussed in ELT programs. Therefore, it is necessary to open spaces for discussion inside or outside the classes so that student-teachers know how to deal with these very complicated situations within our profession. Moreover, an enormous job must be done in terms of strengthening the professional identity of English language student-teachers; they must recognize who they are and how their decisions will impact their students and those around them. Additionally, student-teachers demand that society recognize them for this identity, and this is precisely what another team of autoethnographers claims: Since the perspectives that people have about English speakers are empty, they enclose us only in people who can speak a language without taking into account who we really are, leaving behind a whole universe of factors that construct us as complete members of society. A clear example of such differentiation is the fact that whenever we as English learners and teachers in the becoming, the expectations of aspects such as accent, appearance, and many other factors influence the decision on hiring for a language teacher position; sadly, this reality evidences the coloniality that is present in knowledge and education (CAE 7:2).

These few examples are taken from the final installment in which the student-teachers wrote their collaborative autoethnographies. They demonstrate that when student-teachers are given space to open up and tell their stories, they do it without a problem. By doing so and showing it to others, they begin this valuable process of breaking silences and crying out for what is fair. The next section shows exactly how it is possible to write to right and claim for right through this powerful product, collaborative autoethnographies.

Writing to Right as an Empowerment Exercise CAE makes a valuable contribution to the education of student-teachers. The resulting writing is in itself a powerful instrument to establish a critical position against events that create inequalities and, at the same time, allow us to show who we are as people. The latter can be exemplified with

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the following extract autoethnographies:

taken

from

one

of

the

collaborative

My case is very different from the others. I made many mistakes at the very beginning of my life. I am a person with a second opportunity to emerge since I was a drug addict for over fourteen years; thereby, I wasted a lot of time in the past. I am a recovered person by the power of God, and having got into this public university is the only chance to turn my way of making a living, which is worth a lot to me due to in a country like Colombia. The English language acquisition opened the door to well-paid job opportunities, and being professional is an unreachable dream of those who don’t have a sustainable economy. Still, not only so, I discovered that teaching another language is a gripping profession that caught me at all (CAE 4:2).

How this student-teacher exposes her being without fear of being stigmatized lets us see how appropriate it is to establish pedagogical strategies that delve into the self of each one while building an understanding of the context and culture of ELT programs. Even the following example shows how the family background, which is not easily exposed in the classes, is also part of the constitution of the identity of the student-teachers and is worthy of being considered within their educational process: The way in which we learn a language also determines how we perceive a language, a culture and others’ interactive aspects. In the case of David, his first close-up to a language was at five years old with Wayuunaiki. At first, he was happy because he could talk with more people and acknowledge his identity as a construct of two cultures, but when he said something wrong, his great-grandmother (his teacher) gave him physical punishment. He thought that he just was one culture because being two was painful, and he stopped learning Wayuunaiki, but his father was another crucial part of how he perceived Wayú culture since the mother of his great-great-­ grandmother was Wayú, and his great-great-grandfather’s father was Spanish. The two last generations prefer not to be assimilated into Wayú culture owing to how people relate indigenous people to poverty, inferiority and laziness. Considering that situation, David relates that he could be stereotyped if he learned any other language. His dad is white and a little

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bit racist, and he had heard a lot of bad comments in his family about black people; at the same time, his classmates called him black. Last year, he understood that he is afro (mother’s side), indigenous and white. And this is just a part of his identity; it does not define him at all, but there’s a big difference between how he grew up (¨as a white¨) and how people see him (black-brown), seeing that our society works based on stereotypes and judge people without any knowledge about cultures. These aspects of his life changed how he became bilingual and saw a target language. In that sense, Critical Race Theory talks about that white supremacy and the hierarchies created among people giving more opportunities to whites and Europeans and, at the same time, widening the social gap (CAE 5:4).

Once again, the CAE’s power within the educational processes is highlighted. And it is not just writing for the sake of writing. It is writing to reaffirm that what is experienced is valuable and that the sufferings and successes must be present in the configuration of their different identities.

Reflections on Autoethnography and CAE Finally, I want to highlight what some teams found in this collaborative autoethnography writing process. […] doing this collaborative autoethnography allowed us to reflect deeply on our role as teachers or future educators. We understand that we greatly impact the people around us, and that’s why the knowledge we share must be decolonized. Finally, this process helped us better understand our identity, what we want to teach and how we want to be perceived (CAE 1:7). […] through our narrative research process, we could identify that many barriers have not allowed us to learn a second language in the way we might have liked. Those difficulties have permeated our processes and those of many students. Among the aspects that have had a personal impact on us are the following: social aspects such as our economy, the lack of opportunities, discrimination by native and non-native speakers because of our accent, our lack of confidence because we may not fit into the canon of speakers presented to us by the media, etc. All this has led us to reflect on our learning process as learners of English and future teachers who don’t

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want to keep repeating colonial patterns and racialized discourses in their classrooms and that, through their future teachings, aim to empower their students so that they can face with more tools all those problems that we have encountered in our learning process (CAE 5:7). These narratives connected and helped us to share knowledge giving a different meaning throughout our life experiences. Therefore, this cooperative work provided spaces to reflect and restructure our thoughts about the decolonial turn (CAE 5:6).

These few excerpts are reflections of the student-teachers’ work during the implementation of this pedagogical strategy using CAE. The result could not be more valuable and powerful. Each of the teams worked for several hours on all the steps of the process until they reached the final brief, and even so, some of them assured that many issues were left out of their CAEs.

Conclusion Just as the weaver’s careful hands orchestrate the interplay of threads to form an intricate tapestry, so too does this chapter weave a narrative of the paramount importance of collaborative autoethnography (CAE) within Colombian English Language Teacher (ELT) education. By employing CAE, teacher educators gain an acute awareness of local imperatives. Its transformative essence empowers student-teachers, enabling them to traverse the contours of their identities and vocalize their experiences within the ELT realm. CAE provides a platform for discourse, allowing student-teachers to navigate sensitive subjects like discrimination, racism, and mental health, fostering self-empowerment and an appreciation of diverse viewpoints. Through reflective practice, CAE interconnects personal anecdotes with larger sociocultural phenomena, enriching ELT comprehension by situating it amid individual, cultural, and societal dynamics. Moreover, CAE’s lens encourages a discerning examination of prevailing norms, ideologies, and inequalities, nurturing a more inclusive and equitable educational environment.

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On a pedagogical realm, CAE pushes student-teachers to recalibrate pedagogical methods, philosophical underpinnings, and strategies, culminating in an authentic professional identity. This engagement with CAE also serves as a conduit for the decolonization of perspectives, the fostering of culturally pertinent ELT, and alignment with the tenets of social justice and critical pedagogy. As CAE becomes a cornerstone of pedagogical strategy in ELT programs, it nurtures innovative teaching and learning methodologies, motivating student-teachers to replicate such approaches in their own classrooms. By delving into their own identities, CAE empowers student-teachers to comprehend the intricate tapestry of diverse student personas and cater to their unique educational needs.

References Alexander, B. K. (2013). Teaching autoethnography and autoethnography pedagogy. In S. Holman, T. E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 538–556). Routledge. Ariza-Quiñones, K. J., Hernández-Polo, L. D., Lesmes-Lesmes, K. J., & Molina-­ Ramírez, E.  L. (2022). Preservice EFL teachers’ experiences in their first teaching practicum: A collaborative autoethnography. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 24(1), 193–207. https://doi.org/10.15446/ profile.v24n1.91259 Bolen, D.  M. (2012). Toward an applied communication relational inquiry: Autoethnography, co-constructed narrative, and relational futures. Doctoral dissertation. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/531/ Bonilla-Medina, S.  X., Varela, K.  V., & García, K. (2021). Configuration of racial identities of learners of English. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 23(2), 137–150. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v23n2.90374 Castañeda-Trujillo, J. E. (2018). Voices from the south: English language pre-­ service teachers contributions to ELTE. In H. Castañeda-Peña, C. H. Guerrero Nieto, & P. Méndez Rivera (Eds.), ELT local research agendas I (pp. 159–179). Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Castañeda-Trujillo, J. E. (2019a). Los profesores de inglés (re)clamando por un cambio en el concepto de formación inicial de profesores. ENLETAWA Journal, 12(1), 62–79. https://doi.org/10.19053/2011835X.14105

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Castañeda-Trujillo, J. E. (2019b). Taking stock of research about initial English language teacher education in Colombia. ENLETAWA Journal, 14(2), 51–80. https://doi.org/10.19053/2011835X.14105 Castañeda-Trujillo, J. E. (2020). Untangling initial English teaching education from pre-service teachers’ collaborative autoethnographies. In H. Castañeda-­ Peña, C. H. Guerrero-Nieto, & P. Mendez (Eds.), Methodological uncertainties of research in ELT education (pp.  220–239). Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F. W., & Hernandez, K. C. (2013). Collaborative autoethnography. Left Coast Press. Cuervo-Rodríguez, K.  A., & Castañeda-Trujillo, J.  E. (2021). Dyslexic individuals’ narratives on their process of becoming English language teachers. HOW, 28(2), 79–96. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.28.2.621 Ellis, C., Adams, T., & Bochner, A. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative Research, 12(1), Article 10. España Delgado, J. A. (2021). LGBTQ teacher’s identities within heteronormative school environments. ENLETAWA Journal, 14(2), 102–113. https://doi. org/10.19053/2011835X.14107 Gonzalez, A. (2007). Professional development of ELT teacher in Colombia: Between colonial and local practices. Íkala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, 12(18), 309–322. Guerrero-Nieto, C. H. (2008). Bilingual Colombia: What does it mean to be bilingual within the framework of the National Plan of Bilingualism? Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 10(1), 27–45. https://revistas. unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/article/view/10563 Guerrero-Nieto, C.  H. (2018). Problematizing ELT education in Colombia: Contradictions and possibilities. In H.  Castañeda-Peña, C.  H. Guerrero Nieto, & P. Méndez Rivera (Eds.), ELT local research agendas I (pp. 159–179). Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Hernandez, K. A. C., Chang, H., & Bilgen, W. A. (2022). Transformative autoethnography for practitioners. Myers Education Press. Holman Jones, S., Adam, T., & Ellis, C. (2013). Handbook of autoethnography. Routledge. Johnson, K. (2009). Second language teacher education: A sociocultural perspective. Routledge. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. Yale University Press.

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Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From method to postmethod. Lawrence Erlbaum. Ladapat, J. (2017). Ethics in autoethnography and collaborative autoethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(8), 589–603. https://doi. org/10.1177/1077800417704462 Macías, D.  F., & Hernández-Varona, W. (2022). An overview of dominant approaches for teacher learning in second language teaching. HOW, 29(1), 212–231. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.29.1.631 Magrini, J. (2014). Social efficiency and instrumentalism in education: Critical essays in ontology, phenomenology, and philosophical hermeneutics. Routledge. Méndez, M.  G. (2013). Autoethnography as a research method: Advantages, limitations and criticisms. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 15(2), 279–287. https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2013.2.a09 Petrovic, J.  E., & Yazan, B. (Eds.). (2021). The commodification of language: Conceptual concerns and empirical manifestations. Routledge. www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/languageandcommunication/ Peynado, C. C., Morales-Triviño, M. C., & Castañeda-Trujillo, J. E. (2022). A collaborative autoethnography on being preservice English language teachers throughout the Bachelor’s degree. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 24(2), 169–183. https://doi.org/10.15446/profile. v24n2.91113 Philipson, R. (1998). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press. Selvi, A. F., & Rudolph, N. (2017). Teachers and the negotiation of identity: Implications and challenges for second language teacher education. In J. D. Martínez (Ed.), Native and non-native teachers in English language classrooms: Professional challenges and teacher education (pp.  257–272). De Gruyter Mouton. Vasilachis, I. (2009). Ontological and epistemological foundations of qualitative research. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(2). Vásquez-Guarnizo, J. (2021). Equidad de género en Colombia: Una mirada holística de este problema sociocultural. ENLETAWA Journal, 2, 125–131. https://doi.org/10.19053/2011835X.14110 Victoria Hernández, J. C., Diaz González, L. D., & Méndez Garzón, F. S. (2021). Not easy being “me”: Deconstructing foreign language teachers’ self through collaborative autoethnography. ENLETAWA Journal, 14(2), 11–32. https:// doi.org/10.19053/2011835X.14102

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Yazan, B. (2019). Identities and ideologies in a language teacher candidate’s autoethnography: Making meaning of storied experience. TESOL Journal, 10, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.500 Yazan, B., Canagarajah, S., & Jain, R. (2021). Autoethnographies in ELT; Transnational identities, pedagogies, and practices (B. Yazan, S. Canagarajah, & R. Jain, Eds.). Routledge.

8 Challenging the Master Narratives of the Market and of English in L2 Pedagogy: Striving for a Reorientation Ferney Cruz-Arcila and Vanessa Solano-Cohen

Introduction Current widespread neoliberal social structures have not only shaped our material ways of living (e.g., life quality, jobs, public services, taxes) but also our symbolic and discursive understandings of social reality (Block, 2018). Both strands (material and symbolic) have contributed to the “rise of ‘the market’ as the master metaphor for shaping discursive constructions of many areas of day-to-day activity” (Block, 2018, p. 577), which are reinforced continuously by means of, for instance, mass media and public policies. In turn, such a master narrative has further fueled the traditional narrow Western view of socioeconomic development as

F. Cruz-Arcila (*) Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] V. Solano-Cohen Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_8

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associated almost exclusively to capital accumulation, industrialization and competitiveness (Sen, 2014). One of those day-to-day practices where neoliberal regimes have certainly been prominent around the world is second language education (Zavala, 2019), where the focus of language achievement is oftentimes economic purposes (Soto & PérezMilans, 2018). Thus, it is not surprising that due to overgeneralized views of English as the language of business and opportunities, many countries around the world, such as Colombia, have undertaken ambitious nationwide ELT policies under the premise that English is a straightforward avenue to development (Mohanty, 2017). This view has had detrimental consequences in at least three dimensions: (1) the role that languages other than English may play in aiming at socioeconomic development in L2 education; (2) the quite limited understanding of development as mainly associated with material gains, translated many times into capital accumulation only, and (3) the highly technical understanding of L2 pedagogy as primarily focused on the mastery of linguistic codes. Benefiting from the critical layout of the tapestry the preceding chapters have weaved and further echoing the underlying unauthorized peripheral outlooks that are being brought together, this piece problematizes the neoliberal workings of L2 pedagogy by offering a critical discussion around these three dimensions. From the lens of post-development theory, the chapter first questions the centrality of the market and the instrumentalist visions of development in the configurations and understanding of L2 education in the Colombian context. This is done on the basis of recent research on the social representations of both language learners and teachers around the purposes of language learning and teaching. In such discussion emphasis is made on alternative ways to broaden notions of socioeconomic development in relation to L2. In the second part, the chapter stresses the possibilities to draw more on critical approaches to language pedagogy by discussing two examples from a pedagogical experience aimed at teachers taking critical action in their working environments. Adding different but complementary shades and colors to the fabrics of this book, the two parts of this chapter emphasize on unauthorized, alternative, and more ecological ways of understanding second language pedagogy and thus on the need to reorient L2 pedagogy in more critical terms.

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L earners’ and Teachers’ Social Representations of the Purposes of L2 Education: Toward a Less Developmentalist View This first part of the chapter challenges the neoliberal associations commonly made between socioeconomic development and L2 education. Thinking about this relationship from Latin America, a region marked by huge social gaps (e.g., differences and discriminations historically reproduced in terms of access to resources, income, wealth and rights, such as education), is a critical exercise that invites us to question the hegemony of English as the most associated language with what we have conventionally understood as socioeconomic development: economic growth and technological progress (Sen, 2014). As we know, this Western dominant narrative has led, not only in the region, but globally, to the creation of public language policies that prioritize English in national curriculums, with the thought that the mastery of this language guarantees better academic and employment opportunities, as well as economic prosperity and easiness for intercultural communication in the current globalized and technologized world (Coleman, 2010; Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero-Polo, this volume1). This anglonormative perspective of development positions English as a valuable linguistic capital to reach socioeconomic interests is incontestable evidence of processes of neo-colonization and cultural domination (Phillipson, 1992). In fact, what Phillipson (1992) calls linguistic imperialism resonates with the construction of hegemonic and reductionist understandings of both the notion of development and language learning itself. Following Zavala (2019) and Block (2018), neoliberal structures have modelled education by, in many cases, prioritizing mercantilist dynamics, where learning languages, but especially English, means capitalizing oneself and thus developing in socioeconomic terms. The market therefore controls the institutional framework. For example, neoliberal regimes make the objectives of education to be focused on training individuals to develop  Guerrero and Quintero (this volume). Deskilling of English teachers in Colombia: Neoliberalism, internal colonialism, and the reification of English. 1

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competencies and skills that make them more functional and attractive to the market (Block, 2018), which in turn leaves aside the formation of critical individuals (Freire, 2007). This hegemonic, homogeneous and instrumentalist perspective of the relationship between L2 education in contexts such as Latin America unveils deep social gaps and exposes the difficulties in understanding the heterogeneity of our region, not only in terms of development but also in linguistic terms. It is precisely the regional heterogeneity and diversity which allow us to think critically about the relationship between L2 education and development. This means situating ourselves from a post-­ developmentalist perspective to question the instrumentalist, mercantilist and homogenizing reductionism with which this relationship has been characterized up to now. For us, and drawing on Sachs (2019), post-­ development represents an alternative to neoliberal discourses, which invites us not only to resignify the notion of development but also to decolonize the relationship between L2 education and development, giving priority to other meanings that interrogate this instrumentalized and mercantilist view. For us, post-development theory makes it possible to investigate alternative meanings of the relationship between languages and development and to ask ourselves about other more critical possibilities, but above all, more grounded in the needs of regional contexts. The questions we ask ourselves regarding the relationship between L2 education are anchored, then, in alternatives to narrow anglonormative and instrumentalist views of development. At the same time, it is an exercise in which we question those discursive and ideological constructions that have operated as mechanisms of Western cultural, social and economic hegemony (Ziai, 2007). Now, what does it mean to think critically about the relationship between second language teaching and learning and the notion of socioeconomic development? What implications does this relationship have on the social representations of both students and language teachers? How can we question those hegemonic discourses of English that privilege its teaching and learning in the Colombian context? The above questions marked the starting point of a study developed by the authors of this chapter along with other researchers at a modern language undergraduate program in a University in Bogota. Since 2020, the relationship

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between teaching and learning second languages and socioeconomic development has been studied in light of the meanings that both students and teachers construct around the teaching and learning of the five foreign languages included in that undergraduate program—English, French, Italian, Portuguese and German (Cruz- Arcila et al., 2022). From a post-developmentalist point of view (Escobar, 2005), the research we have been conducting has been particularly interested in spotting non-hegemonic or instrumentalist possibilities of thinking about L2 education. When analyzing how learners position themselves toward dominant anglonormative discourses of development and the meanings they construe about the other languages they study, three broad findings were identified. The first is a dominant accommodation to the hegemonic discourses linking English and development. Such accommodation highlights the instrumentalist vision of language learning understood as a mechanism for economic development and access to greater academic and labor opportunities—an uncritical perspective that continues to reaffirm the importance of mastering a foreign language as a requirement imposed by the educational system and the labor market. That is, we see how the neoliberal dynamics of language learning, “the language-as-resource discourse” in Mena and García’s (2021) terms, resonates in the meanings that learners attach to foreign language proficiency. Languages other than English were less frequently associated with instrumentalist or tangible gains, with conventional views of development. The second finding underscores the importance of interculturality and the possibilities offered by learning a foreign language for communication and shaping global citizens. Curiously, in this narrative, the hegemony of English weakens when it becomes evident that it is of limited use for economic, employment and academic opportunities in non-­ English-­speaking countries and in the face of the relevance of Eastern languages that expand these same opportunities. This weakening, which we understand as a questioning of the hegemonic discourse, would attenuate the neoliberal burden that language learning has; although it still does not question the underlying power relations in any intercultural process, an urgency that, from Latin America, Walsh (2010) has announced to us.

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The third finding is the one that interests us most, since it puts forward other arguments such as personal development and emotional fulfilment as reasons for learning a foreign language and in which English is not seen as a language that signifies an achievement but is rather seen as an imperative. These reasons have more to do with individuality and personal experience, which is why we understand them as perspectives that take great distance from the dominant discourses, and which, from the theoretical proposals of post-development (Escobar, 2005, 2007), can be read as interrogations of the hegemonic developmentalist discourse underlying L2 education nowadays. On the other hand, from the teachers’ perspective, the results show a more uncritical positioning toward the hegemonic visions of English as a language of development than that of the students. Nonetheless, it is also possible to read narratives that suggest more ecological and less instrumentalist positions. For the vast majority of teachers, foreign languages, particularly English, are a guarantee of economic growth, better jobs and access to culture, the latter understood as a consumer good that allows, through its acquisition, the construction of more “developed” societies (Cruz-Arcila et al., 2023). This relationship that teachers propose between development, interculturality and culture confirms the absence of a critical stance against the hegemonic developmentalist position and, therefore, a superficial and static view of culture and interculturality, which, in terms of Walsh (2010), continues to be functional to the system. That is, teachers’ uncritical positioning is a sign of a logic of global capitalism, in which the recognition of cultural diversity and the construction of communication bridges dialogue with the promotion of “the economic imperatives of the (neoliberalized) model of capitalist accumulation” (p.  78, own translation). As for the perspective of personal development, teachers assume the learning of English as an obligation in any academic training, which would confirm the resonance of anglonormativity in teachers’ narratives. From the results, it is possible to read a colonial bias in how teachers make sense of the relationship between L2 education and development, since it is assumed that being multilingual is restricted mainly to the mastery of dominant-Western languages, which are precisely those offered by the undergraduate program analyzed. For teachers, these languages are defined from a hierarchical dynamics in which English dominates, followed

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by French and German, in terms of academic opportunities and social prestige; while from the instrumentalist view that defines the hierarchy, Italian and Portuguese are not perceived as languages that guarantee work and academic possibilities. This perspective maintains the ways in which colonial ideology shapes institutions and hierarchizes knowledge, thus classifying social relations, in this case, on the basis of the mastery of a European language, thus classifying social relations, in this case, on the basis of the mastery of a European language. We highlight that despite the fact that the position of most teachers reaffirms the hegemonic relationships between socioeconomic development and language learning, from the post-developmentalist logic, the narratives make it possible to read other ways of thinking such relationships, other options that transgress the narratives and open, as Walsh (2017) points out, fissures from which more hopeful perspectives of understanding social reality emerge. For some teachers, it is important to think about language teaching from the local, situational and individual interests marked by a concern that emerges from some narratives in the face of the social inequality that characterizes the national context. That is to say, several teachers showed awareness of the reductionist viewpoint of learning the dominant Western languages with the proposition of more and better job and academic opportunities. We consider that this purely developmentalist discourse does not allow us to reflect on what job or academic opportunities mean, or what meaning they have for each individual or who can access them, in a context as complex as Colombia. For example, the case of English, which globally, with its promise as the language of development, has benefited an elite in terms of access to labor and academic opportunities (Mackenzie, 2021; Mohanty, 2017). The question of the dominant and anglonormative narratives in the framework of the relationship between teaching and learning second languages, from the perspective of a group of students and teachers, allows us to identify some tensions in this relationship and therefore, as we will do below, to propose other ways of thinking about teaching from more critical positions against the developmentalist discursive hegemony that permeates the teaching of languages at a global level. Crossing the narratives and from a critical post-developmentalist position (Escobar, 2005,

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2007) of this instrumentalist conception of languages as guarantees of development, we consider it relevant to reformulate this vision in which language is understood as a resource, a hierarchized instrument from the scaffolding of anglonormativity, that is, languages would acquire relevance to the extent that both the learner and the teacher are functional to the dynamics of the market. Teachers’ and students’ positionings invite us to relate the learning of a foreign language to more personal and subjective perspectives, in which personal fulfilment prevails and not the global dynamics marked by competitiveness and the free market. On the other hand, it is necessary to understand that the same mercantilist dynamics of education intensifies social gaps in countries like Colombia, where, for example, young people find it increasingly difficult to access higher education. As reported by Fedesarrollo (Forero, 2022), only 39% of high school graduates, at the national level, manage to access higher education—a situation that is aggravated if we take into account that the dropout rate at this educational level is 70% for the most vulnerable socioeconomic level and compared to 10% for middle- and upper-­ class students. In Colombia, access to and permanence in higher education determines factors of competitiveness in the labor market and social mobility. Therefore, the same economic and social conditions that make it difficult to access higher education maintain the inequality of the educational system and keep young people who cannot access higher education on the margins of this developmentalist vision of education and work. The above invites language teachers to deconstruct our pedagogical practices in the classroom to take into account the interests and motivations of our students, and therefore, to emphasize the habitus (based on Bourdieu’s concept2) of our learners in order to have classrooms in which languages transcend this mechanistic and utilitarian vision. That is to say, and taking up Walsh’s (2017) metaphor, to make our classroom a fissure to think the world from the teaching of foreign languages, in which other ways of understanding social reality are promoted, the hegemonic developmentalist discourse is questioned and more thought is given to regional and local needs that allow us to be a more sociolinguistically just society.  Bourdieu (2002) develops the concept of habitus to account for the practices and conditions of production that distinguish individuals in a society and thus differentiate them from others. 2

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Reorienting Pedagogy in L2 The previous discussion on post-development possibilities to understand language education is in tune with actual attempts to bring about transformation in L2 pedagogies. As stated previously, hegemonic discourses of development emphasize the material gains of language learning and have commoditized languages. Our previous research has already highlighted the importance of considering “more heterogenous and plural understandings of both second language learning and socioeconomic development [and to call into question the] neoliberal hermeticity of English as the language of opportunity” (Cruz-Arcila et al., 2022, p. 483). However, such argument has been limited to the identification of the more individual and localized drives for language learning that are not necessarily associated with material gains. Taking a step forward, this section discusses ways in which the initiative of contesting neoliberal regimes can take the shape of critical possibilities to reorient practices in language education. The examples of alternative orientations to be shared are part of the work of in-service language teachers, who participated in a course called “critical pedagogies for language teaching” during the first semester of 2022 at Instituto Caro y Cuervo,3 Bogotá. The most important goals of the course were: • Analyze different critical approaches for L2 teaching and its possible impact on the concrete pedagogical practices of the course participants. • Reflect critically on the notions of language, bilingualism, language policy and pedagogical practice. • Propose possibilities for critical action in the specific contexts of the teachers who took part in the course. With regard to the first objective, the course included the analysis of reading materials of what were presented as the main intertwined contributions of three broad approaches: critical pedagogy (Freire, 2007; Crookes, 2013; Pennycook, 1990, 2001), decolonial pedagogies (Walsh,  This is a State higher education institution committed to safeguarding the Colombian linguistic diversity through education and research. 3

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2017; Mignolo & Vásquez, 2017) and proposals based on critical race theory (CRT) (Kubota & Lin, 2009; Cruz-Arcila & Bonilla-Medina, 2021). On this theoretical basis, we aimed to analyze how education and, thus, the practice of language teaching are not neutral activities but a space for either the reproduction, resistance or reconfiguration of power relations (Freire, 2007; Crookes, 2013). These ideas were complemented with the decolonial and CRT’s permanent interrogation of the patterns of power behind racialization, subalternation and inferiorization (Walsh, 2009; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). In tune with their critical common ground, these three approaches serve to make visible different ways of being, living and knowing and to negotiate differences within a framework of legitimacy, dignity, equality, fairness and respect, and also to boost the creation of “other” ways of thinking, being, living, learning, teaching, dreaming and living (Walsh, 2009, p. 13). Relatedly, the use of CRT contributed more explicitly to raising awareness over the fact that “issues of race address power, identity, subjectivity, and social (in)justice, … [which] are vital to all aspects of second language education” (Kubota & Lin, 2009, p. 1). Considering these theoretical foundations, skepticism was raised toward language teaching models that, in line with neoliberal trends, tend to view language simply as an instrument of communication (Kumaravadivelu, 1994), rather than as a social practice (Pennycook, 2010), hence, a constructor of social reality. This view of language is central to the idea that teaching and learning languages can be connected to social reconfigurations and, thus, transformation. In relation to the second objective and, on the critical theoretical grounds briefly outlined above, the course drew mainly on the work of García et al. (2021) and Zavala (2019) to question mainstream instrumentalist views of language, bilingualism, policy and pedagogical practice. This questioning worked also as an invitation for teachers to rethink their own practices from a more localized and ecological reconfiguration of these notions. In this endeavor, García et al.’s (2021) rejection of what Santos (2007) calls “abyssal thinking” played a fundamental role. Following Santos, abyssal thinking is this imaginary unequal distinction between Western and non-Western knowledges and ways of life, the former being considered universal and valuable while the latter are rendered almost non-existent or invalid. Drawing on Santos’s (2007) work, García

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et al. (2021) argue that that sort of thinking has contributed to intensifying racializing positionings of bilinguals who “as a result of long processes of domination and colonization, have been thought of as inferior in racial and linguistic terms (p. 201)”. In this context, one way to redress the situation is to stem from the centrality that needs to be given to the counter-­ hegemonic experiences and knowledges of such “racialized bilinguals”. The rejection of abyssal thinking, García et al. (2021) advocate, comes hand-in-hand with resistance toward hegemonic and normative ways of understanding language education, where learners are measured within the limits of the idealizations of monolingual users of a target language, who stick to narrow standards of correctness. In relation to this critique, there is an invitation then to see languages not as separate entities learners need to master and use independently from their own linguistic background but rather as a growing repertoire to understand social reality and take part in it (García & Wei, 2014). Another important contribution taken from the work of García et al. (2021) was the resignification of conventional, instrumentalist understanding of pedagogical practices as limited to a series of classroom strategies. These scholars convincingly argue that pedagogical practices in the field of L2 can be viewed rather as spaces to potentiate different and varied types of knowledge and communicative practices. This view intersects interestingly with Zavala’s (2019) idea that linguistic disadvantages should be conceived as structural social injustices that need to be remedied. According to Zavala (2019), talking about linguistic justice opens up possibilities for marginalized individuals and communities to fight for the recognition, legitimation and respect of their non-hegemonic languages or varieties and in turn identities. In order to do this, educational practices need to be oriented toward the deconstruction/interrogation of two dominant narratives of the technocratic discourse permeating L2 education: equal opportunities and quality of education. Zavala (2019) rightly points out that opportunities are presented as standardized when the needs of peoples are quite diverse and so there is an urgent need to consider the linguistic discontinuities marginalized groups face (p.  4). Likewise, this scholar suggests that the homogenization of skills and achievements and thus academic success by means of standardized tests is an unhelpful approach since it emphasizes the neoliberal role of

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education as the generator of skillful products over its sorely needed contribution to social equality. Deep reflections and discussions over these critical views of language education were connected directly with the third objective of the course: propose possibilities for critical action in teachers’ specific work contexts. The course included the invitation for participants to consider the critical theoretical foundations analyzed to reconfigure, potentiate/propose and share an original and applicable pedagogical practice in their own contexts. Previously, they had already identified some of the most salient problematic social issues they could address from their role as language teachers. Gender stereotypes, the misrecognition of the Colombian sign language, the regimented workings of language testing and the power disbalances between languages and varieties were some of the different issues teachers aimed to address in their proposals. Due to space constraints, in the remainder of this chapter, only two illustrative examples of the last two broad themes are discussed. Before we start, it is also worth mentioning that the pedagogical proposals were submitted in paper and were also shared orally with the group of participating teachers. Permission has been obtained to discuss their work here.

 eframing the Technocracy of Language R Testing in ELT in Higher Education The first example is in tune with Zavala’s (2019) critique of the technocratic procedures to measure educational success in English language learning by means of standardized tests and the regimented frames of language education. It is about the potentiation of an ongoing proposal that Alex4 decided to implement at his workplace. At that time, Alex was working at a private university in Bogotá and, like many private institutions, this one had quite strict policies and regulations for language teaching and assessment. Following the mandates of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), for example, one of these policies was a graduation requirement of a B2+ level of English for all undergraduate  Names used here are pseudonyms.

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students. Thus, the university offered eight levels of English instruction aimed at achieving such a goal. As Alex explains, each of these courses needed to implement a midterm and a final exam that included traditional multiple choice and true/false questions associated to two reading and two writing tasks, which were scored automatically by a platform. This meant that the teacher’s role in terms of evaluation was mainly to verify the results. Alex had the role of coordinator for the virtual program of English and as he says, Although I do not have any explicit status within the institutional organization, I still have some important room for action, decision making and implementation.5

When he took that role, he was critical of a number of things, which he turned into opportunities for change. First, he saw it was a contradiction to assess language performance only with two communication skills (reading and writing). Secondly, the tests seldomly considered real-life inputs and situations and, thirdly, the passive and technical role of teachers in the process. Acting on these problematic issues, he decided to listen to students’ views on the ways in which they were being evaluated by means of a questionnaire and, based on the information collected, decided to open the test possibilities beyond standardized, automatized procedures. Thus, as he states, General recommendations were given [to teachers] and each team of teachers made the decisions they deemed pertinent to evaluate students’ achievements.

This decision gave way to multiple and heterogeneous assessment practices. He reports that in light of this first attempt, it was possible to learn from the experiences of different teachers and propose for the upcoming opportunities assessment procedures that went way beyond the technical artificial 90-minute testing activity to include a complex 5-day process, where,  All excerpts are taken from the written proposals submitted and were originally in Spanish.

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students participated and engaged in teamwork activities, used authentic materials, addressed problems related to their own undergraduate programs, which also implied a much more active formative role on the part of teachers.

The 5 days were distributed in time to prepare (2 days), develop and share their work (2 days), and reflect upon it (1 day) by means of self and co-evaluation processes. Another important element of this proposal is that “in some cases, students had the chance to decide which way to take” in their assessment process. Alex’s proposal in action implied a significant step in the democratization of language assessment that deviates from technical and commoditized regimes of pedagogy. As he puts it, these attempts are significant considering especially the rigidity of the context, where it takes place. There is a huge difference between seeing evaluation as a one-moment technical task that is measured against worldwide standards and taking evaluation as a process and space for collaboration, autonomy, reflection and engagement with the world beyond the classroom. Following Freire (2007), Alex points out that the changes he has contributed to generating are liberatory as “they problematize and decentralize the role of the teachers … and interrogate the transnationality of educational processes linked to obtaining a score”. In consonance with Walsh (2017), Alex also highlights that these small “transformations … crack the institutional system through strategy and resistance”, which at the same time are seen as more “fructiferous” and significant for the purposes of language education.

 hallenging Hegemonic Ideologies Through C Material Development in a Spanish as a Heritage Language Course The second example deals with the subalternation of Spanish as a heritage language in the context of the USA. Yina decided to design curricular guidelines and teaching materials for a course of Spanish as a heritage language at the private university she works for as a way to question neoliberal hegemonic discourses underlying the teaching of Spanish at that institution. As she explains, the main premise underlying her initiative is that,

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unlike the other language courses at my university, my proposal draws on critical pedagogies, where learners’ linguistic varieties used in their families and contexts are accepted.

In other words, and as shall be illustrated below, she aimed at challenging dominant monoglossic and standard language ideologies in the USA context, where “speaking languages other than English is sometimes seen as ‘un-American’” (Fuller, 2018, p. 123) and as a barrier for economic or academic prosperity (Redondo-Quesada, 2018), and where deviations of the so-called standard varieties of any language are considered of less importance (Fuller, 2018). Thus, in order to make the teaching of Spanish attractive under these ideologies, it is necessary to present it as a foreign language, which serves the purpose of dissociating the language to any varieties spoken by the huge Latin community in the USA (Mena & Garcia, 2021). As Mena and Garcia (2021) highlight, insisting on the idea of the idealized variety of Spanish is useful to “unmark” the language from the “Latinx population in an effort to ‘add value’ to [teaching and learning it]” (p. 2), by getting rid of all the unwanted history and baggage of the varieties already existing in the USA. In tune with the above, when characterizing the concrete problematic issues, she aims to address through her proposal, Yina first of all aimed at creating a course for Bilingual Latinx, which unsurprisingly did not exist (in other courses, Spanish was presented as a foreign language). She also refers to how in the existing practices, language learning was seen as an instrumentalist activity where, as she notes, “non-standard linguistic practices and identities are marginalized”. Similarly, she underscores that the pedagogical material regularly used accommodate to the hegemonic monoglossic and linguistic standard ideologies, which also present “contents that are far removed from [learners’] social problems”. A further problematic point, which resonates with the research findings discussed in the first part of this chapter, is that teachers at that university tended to take an uncritical “neutral” positioning toward these issues. Her critical proposal, then, aimed at challenging the linguistic ideologies that over-emphasize the power of English while undermining the importance of the linguistic diversity and richness of the learners.

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Drawing on the work of Sara Beaudrie (e.g., Beaudrie et al., 2021) on critical language awareness, Yina aimed at raising the critical consciousness of learners’ own language diversity by means of the pedagogical material and activities she proposes in her course. As she explains, This course is made up of three thematic units. Unit 1 is concerned with the voices, identities and experiences of Latinx communities; unit 2 with the linguistic practices and the role of English in the USA; and unit 3 with knowing the past to understand the present [of Latinx bilinguals in the USA]. Specifically, unit 2 has the objective of developing critical awareness of the learners’ language …

Within the three-unit structure given to the course, Yina decided to present a didactic proposal for unit 2. She first divided unit 2 into four main themes: (1) linguistic diversity and variation, hegemony of English; (2) linguistic ideologies and linguistic bias; (3) Spanish in the USA, bilingualism and language change; and (4) language policy and maintenance/ loss of languages. As seen in the list of these themes, and in consonance with the idea of sociolinguistic justice (Zavala, 2019), as well as the problematization of why some bilinguals are racialized (García et al., 2021), Yina aims clearly at challenging the hegemony of English and dominant linguistic ideologies in her proposal. From the thematic structure given to the unit, she presented a didactic proposal for theme 2. Her critical proposal includes tasks oriented toward the recognition and value of their own identities as bilinguals through the use of, for example, linguistic autobiographies. It also includes the analysis of situations and experiences bilinguals like her students would face on a daily basis, such as discrimination for speaking Spanish, or not accommodating to the neoliberal monoglossic demands of their contexts through the analysis of cases of linguistic racism toward Latinx reported on the media or testimonials of prominent Chicano activists such as Gloria Anzaldúa in her writings. Interestingly, this teacher also planned on having students examine and appreciate both different geographic and social varieties of Spanish that challenge standards of correctness, where there is also room to cherish the richness of Spanglish as a valuable variety.

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All in all, in resonance with translanguaging pedagogies, sociolinguistic justice and critical race possibilities, Yina devised a pedagogical proposal that transgresses the hegemony of languages such as English and of the so-called standard varieties of a given language like Spanish. Thus, she opens up the room for considering and valuing the linguistic diversity of her context. As she insists, this implies conceiving the language classroom as a space for resistance and critical interrogation of dominant linguistic ideologies. We learn from this proposal too that one meaningful way of pursuing this objective is by giving a central role to learners’ rich linguistic and cultural experiences and repertoires, instead of simply ignoring or invalidating them for not responding to the needs or demands of the market.

Conclusion This chapter has dealt with unauthorized critical ways of understanding the purposes and pedagogy of L2 education, which have tended to be shaped by neoliberal structures. The chapter contributes to the intellectual tapestry, which represents this book, by intertwining two main threads of discussion. First, drawing on ongoing research on the configuration of teachers’ and learners’ social representations of modern languages, the chapter highlights how despite the apparent accommodation and acceptance of technicist and instrumentalist goals of L2 education on the part of both learners and teachers, there is room for potentiating and cultivating alternative critical and socially sensitive meanings. From the point of view of post-development, for example, it is shown how the hegemony of English and the master narrative of the market are insufficient to account for the multifarious meanings and drives of L2 learning. We, therefore, understand these possibilities as “other” meanings of the relationship between language teaching and learning and, at the same time, as an invitation to reflect on current language policies in the interest of promoting true social justice based on our role as language teachers. Relatedly, the second main thread shows how pedagogical practices grounded on critical foundations can very well be spaces for social resistance and transformation. We have seen how the regimes of language

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testing can be reconfigured in meaningful locally sensitive ways, even in contexts where teachers do not seem to have much room for action. Likewise, we have analyzed a meaningful proposal to contest the subalternation of Spanish as a heritage language in the USA context. Such a proposal illustrates how the curriculum and material design are other spaces for aiming at more sociolinguistically just pedagogies. By linking teachers’ and learners’ perspectives on the relationship between development and language with pedagogical practices that promote social transformation, we wish to underscore the need to critically reorient L2 pedagogy, toward more ecological forms that take into account contextual needs and enable spaces of resistance to the hegemonic developmentalist perspective that pervades the education system globally. All in all, this chapter adds a new patch of critical discussion which problematizes traditional and instrumentalist views of L2 education. In the upcoming chapters by Quintero-Polo and Guerrero-Nieto, this patch is extended with new striking stitches around the unhelpful neoliberal and technocratic approaches to language education in the Colombian context.

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Cruz-Arcila, F., Solano-Cohen, V., Briceño-González, M.  L., & Rincón, A. (2022). Second language learning and socioeconomic development: Interrogating anglonormativity from the perspective of pre-service modern language professionals. Current Issues in Language Planning, 23(5), 466–487. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2021.2006944 Cruz-Arcila, F., & Bonilla-Medina, S. X. (2021). Configuración de identidad racial de aprendientes de segundas lenguas en el contexto colombiano. Folios, 54, 146–163. Cruz-Arcila, F., Solano-Cohen, V., Briceño-González, M.  L., Rincón, A., & Lobato-Junior, A. (2023). Resisting hegemonic discourses on the relation between teaching second languages and socioeconomic development. Profile: Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 25(2), 111–127. https://doi. org/10.15446/profile.v25n2.103953 Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory an introduction. New York University Press. Escobar, A. (2005). El “postdesarrollo” como concepto y práctica social [“Postdevelopment” as a concept and a social practice]. In D. Matto (Ed.), Políticas de economía, ambiente y sociedad en tiempos de globalización (pp. 17–31) (D. Matto, coord.). Universidad Central Venezuela. Escobar, A. (2007). La invención del Tercer Mundo: construcción y deconstrucción del desarrollo [The invention of the third world: Construction and deconstruction of development]. Fundación Editorial el Perro y la Rana. Forero, D. (2022). ¿Qué hacer en educación? In L. F. Mejía (Ed.), ¿Qué hacer en políticas públicas? (pp. 24–29). Fedesarrollo. Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogía del oprimido. Siglo XXI ediciones. Fuller, J. M. (2018). Ideologies of language, bilingualism, and monolingualism. In A. De Houwer & L. Ortega (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of bilingualism (pp.  119–134). Cambridge University Press. https://doi. org/10.1017/9781316831922.007 García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Language, languaging and bilingualism. In Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Palgrave Pivot. García, O., Flores, N., Seltzer, K., Wei, L., Otheguy, R., & Rosa, J. (2021). Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 18(3), 203–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2021.1935957 Kubota, R., & Lin, A. M. (Eds.). (2009). Race, culture, and identities in second language education: Exploring critically engaged practice. Routledge.

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9 Colombian English Language Teachers’ Storied Agency Contesting the Inset of Globalization and Capitalism of Education Álvaro Hernán Quintero-Polo and Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto

Contrasted with the demands of the capitalist market we find the long rationalist tradition that permeates our culture, reaching from Descartes to Marx, Freud and many others, which continues to demand that education is not simply training for a partial function, but capacity building (Our translation). —Estanislao Zuleta (2020, p. 74)

This chapter stems from the research study titled “Critical Language Teacher Identity in ELT as a Political Milieu: Colombian Teachers’ Storied Agency in Times of Neoliberal Insertion in Supranational Policies.” It is an institutionalized study by the Office of Research of Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas by code N° 246273220.

Á. H. Quintero-Polo (*) • C. H. Guerrero-Nieto Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_9

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Introduction The epigraph connects us with our society that has been, is, and will surely continue to be capitalist. It is normalized but not positive. We believe that our research agendas, beside our intention to add understanding about criticality and agency as two components of language teacher identity (hereinafter LTI), should be a way to resist the predominant pragmatism and utilitarianism promoted in the name of an alleged modernization and progress by the inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism of education policies. This chapter intends to report on a study that was grounded on our concern to explore the various issues intersecting English language (hereinafter EL) teachers’ identities in the framework of supranational education policies that have an insertion of globalization and capitalism. Acknowledging the power that narratives have in individuals’ construction of their lived realities, the study sought to analyze EL teachers’ voices about their lived experiences in the form of small stories. This was the result of the socio-critical perspective we adopted to voice those who often tend to be placed at the bottom of the hegemonic and hierarchical pyramid within the decision-making and implementation of language policies in Colombia. The big story that we set out to tell in this chapter adds up to the metaphor of a tapestry that is at the core of this volume. Figuratively, those EL teachers’ small stories compose one piece of the tapestry. They are meaningful life experiences that we sew with the threads of the EL teachers’ epistemological, ontological, and axiological positions. Those positions mark their criticality and agency to problematize the neoliberal power that hits their personal, academic, and professional beings and doings. For some EL teachers, being critical and acting accordingly becomes an isolated effort; nevertheless, we always hope that LTI becomes a research area that transcends and adopts a critical dimension to contest the subtle spreading forms of globalization and capitalism in schools and universities,

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such as programs and assessment standardization, that lead individuals to turn into global competitors. We base this statement upon Adams & Marshall (1996) who declare that identity construction usually appears as transactional given the fact that people’s personal or social identities cannot only be shaped by but also shape and transform living systems.

Our Research Concerns We consider research that advocates Colombian EL teachers as transformative intellectuals an urgent need. Through research, our concern here is to unravel their own ways of being and becoming, their ways to say who they are before the social, cultural, and political identities that they claim or that other social and political actors assign them. It is also part of our concern to add understanding about the ways EL teachers self-­ initiate their own critical agendas rooted in local knowledge. We have seen that EL teachers account for their practices from within the practices themselves. In another study (Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero, 2016), we learned about how some teachers at public schools become powerful when interacting with their students within their classrooms, when they examined their experiences to qualify themselves, and when they made informed decisions about their practices. It means that they are accountable for the processes that occur in their classrooms, their work efforts, professional development options, and the obligations that they reckon as intrinsic to their roles (Varghese et al., 2005). Conversely, we also learned that there are situations where teachers become powerless. It usually happens outside their classroom or schools when dealing with issues of the education community. Such is the case of policymakers’ reluctance to position EL teachers as people with more value than mere clerks of the education system. Guerrero-Nieto (2010) states that official mandates, such as the Colombian National Bilingual Program, construct EL teachers as implementers and technicians with little to no space to propose alternatives; therefore, their voices are silenced (Méndez et al., 2019). Even though EL teachers’ informed decisions are part of what we understand as their agency to help their students learn, that is, their capacity to think, act, and feel (Monge-Urquijo et al., 2019),

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they must face the challenge to make their agency transcend their classrooms so that it turns as valuable for other social actors of education policymaking. We are convinced that a great majority EL teachers do not reproduce official mandates blindly. When it comes for them to implement official mandates, they question, take positions, and re-orient their pedagogical practices, making those mandates context-responsive and hence, meaningful for their students’ learning process. Despite the fact that we know that EL teachers’ agency arises when there is a clear and profound critical reflection among practices and discourses (Canrinus et al., 2011), they are usually convened not to participate but to be informed of the decisions previously made by technocrats and government representatives. There is a lack of bidirectional communication between policymakers and EL teachers. There is no negotiation about what a priority should be; for instance, policymakers focus on the technical effectiveness of education programs and projects, while teachers consider their students worthy of attention as multidimensional human beings. It accentuates a top-down delineation of policies and a hierarchy (Touraine, 2001) in the education system. In Colombia, such hierarchy has an ideological, political, and economical background. Nussbaum (2010) maintains that policymakers are usually influenced by supranational factors above the local governments and associated with economic agreements or capitalist impositions. It entails the silent adoption and circulation of discourses such as productivity and competitiveness (Usma, 2009; Villegas Correa, 2017), performativity, and quality (Ball, 2003; Guerrero & Quintero, 2021). In the same line, Shohamy (2004) states that those discourses are justified by statistics that are consistent with the terms of external agents and divert the attention of those at lower levels of the hierarchy. This is problematic since it reflects capitalist principles that direct and promote the development of knowledge but mainly in the sense of the interest of capital (Hill, 2010). In this sense, EL teachers experience a constant tension between their own understanding of language pedagogy, language research, and language learning versus what the supranational norms of performativity (Englund & Frostenson, 2017) about the use of product-oriented instructional strategies and techniques to assure quality results at the time of evaluating students’ performance (Day et al., 2006).

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Summing up, this chapter intends to examine the interplay of EL teacher-researchers’ identity and policy through a narrative inquiry approach in the time of supranational education policy reforms that are implemented at the micro (e.g., classroom interactional), meso (e.g., school institution), and macro (e.g., societal) levels. Likewise, it aims to make visible the transformative potential that EL teachers have when critiquing the status quo or when they negotiate their identities at the time they experience ideological and political conflicts with others. With this in mind, the research question that guided the study was what reflexive and transformative perspectives do EL teachers take on to story themselves as critical agents of language education?

Theoretical Considerations Our understanding about EL teachers’ storied agency vis-a-vis supranational policies as part of the (re)construction of their critical teacher identities leads us to propose a discussion of three topics, namely: The inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism of education affecting LTI, Criticality and agency as components of EL teachers’ self-as-teacher, and Storied LTI from a narrative outlook.

 he Inset of Neoliberal Globalization T and Capitalism of Education Affecting LTI There is a unipolar power structure of the world order that results from the current neoliberal globalization. It is a phenomenon that affects every actor of the relations between economy and politics in Colombian society, and although one wants to flee from this process, in one way or another, one ends up linked to the dynamics of the internationalization of markets and the mobility of people throughout the planet. Capitalism has caused a division between doing and knowing, between theory and practice, between work and education (Zuleta, 2020), and neoliberalism has appeared as an alternative proposal of the international capitalist system. Velásquez (2017) claims that neoliberalism is an intellectual fad

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typical of modernist capitalism that superimposes over the tradition of the periphery and that in Colombian society, it was institutionalized from the 1990s through a series of economic, political, and social reforms. In the Colombian education system, the inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism has been gaining room quietly and effectively and has become stronger year after year in the silent acquiescence of many actors of the education system. One illustrating situation is that in the name of economic adjustments, education has been the center of reforms that little by little has cut financial support for schools, teachers, students, and parents. It has promoted practices of privatization such as equipping students with skills to function in the labor market, fostering charter schools, and opening student loan agencies. The inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism of education stems from the world order that depends on the global political and economic actions of the richest part of the planet. It finds an alibi in freedom of choice, and in its name, the responsibilities of the State toward its nationals are reduced (Harvey, 2007); for instance, aspects of the social life (e.g., education, health, and housing) that should be granted as rights become services for which citizens must pay. In Colombia, it is seen in ways the actors and activities of the education system serve the purpose to propagate an ideology of profitability; that is to say, knowledge does not develop according to its general useful effects for humanity but rather to its particular effects for the accumulation of (economic) capital.1 It puts education at stake because education turns into a cost-effective business that requires low investment for high profits. The inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism affects LTI in subtle but effective ways. Following our aforementioned idea that education has become a business, we add that such inset forces universities and schools to look for obtaining economic profit from the action of educating and implicitly constructs students as customers and teachers as clerks. It also implies the corporatization of the individual identities of teachers (Flores, 2013), in the sense that teachers become valuable to the extent that they help corporate groups accumulate as much capital as possible.  Cruz-Arcila and Solano-Cohen (this volume) refer to the prioritization of mercantilist dynamics associated to the industry of the English language teaching and learning as a practice that is forced by neoliberal structures within the education system to capitalize oneself in socioeconomic terms. 1

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In addition, the pervasiveness of capitalism has engendered hegemonic discourses that dictate the work teachers are supposed to do, for example accreditation, standardization, ranking. Economic profit calls for training programs and life-long technical learning to assure employable workers (Saad-Filho & Johnston, 2004). One way to achieve economic profit is to force uniform patterns for teaching and assessment as activities of the curriculum. Through uniform patterns, it is possible to control and standardize programs and practices of universities. Universities, in turn, must prove productivity and quality following standards from the corporate world. The standardized models also imply a breakdown of the relation between teachers and students. Establishing a rapport between teachers and students is not a priority of those models, that is to say, that teachers focus on transmitting contents and students are led to manage their time to engage with their learning process. A standardized curriculum assumes learners as equal to the business, ignores specific learning needs, and expects students to produce learning outcomes as part of a commodification ideology. In ELT official planning, EL teachers are thought to play a passive role, that of consuming and reproducing prescriptive views of language. Likewise, its intromission in ELT has installed ideas on uniform language use, boosting the standardization movement, and pursuing trained language users under the fantasy of a native-like model (Kubota, 2004). Overall, the incidence of neoliberal globalization and capitalism spans beyond the economic factors to the very concept of what education really means and what purposes it should serve.

 riticality and Agency as Components of EL C Teachers’ Self-as-Teacher EL teachers’ identities are multifaceted, dynamic, and fluid (Barkhuizen, 2017, Flores, 2014; Fomunyam, 2016). This implies that teachers’ identities are ongoing and permanently changing. They do not happen in a vacuum. They develop as teachers interrelate and play roles as social, cultural, political actors. This process is complex and occurs thanks to the (re)interpretation of experiences (Beijaard et al., 2004; Nias, 1996).

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Likewise, at the individual level, multiple experiences can shape embodied understandings and actions that lead to what teachers consider being a professional (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). EL teachers always make sense and negotiate their self-as-teacher (McLean, 1999; Quintero-Polo, 2019) while performing as professionals of language education in different settings. Furthermore, Varghese et al. (2005) state that the identity of language teachers is “multiple, shifting and in conflict” (p. 35). It relates to the fact that EL teachers’ making sense of their self-as-teacher is based on their positions derived from their personal, academic, and professional experiences in educational settings that challenge inner and outer factors. Therefore, Along Freire (1972), we deem EL teachers’ problematizing of professional issues is a sign of the critical dimension of LTI. In relation to that, we see criticality in some EL teachers’ skepticism toward notions and ideas about the industrialization and commodification of EL instruction (Pennycook, 1999) and EL teachers that globalization and capitalism forward and that have remained naturalized. It shows that EL teacher’s identity is critically based (Kubota, 2017). It means that EL teachers can resist imposed traits on their identity and even revert it when they engage in questioning conventions, such as that of massive and standardized practices of language assessing and testing that are no longer challenged or the neoliberal tendency to depict teachers as passive social actors in charge of implementing guidelines based on the economy of a globalized world (Rodriguez & Rusell, 2016). Though for some casting doubt on such sort of conventions and tendencies may not be enough for making considerable impact on social realities, we have learned that EL teachers’ making sense of their meaningful experiences induces reflexivity (i.e., critical awareness) and awakens their critical thinking. This relates to criticality in the sense that, as Giroux (1988) puts it, EL teachers are transformative intellectuals and professionals who are willing and engaged in problematizing cultural, social, and political matters. They view the relation between language and society as situated and their critical awareness allows them to take a stand for or against broader sociocultural and political orders (Fairclough, 1992; Pennycook, 2001). Accordingly, EL teachers can decide and act

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upon veiled purposes and hidden agendas of globalization and capitalism within language policies. Therefore, EL teachers do not simply accept and reproduce mandates of education policies, but they can also cast doubt on them and become agents of change through micro-practices (Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero-­ Polo, 2021). It is another shade of criticality, that is, agency. LTI takes place in teachers’ willingness to exert agency toward determining the sense of self (Kumaravadivelu, 2012). We consider that agency relates to EL teachers’ self-empowerment since they can reflect and act upon their own experiences. Such self-empowerment is their capacity to freely understand that the world is multidimensional and to subvert the discourses of powerful others that determine them (Davies, 1991). In this train of thought, EL teachers rely on their own individual experiences, beliefs, and reasoning (Freire, 1972) to decide and act upon powerful others’ positioning practices that affect them. In other words, EL teachers take up a position, decide, and act upon external factors. Thus, EL teachers’ agency takes place to resist the positioning and the power that globalization and capitalism exert over their identities.

Storied LTI from a Narrative Outlook In the ELT field, EL teachers have a voice that usually interacts with distinguishable voices from diverse sources (Bakhtin, 1981). The voices of EL teachers often take the shape of stories as a constitutive part of being human (Moen, 2006). Lived meaningful experiences are the contents of those stories that EL teachers tell, and narratives are both the introspection and verbalization of the meaningfulness of such stories. Thus, narratives are not just a list of events or cursory descriptions of lived experiences. Instead, narratives are complex discursive constructions that individuals intelligently connect with experiences (Meretoja, 2014). In that sense, EL teachers position themselves reflexively from constructing their narratives (Davies & Harré, 1990). As owners of their stories, EL teachers are the ones who assign meaning to their narratives (Atkinson, 2007). Put it that way, narratives can be thought of as having cognitive, epistemological, and ontological

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dimensions (Meretoja, 2014). Thus, EL teachers decide upon a meaningful order to reality or the human experience. EL teachers also act upon their own human way of being in the world as a constitutive factor of human existence. They connect their past or present (and even their future) lived experiences with their emotions, feelings, and beliefs (Barkhuizen, 2016). Hence, narratives, either oral or written, transcend the narrated event and become a means to understand the narrator’s self and a means for him/her to shape his/her identities (De Fina, 2015). In addition, the systems of knowledge and power that govern the institutions, disciplines, and practices in our society have language as a key element (Norton & Morgan, 2013). Language acquires a locally grounded dimension (Derrida, 1978; Weedon, 1987) that ingrains meanings that individuals create upon discourses, the social groups they inhabit, and their lived experiences represented in stories. This statement acknowledges the multiple realities constructed in discourse and which “are always local, subjective, and in flux” (Hatch, 2002, p. 18). Furthermore, extending this statement to identity, language becomes a site for the configuration and contestation of identity. It is because language configures meanings, and meanings of the self and others, in turn, form our notion of discourse (Morgan, 2007). Such notion relates not only to the dialogic process of conversation and interaction but also, as we especially saw it in our study, to the meaning-making EL teachers construct over their lived stories (Barkhuizen, 2015). To conclude this section, EL teachers make sense of their teaching experiences through the stories they tell (Barkhuizen, 2008). We have learned that experience and temporality are the ground for identity (Elliot, 2005). In addition, it is through those stories that teachers shape, negotiate, and/or alter their identities. Similarly, how experiences are interpreted, made tellable, and even livable upon the meanings created in stories are some ways that EL teachers story themselves. Therefore, in storying their lives, EL teachers provide the substance of the lived reality (Davies, 1991). In a few words and drawing on Bruner’s (2002) perspective of narrative as a means of knowing, that is particularly useful to represent the richness of human experiences, one may contend that identity is also a life story.

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Methodology This study used a narrative-based data collection approach and analytical framework. The narrative turn (Barkhuizen, 2015) in the field of applied linguistics in general, and in the area of ELT in particular, is nowadays acknowledged not only with a focus on it as a genre (form) but also with a focus on it as research approach and data (Quintero-Polo, 2019). In the same line as Connelly and Clandinin (2006), who place narratives under the qualitative paradigm, in this study the concept of narrative is methodological and it is used in close relation to the use of language as a social practice through which experiences are storied while identities are constructed (Norton & Early, 2011). It took a practical realization when the participants reflected upon their life experiences, that is, when they storied themselves. Accordingly, this study used short stories since the focus was on meaningful experiences related to the phenomena of critical language teacher identity in ELT as a political milieu. Furthermore, the data were triggered in an introspective process that went beyond events by themselves and transcended to understand the meanings EL teachers assigned to these places, people, and experiences. Through this discursive process of self-narration, participants recognized themselves as a way to (re)construct their identities since they linked their introspection about their past experiences and their interpretation of the present. In the same vein, teachers envisioned ways of being that ultimately reflected the ideological, political, and practical perspectives that shaped their professional identities.

Participants We decided to open a call for participation for MA students in the fields of ELT and Applied Linguistics from more than 25 public and private universities across Colombia. From the open call, 7 out of 13 EL teachers accepted to participate and culminated an online interview. Therefore, we account for the outcomes of the interviews to those seven participants as seen in the chat below. Every participant signed a form granting us

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consent to use the collected data for research purposes (available from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JiAMsFIFUC2iZHgkf7JBL4EF he2S2y84?usp=sharing). Participants’ Profiles EL Teacher-­ Participant Joha

Patricia

Ángela Jonás

Julieta

Cristo

Marcos

Profile She is an EL teacher in a public school. She recently graduated from a MA program, and she declares to having become more critical and questioning her students’ context realities. She is an EL teacher. She is currently studying an MA. She positions herself as a critical person because of a transition in her personal and professional life. She is a language teacher and an MA student. She detaches herself from the technical focus of policies. He has studied two MA programs. He teaches English at university level. He sees himself as a professional of language education with a voice of resistance. Julieta is an EL teacher at a public school which is located in a rural town. She is currently studying an MA. She has also taught at private schools. She has discrepancies with policies that perpetuate the social gap. He is an EL teacher and MA student. He is from a small city but currently living and studying in a big metropolitan city in Colombia. He is critically aware of the unfairness of the government when allocating resources to the central and thriving cities in comparison to the scarce resources that peripheral cities receive. Marcos is an EL teacher and MA student. His process of selecting, applying, and eventually starting an MA program constituted a turning point in his academic and professional life with implications in his personal life too.

Source: Own elaboration

Interview Process We collected oral life narratives through interviews for which we used an online video call platform. Those interviews eased a dialogic relation between the researchers and participants. Also, considering that the interviews were semi-structured, we designed an interview protocol (Available

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from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JiAMsFIFUC2iZHgkf7J BL4EFhe2S2y84?usp=sharing) that guided each conversation to align the pertinence of the information obtained to the purpose of our research study. In this sense, the interview protocol revolved around three key moments: before the interview, the participants received via email a guide for a preliminary introspective practice (available from https://drive. google.com/drive/folders/1JiAMsFIFUC2iZHgkf7JBL4EFhe2S2y84?us p=sharing); during the interview, there was a dialogic space in which researchers and participants conversed about the different moments in their life that marked their agency as teachers and after the interview; and after the interview, the conversations were transcribed and later analyzed.

Findings and Discussion Having narrative analysis as the lens to explore EL teachers’ identities, we could examine the dynamics that the participating EL teachers engage in, while experiencing the subjugating, oppressive policies and enacting, adapting, or resisting said policies. It resulted in our proposal of three categories, one main category titled EL teachers’ reflexivity questioning the inset of globalization and capitalism in education, and two related categories titled EL teachers’ storied agency for educational equality despite the neoliberal social gap, and EL teachers’ certainties and uncertainties caused by transnational organizations: the case of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

 ain Category: EL Teachers’ Reflexivity M Questioning the Inset of Globalization and Capitalism in Education We consider EL teachers’ criticality and agency as features of their beings and doings in which their reflexivity and decision-making lead them to (re)signify their own teaching and research experiences as alternative practices for transformation. The new ways of being educators connect to

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the participants’ preliminary step toward a critical identity perspective in the sense that they frequently look for alternatives to inform their decisions and actions on their own experiences, which have implications for the resignification of their own beings. Joha illustrates this as follows: So the research seems positive to me, because the research programs do make one really change, change their attitude, their thoughts. See everything you can contribute as a teacher, despite the fact that one says that teachers in our country do not have power, because suddenly in some things we do not have as much influence, but with our students we do have power. (Joha, narrative interview. Our translation)

Joha’s declaration about her change of mind and her image of power are two features of her enacting of her criticality and agency. The former feature finds research as a mediator, and research itself is a way to empower herself as a figure of power for, not over, her students. Another feature of the participants’ criticality and agency that we found is that of the evolution from being obedient to becoming critical. Patricia shows her own transition this way: So first, when I knew about them for the first time, I saw that they were very much about languages as something that will give you a job and as something very functional. So, when one sees that as a teacher, at first it’s like, let’s say, one still hasn’t developed some more critical thinking. So one can think “ok I have to train the students to be good workers, so that they have enough language to work in lalala”. But that’s not right. I think that this is the problem with policies that make people think that languages are for one thing, that they are only good for one thing, but in reality they go further. So, when one begins to think a little further, one sees that the policies that these plans do not, that is, fall short. (Patricia, narrative interview. Our translation)

There is an evolution from the self of the past to the self of the present of Patricia. She sees that in the past she was obedient about what the policies mandated and she felt her duty was to teach students the language to find a job. She acted that way because she was not “critical enough”; later she starts questioning the real purpose of a language policy and she positions herself differently by saying “but that’s not right.” She distances

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herself from the discourses that sell the language as merely instrumental in attaining a job. We see that the self of the past did not question what the policy mandated while the self of the present does problematize and finds more shadows and textures to the language policy. As regards the inset of globalization and capitalism, we refer to it as the capital-based world order that introduces the language and the logic of the market into the education system to comply with the demands of globalization and that imitates the private sector (Hatcher, 2000) to the point of controlling people’s lives and determining social practices, values, and identities. That inset is not different from the commodification of education in general and, in particular, the mercantilization of the ELT curriculum in the Colombian education system. Ángela’s small story below let us see how it affects life experiences of all actors of the education system. If I speak I, I am productive and competitive, otherwise I am not. That is one of the things that strikes me the most. The other thing is that it’s like society in general is expected to have specific skills, that is, market expectations. Then, they have made us very technical and mechanical and jobs that do not require thinking, but require doing, so that we repeat and repeat one thing over and over again and that we focus on an activity that is merely technical. (Ángela, narrative interview. Our translation)

We infer from Ángela’s story that the inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism of education emphasize on the technical over the human dimension of education. That inset uses English language as an instrument of domination that alters individuals’ ways of being, as Ángela declares “I speak English, I am productive and competitive, otherwise I am not.” It means that the major interest of globalization and capitalism is to position EL teachers as clerks who are functional to the demands of the market, instead of valuing their capacity as intellectuals. Fortunately, the dominance that Ángela mentions in her story finds instances of resistance in some EL teachers, such as in the case of Jonás’s: I feel that the word resistance in my case means raising my voice, not interpreting it as the fight, but rather demonstrating with my actions, which in this case would be my teaching, that what the ministry of education is really showing through the

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bilingualism plans that have reformed period after period, is not what really puts together our reality. (Jonás, narrative interview. Our translation)

Yet questioning official programs, like the bilingualism plan that Jonás refers to in his small story, is not a common collective practice; it is always comforting to know about those isolated efforts of raising the voice to question official programs. Jonás does it in a symbolic manner through his “actions” (i.e., his teaching practice) to contest the ever-changing bilingual plan for being far from his reality.

 elated Category 1: EL Teachers’ Storied R Agency for Educational Equality despite the Neoliberal Social Gap There is some social stratification implicit in the inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism of education, particularly in its tendency to privatization of education that brings about inequality. Private education educates for high roles in the society and labor contexts. In contrast, public schools create their curricula for students to play subordinated roles. Kramsch and Vinall (2015) state that due to globalization and capitalism, teachers are responsible to generate learners from public schools with language skills for being workers. About this issue, Juliana tells: President Juan Manuel Santos’s discourse focuses on English learning as a tool for students to work in call centers. I state that a call center is not a place to develop a person’s intellect. I mean, they do not view the English language as a social tool to learn the culture, they view the English language as a work tool (…) Additionally, it is sad to see that lower-class students are prepared to work in call centers, while private education students are educated to study at universities and get elite positions in their jobs. Taking into account the policies (…) in private universities and schools they do not educate students to work in a call center, I mean, there is stratification related to education. (Julieta, narrative interview, our translation)

We infer that Julieta’s agency and criticality is enacted through her vision of language as sociocultural practice that goes beyond its

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instrumental dimension. Julieta questions public education that perceives students as call potential center workers and teachers as trainers. The socioeconomic stratification in ELT manifests itself through a binary educational opposition between private and public schools. We understand that it is problematic for Julieta, since she positions her students as thinking reflective individuals, whereas public schools intend to form workers who do not go beyond following instructions. Accordingly, we infer that she is exerting her agency because she acts under her own principles. Moreover, the social gap that the inset of neoliberal globalization and capitalism accentuates in the Colombian territory turns even paradoxical when policies overlook the needs of sectors of the population to assure what those policies claim as a priority, that is, the access to a globalized world. Cristo lets us see this issue: These policies are a bit dehumanizing because they forget low-income students, those who still live far away, those who do not have Internet access, when the world is almost speaking digitally in a constant digitization and all the information has already been globalized. But in many schools students do not even have access to a computer in information technology class. So, it is inconceivable from every point of view. (Cristo, narrative interview. Our translation)

Yet one of the premises of the inset of globalization and capitalism is that the English language is a prerogative for economic success, Cristo’s small story shows us his critical awareness about national policies related to Internet connectivity not being equitable because they do not consider low-income students. Cristo’s agency leads him to question the paradox of globalization without assuring the technological mediation to interact globally.

 elated Category 2: EL Teachers’ Certainties R and Uncertainties Caused by Transnational Organizations: The Case of OECD The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a transnational organization that claims its attempt to build better policies for better lives. It created such a thing as a “Better Life Index” for several countries. In the Better Life Index for Colombia, the

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OECD reports that relative to other countries in that index, “Colombia underperforms the average in income, jobs, education, health, environmental quality, social connections, civic engagement, and life satisfaction” (OECD, 2020, par. 1). It implies that Colombia must accomplish the demands to reach the minimum required to be part of the OECD. As in other areas of the Colombian educational system, it is strategically presented as another alibi for justifying actions that respond to the demand for improving the economy of the country. We could exemplify it through the following segment from the Education section of the OECD’s (2020, par 19) Better Life Index for Colombia: A well-educated and well-trained population is essential for a country’s social and economic well-being. Education plays a key role in providing individuals with the knowledge, skills, and competencies needed to participate effectively in society and the economy. Having a good education greatly improves the likelihood of finding a job and earning enough money.

Marcos expresses his discrepancy about the OECD’s economic drive in the excerpt below, when asserting that an interest solely in the profitability of education leads to overlooking the human development of people: I feel that this is the speech that Santos gave there, he focused more on terms of work. It is English to work, not for other things. And as for the teaching of the English language, well, that is about rather economic purposes, so they discuss how the country’s insertion in this organization, –the OECD–, is all about. So, I see it as having political and monetary interests there, rather than educational as such or the development of people. (Marcos, narrative interview. Our translation)

The identification and problematization of issues relevant to social reality (Atkinson, 2004) relate to the social and critical sensitivity of Marcos’s when he declares his small story that education and people’s (human) development remain disregarded. We also see those features in the following Joha’s small story: Well, I think according to what one sees, what one knows, it is not for an altruistic purpose but rather for an economic purpose. He [former president Santos]

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talks a lot about the OECD, we also know that this establishment governs the economy in developed and developing countries. I like to read a lot about the economics of education. (Joha, narrative interview. Our translation)

We could infer that when Joha refers to the relationship between the insertion of Colombia in the OECD as grounded on economic interests, then she relies on her intellectual self-investment to understand and question the supposed altruistic spirit of OECD and how government representatives and policymakers play their roles accordingly. Marcos’s and Joha’s stories about the insertion of Colombia in the OECD are a sign of resistance, which we extrapolate to their agency that goes back and forth from uncertainties to certainties. Uncertainties that act as a force for their autonomous decisions and actions when they deal with social issues inside and outside their classrooms and schools, and top-down models of language instruction claim to provide teacher-­ researchers with recipe-like strategies to solve immediate classroom instructional issues that create the sensation of certainty, but they are actually veiled forces over the actors of the educational system. A focus on research to detach from a top-down and instrumentalist view of ELT is for Marcos a reflective and critical way to understand teaching and figure out alternatives for transformation, as he declares: So that’s when I began to document much more about the critical. It took me many months to understand, let’s say, adequately, what the critical consists of. And then, while designing the problem statement and the theoretical framework and everything, that’s when it began to dimension how interesting this is, it is a perspective that definitely goes according to my interests, with my vision of teaching and with the purposes that I have, to transform, to change or at least to raise awareness in students about something. (Marcos, narrative interview. Our translation)

Marcos lets us see his desire for transformation. We understand transformation achieved by means of doing research as a practice that signals the critical spirit of those who conduct such practice. Marcos’s decision of doing research from a critical outlook as the result of his individual human action or his agency that serves the purpose to tackle the

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uncertainties generated by forces that are external to him. Marcos appeals to his self-initiated research agenda to pursue the purpose of transforming the status quo moved by what is a priority for him: to raise awareness in his students.

Concluding Remarks The question that guided our analysis was what reflexive and transformative perspectives do EL teachers take on to story themselves as critical agents of language education? To answer this question, we account for the participating EL teachers’ transformative identity as a site of agency in the frame of macro policies with an influencing force of neoliberal globalization and capitalism. In addition to that, we encapsulate our analysis into three categories, namely one main category titled EL teachers’ reflexivity questioning the inset of globalization and capitalism in education, and two related categories titled EL teachers’ storied agency for educational equality despite the neoliberal social gap, and EL teachers’ certainties and uncertainties caused by transnational organizations: the case of OECD. We also consider the notion of storied agency as a step toward a critical identity perspective. It means that the EL teachers’ research alternatives relate to the informed decisions and actions they take upon the discourses and practices which condition their self-construction. It is by reflecting upon their own stories around their personal, academic, and professional trajectories that the EL teachers find ways to enlighten their decisions and actions. Their reflexivity as critical awareness serves the purpose to cope with institutional planning or the education system. They do not fight against the system but find ways to act upon their own experiences to keep their own (ideological) principles. These ones consider a balance between the human and technical dimensions of all actors in the education system. All in all, the EL teachers’ agency is the initiation of the construction of their critical identity. Their agency serves the purpose for them to contest discourses of globalization and capitalism that position them as functional clerks.

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10 Deskilling of English Teachers in Colombia: Neoliberalism, Internal Colonialism, and the Reification of English Carmen Helena Guerrero-Nieto and Álvaro Hernán Quintero-Polo

Introduction In this chapter we will pull three salient threads from the previous ones: neoliberalism in education, teachers, and English, to weave yet another piece in this multicolored tapestry, all these crossed by the fiber of internal colonialism. We would like to open this weaving with a quote from David Block (2012: 63):

C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (*) • Á. H. Quintero-Polo Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_10

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applied linguists need to take not only economics seriously when discussing globalisation, but also history. Were they to do so, many who currently claim to be doing ‘critical’ work would be in a better position to argue that their work is indeed ‘critical’. Their work would not just be respectful of diversity (important, as I will argue below) and even ‘cool’, but oppositional to the current neoliberal order of things and resistant to the processes which constitute this order.

Although our interest is not to discuss globalization but to examine the role of neoliberalism in education, and particularly in English language teaching, the role of history is undeniably crucial in understanding the pervasive consequences of neoliberalism in people’s life choices. The late 1980s and early 1990s constitute a period of extreme violence in Colombia, marked, among other bloody events, by the murder of Luis Carlos Galán, a liberal candidate who faced the drug cartels lead by the infamous Pablo Escobar; constant terrorist attacks like random car bombs in the big cities, the killing of hundreds of policemen, the explosion of an airplane, kidnaps, and many more, executed by the drug cartels; the murder, by extreme right groups, of many leftist political leaders, some of which were ex-members of the M-19 guerrilla group who had signed a peace agreement with the national government. In this panorama of normalized violence (Ortega, 2023) exerted by illegal groups as well as by state agents, Colombia welcomed neoliberalism. Neoliberalism was inserted, ideologically, from 1986 to 1994, when Virgilio Barco was in office. In 1990 under the government of César Gaviria, neoliberalism was fully implemented. For almost two decades more, during the government of the liberal Ernesto Samper and the conservative Andrés Pastrana, there was a close supervision from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make sure the model was fully implemented and executed (Díaz-Borbón, 2018) The reduction of the State is one of the actions that reassure the implementation of neoliberalism; this includes, of course, drying out public schools and universities while boosting, facilitating, and promoting private education. At the same time, neoliberal discourses colonize the disciplines by undermining the humanistic concept of pedagogy and replacing it with one where education is “a process of profitability and

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productive skills; it is sold and acquired because it has an economic rate of return” (Díaz-Borbón, 2018: 165). In Colombia, English language teaching has been very instrumental in the spread and implementation of neoliberalism since the English language has been widely reified as the language of success, business, international communication, global economy, etc. The design and implementation of a national language policy, best known as the National Bilingualism Project, where “bilingual” means “English” (Guerrero-­ Nieto, 2008) was nested, in fact, in the interests of economic groups, who responded to supranational organizations like the OECD and Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, BID (Miranda-Pulido, 2022). The recommendations of these organizations were to implement “bilingual” projects in order to facilitate free trade agreements. The four English teachers with whom we talked about their current jobs and work conditions at language institutes in Colombia (we will provide more detailed information below) are all young professionals born in the late 1990 and early 2000. This means that they did not know, firsthand, a welfare State. They do not know the privileges of a public, free education, or public health, or public utility services, etc. For these generations, the rule is that you have to pay for everything from your own health coverage to your Spotify account. As we stated above neoliberalism have even affected the life choices of young professionals, who have two or three jobs to make a decent salary and who have to postpone family or other personal projects because money is very tight (Motavita & Motavita, 2019). The adoption of neoliberalism in all areas of education, from hiring conditions to controlling curricular content, has led to the configuration of internal colonialism. Internal colonialism was originally coined by Mills, an influential Black Marxists (Grosfoguel, 2018), and later revisited by González Casanova (2006). It refers to the way in which local elites treat their own compatriots as inferior. The State, through their regulations and policies, has aided and abetted the exercise of internal colonialism and has left very little room for teachers to fight those unequal practices. In the second section of this chapter, we will address this issue in depth. These three core concepts: (1) Neoliberalism in Education, (2) Reification of English, and (3) Internal Colonialism will serve as the lens we use to analyze the conversations we had with four young English Teachers in

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order to get a glimpse of the way in which the three concepts are articulated toward the domestication and deskilling of English teachers. We will be knitting, weaving, and stitching some theoretical considerations about these three concepts, followed by a description of our research design; then we will discuss our findings and close the chapter with some conclusions.

Neoliberalism in Colombian Education The neoliberal turn in Colombia has been around for about 30 years that have left a negative imprint in the ways in which we live our lives (Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero, 2021). Its implementation in our country was founded on the promise of economic success for all. However, we cannot lose sight that in the United States and Great Britain the rationale had to do with the “threat” of communism that motivated a discrediting campaign against unions to debilitate their leverage in negotiating better working conditions (Harvey, 2007). But we could say, along with Dumenil & Levy (2011), that the real reason behind the implementation of neoliberalism is the interest of the wealthiest classes regaining the economic hegemony they had lost between World War II and the 1970s. By mining the role of unions, neoliberalism has successfully installed the idea that individualism is the key to success and freedom. In education, neoliberalism has had incidence in (1) the core foundations of education, like the pedagogical and curricular ones, introducing corporate language, standardization practices, achievement indicators, efficiency, and efficacy, among others (Apple, 1999); and (2) in the working conditions of teachers, by normalizing short-term contracts (between 4 and 11 months) with no benefits and paid by the hour; by doing so, reducing the teaching profession to the single activity of delivering a lesson. We think, with DíazBorbón (2018: 165), that “given the economic matrix that causes the elaboration and application of these educational policies, they entail not only the cultural educational setback already seen (and still to be seen), but also deteriorate the possibilities of ‘democratic growth’ in a country”.1  Translation is ours from the original in Spanish.

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 recariousness of Teaching English P in Colombia In 2004 the national government launched its National Bilingualism Program. As we have stated elsewhere (Guerrero-Nieto, 2008, Guerrero-­ Nieto & Quintero-Polo, 2009), “bilingual” means “English”. Nurtured by the discourses that reified English as the language of globalization, progress, and economic benefits (López-Gopar & Sughrua, 2014; Sayer, 2018), there was a boost in the demand for English classes which in turn led to an increment of language institutes, some as annexed departments to private and public universities and many others under the figure of vocational institutes; their objective is to offer non-formal technical education to respond to the needs of the market (Ministerio de Educación Nacional, 2006). This norm has been updated in 2009 and in 2015. These non-formal institutions which we will be calling “language institutes” for the remaining of the chapter have profited from the norms and regulations issued by the different governments of the last 20 years, and have installed an apparent neoliberal agenda that goes in the two directions mentioned above: that of the curricular and pedagogical aspects, aimed at the deskilling of teachers (Apple, 1999; Bonilla-Medina,2 this volume; Sayer, 2012), and that of the working conditions, that under the premise of efficiency hires teachers per hour, with the sole purpose of delivering a pre-planned lesson, designed by someone somewhere.

Internal Colonialism in English Language Teaching Various authors have referred to the classificatory nature of capitalism. Block (2012) states that under the logic of capitalism the world is divided between core and periphery where powerful nations (the core) hold monetary capital while periphery nations like African and Latin American provide cheap labor. This perspective coincides with decolonial authors  In her chapter, Bonilla-Medina refers to the ways in which neoliberal-oriented policies oppress teachers and make them obediently follow those policies. 2

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who add to this concept that capitalism is also founded on the idea of race (Grosfoguel, 2018), where the core is white and superior and the periphery (non-white) is poor and deemed as inferior (Mignolo, 2009). This understanding of capitalism is very helpful in the conceptualization of internal colonialism. González Casanova (2006) traces the first hints of the concept in the former Soviet Union under the ruling of Lenin, in 1914. He also acknowledges that the Black American Marxist C. Wright Mills was the first to use the expression “internal colonialism”. Grosfoguel (2018) states that for Black American Marxists internal colonialism defines the oppressive situations lived by Afroamericans within their own territory, exerted by their own white fellow Americans. What differentiates internal colonialism from coloniality is that the former is exerted by native (local) elites over their fellow citizens, who happen to be in less privileged situations. A neoliberal state like the Colombian one facilitates the consolidation of internal colonialism through loopholes in different regulations, left there intentionally or unintentionally.

Research Design The objective of this short-term qualitative study was to unravel how the articulation of neoliberalism, internal colonialism, and the reification of English give way to different strategies aimed at the deskilling of teachers. In line with Vasilachis (2009), we invited the four young professionals who accepted to dialogue with us as “known subjects” while we took the role of “knowing subjects”, within an epistemological position that sees both roles as dynamic and fluid, that is, either party can be, at times, the known or the knowing subject. This perspective is relevant for us as we sought to build a heterarchical relationship among ourselves and where known and knowing subjects were equally important for the research process in terms of knowledge construction. Seeing each other as equals allowed us to stimulate an honest and rich conversation. Being consistent

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with this epistemology, we asked them to introduce themselves for the sake of this chapter, so let us meet these young professionals3: Yergu:  Woman, mestiza, bilingual, language teacher educator. She constructs peace in different scenarios accompanied by her family, her students, and some other teachers who believe in living otherwise from their hearts. Finally, she is a writing lover, for it has been a therapeutical opportunity to become a resilient teacher and an everlasting learner.  Marcos:  I have been an English teacher at language institutes for about 8 years. Half of the time in Bogotá and half of the time in Medellín. I got my undergraduate degree from a public university in Bogotá and I am currently finishing my master’s degree at a public university in Medellin. My experiences as a student in public universities have allowed me to look at the world from a different perspective. I am 28.  Neko:  I am a graduate from a public university. I hold an MA degree. I am 28 years old, and I am working at4 language institute. Phoenix Saint: My name is Phoenix Saint. I am 36 years old. I started working for private language academies in 2011, and I have been working in that setting ever since, I have not yet worked in a school or for a university. My experiences begin well and somehow end up a bit bitter. I worked for private language academies that took advantage of my responsibility to make me teach classes “for free”.  To collect data, we engaged in individual conversations with each one of the known subjects to explore with them three main issues in relationship with their work (either current of former) at any (or various) language institutes in Colombia: (1) Hiring requirements, (2) Working conditions, and (3) Pedagogical aspects. The invitation to participate was done through a convenience strategy, that is, we asked among our friends, colleagues, and students about people who would fit the criteria and would be willing to talk with us. The criteria were very simple: we wanted to talk with Colombian English teachers who are working/have worked at any language center in the country. By coincidence, the four persons who accepted the invitation are in their late 20s or early 30s, which, as we

 We are using their chosen pseudonym.  We will omit the name of the language centers for ethical considerations.

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will show in the conclusions, play a role in the way they exercise their own professional identities. To analyze the data, we followed an inductive technique where we identified major themes and reduced them to find patterns that became categories. In the following section we will present our findings and discussion.

Findings and Discussion The conversations we held with the four known subjects in this study allowed us to identify some ways in which the articulation of neoliberalism, internal colonialism and the reification of English work as a platform that gave way to language institute owners to instrumentalize and deskill English teachers. This articulation happens via discourses and practices. One of the key ideas in neoliberalism is productivity which relates directly to efficacy and efficiency and translates into economic profits. What is not been explicitly said is that the owners of the capital are the ones who profit the most from the labor of their employees. We find here a point of articulation with internal colonialism. In the theoretical considerations section, we showed that internal colonialism had to do with how national elites treated their fellow citizens (who happened to be in less privileged positions) as inferiors. The language institutes adopt labor practices where not only Colombian English teachers are paid less than foreigners (either they be native speakers or not, as long as they are not Colombian or have light skin) but have more chores to do, less challenging courses, and are subjected to practices of fear and coercion to secure contract renewal. The third element that comes into play in this articulation is the reification of English as a good that can be bought. The language institutes serve as providers of a service while teachers serve as clerks who sell the product. In this commercial exchange, the English teacher is nothing else than an instrument. The articulation of these three elements gives way to different strategies that facilitate the deskilling of teachers; in this chapter we will unpack three of them: (1) Corporatization

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of teaching; (2) Routine hackwork; and (3) Language proficiency over teaching skills.

Corporatization of Teaching We understand “corporatization” as the introduction, in different sectors of education, of corporate culture, discourses, and practices. The corporatization of education has developed hand in hand with neoliberalism, and we could say, as a consequence of it. Once the Nation States privatized education, schools and universities (and all other non-formal education institutions) adopted different corporate strategies to survive in the market like making strategic alliances with other companies, organizations, and sponsors; working on their “branding”; developing a “corporate identity and culture”; adopting measurable indicators, among many more to attract clients and maintain profit (Fairclough, 1995; Levidow, 2004). Although this is now the norm among formal education institutions, language institutes have taken it to a different level, and in their run for profit, teachers are being affected as persons and as professionals. Same as any blue-collar jobs where people are hired to perform a variety of chores from managing to cleaning, language institutes have normalized the hiring of teachers, not only to teach but to perform other duties (non-teaching related) like selling courses, serving as receptionists, or collecting students’ fees (Rendón, 2019), despite that most of them are highly qualified professionals (as the case of the knowing subjects of this study). L’s and C’s words help us to illustrate this: Neko: For example, in the case of motivational calls … one has to call the people who are absent, who have not showed for several months, find out why they haven't come back and offer them alternatives for them to come back, so that's one of the functions. Sometimes it's also supporting the front desk; sometimes it can be very crowded, and the secretary is alone, then they ask a teacher to support there, or also with the orientations, these are like some of the functions that we can do in a given case.

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Phoenix Saint: Yes, in XX that was called giving demonstration classes, or giving demo classes, then in the demo class what the teacher does is give a class to a student who is interested in acquiring the product, then the class is given with the methodology [of the center] and it happens even with students who are already studying there, so it is done in such a way that the client feels hooked, so when you have a demo class, there is more pressure because there is something here that I am going to say, but if you touch the owner's pockets, then you receive a punishment, that is, if the seller says, I assign the class to the teacher so-and-so, but the client does not buy from me, because the attitude of the teacher wasn't the best, if that sale falls through, bye-bye the teacher

Loyal to the efficiency and efficacy neoliberal premises, language institutes do not hire enough suitable personnel to serve their clerical needs (receptionists, salespersons) but squeeze the most “labor” per hour from their teachers. In their business model, teachers have to teach all the eight hours per day; if by any circumstance the teacher does not have any student in a particular slot, they have to execute any other task, as the ones we have already mentioned. As Neko recalls: Preparation is not necessary because we have the same methodology that XXX had, which is a maximum of 6 students, each one goes to a different class but they are all at the same level, so it is the same as in XXX to a certain extent because the teachers know everything, that is, the teachers know how to evaluate, the teachers know how to answer calls, the teachers know, well, a more specific group of teachers, they perform other functions, they are in charge of giving the material to the new students, well, let's say that administrative tasks are also part of the teaching functions, so it is not only teaching, but also participating in all the dynamics that YYY has.

Despite the underfunding of public schools and the business-oriented private ones, these types of practices are unthinkable in formal education institutions, where the teaching profession is (to a certain extend) respected. Teachers are expected to perform several activities related to their profession: preparing classes, designing evaluations, advising students, conducting research, participating in academic events, etc. Unfortunately, although the norm, ISO 5580 and ISO 5581 (Ministerio de Educación Nacional-Icontec, 2007a), that regulates language

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institutes in Colombia specifies the qualifications and roles of teachers (none of them include serving as clerks), this type of labor exploitation has been naturalized and accepted among employers and teachers. Besides hiring conditions, the deskilling of teachers has taken shape in the continuous surveillance and control practices. Once hired, teachers receive a two-week training (which ignores that these teachers come fully prepared—professionally speaking) to introduce them into the teaching “method” they have to follow (the PPP: Presentation, Practice, Production, which is not a method, it’s a procedure), the institutional norms and regulations, and other sets of rules they have to follow. Teaching observation has become a naturalized practice in ELT where the observer is positioned as “the expert” (Martínez-Luengas & Méndez, 2023) and is performed traditionally by other teachers who have been trained do that. However, the conversations we held with the four known subjects allowed us to see that observations are not exclusively conducted by teachers or “experts” but by other individuals. In these language institutes teachers are constantly observed to determine if they are following, to the letter, the requirements of the language institute, with a darker twist: its role as a harassment mechanism to discipline and to instill fear on teachers. Although observations are common and happen at least four times a year, Phoenix Saint recalls how he was subjected to constant observations for months after an incident with an academic coordinator. This situation caused him great stress and he became paranoid fearing that at all moments other teachers, staff, and even students were observing him. Yergu refers to observations conducted by the human resources person who would pretend they wanted to learn English and choose “randomly” a teacher to observe. Teachers knew their intention was none else than making decisions on who would be re-hired and who would not, which caused them to live in constant fear. Teachers learned that the more they stuck to the norms and regulations, the better evaluated they were and the greater chances to be re-hired.

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Routine Hackwork The neoliberal take on education is fostered by the adoption of a Fordist approach which can be defined as “the organization of work that is based on the fragmentation of the task, the control of the times and movements of the worker, the separation between conception-execution, the disposition of the worker on the assembly line, etc.”5 (Reta, 2009). In education this model has translated into the fragmentation of contents in the textbooks, the role of the teacher as the deliverer of this content, and the disposition of teachers in the larger production chain, where it is irrelevant who performs the task as long as they perform it according to the rules. Two of the leading language institutes in Colombia, where all known subjects have worked or are working, have implemented the Presentation, Practice, Production (PPP) teaching procedure (which they call “method”). Learning, for them—very much in line with neoliberalism— is an individual process where progress is paced, automatically, by page-­ hour, that is, a person has to “learn” a page in one class-hour. This teaching model centers the learning on the student while the teacher’s role in the classroom is reduced to merely assist them from time to time. Whether or not to this is a successful model needs to be seen but has been very instrumental in deskilling teachers. It is important to clarify that we agree that in certain contexts learner-centered is a must, but we also think that learning is social and should happen in interaction with others (Guerrero-­ Nieto, 2007) and not on individual basis; this takes the teaching-learning of English as a Foreign language many years back. Given that students do not need to follow a process with peers and that they progress automatically, the teacher becomes irrelevant. As stated by Marcos: The methodology is flexible because students schedule class the day they want at the time that suits them best, so one does not have to review homework or carry out a process with a student or something like that, there is a lot of turnovers. So, let's say that the process is quizzes and things but that moment passes and  The translation is ours from the original in Spanish.

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that's it. There may be students who, in the course of a level, have had 14 different teachers.

The teacher, then, has to follow the book and provide grammar explanations when asked by the students. As a consequence, teachers do not have to prepare a class, design an evaluation, or plan activities because the language center buys a ready-to-be-used teaching package from a well-­ known international agency. This hackwork leaves teachers very little room to enrich the classes and severs their creativity, intellect, agency, criticality, etc., which are the things teachers are prepared for in their undergraduate programs. This way of teaching goes against everything taught in schools of education in Colombia where teachers-to-be take a wide range of subjects that span from learning the language to conduct small-scale research and to take their teaching practicum in different schools. Along with Ortega (2023) and Rendón (2019) we found that besides hurting teachers’ professional selves, routine hackwork also takes a toll on teachers’ mental wellbeing. As reported by the four teachers with whom we talked, very few teachers endured routine hackwork, and most teachers resign after a few months. Yergu: you become a robot, in those classes you become automated, in fact, at the beginning improvisation was an act of creativity at some point, because it challenged you to invent and invent, but later these activities were automatic because there was no more room for creativity but for applying the same with different students all the time. Marcos: There are some teachers who suddenly, due to the monotony, let's say taking into account the very particular methodology that is used in the institute where I am, run out very quickly. Neko: Normally what happens is that they do not fit in with the company, they do not follow certain rules … I know of a teacher who started working with me, well, not at the same time but in the same office, and the teacher did not felt OK during the test period, she didn’t like the methodology, that is, she did not apply it as expected, and there was one day, a Saturday, she did not come to class and did not send any notice.

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Being a teacher supposes, as Giroux (1988) would say, an intellectual work. Teaching is a constant challenge to improve our practice, to help learners be better at learning and also at being good human beings, to help students to discover new worlds and act on that world. In schools of education, particularly the ones where our known subjects graduated, are all public universities where the critical component is at the core of their formation. As reported by Quintero-Polo et al., (2022) teachers usually find a small window within their jobs to resist and transform some neoliberal practices; however, the disciplinary practices of language institutes are so controlling that it is very hard for teachers to escape or resist them. The only way out is to resign and find a new job. Unfortunately, all the intellectual investment of teachers and student-teachers alike is dried out in these language institutes where the role of the teacher is routine and irrelevant.

Language Proficiency over Teaching Skills In the field of ELT many dominant discourses and practices about the language per se have been installed in the peripheries. For example, discussions as simple as if there is a variety better than other are still common. In Colombia, for many years there was a strong belief in that British English was “purer” than American English; in a study on language attitudes, Cárdenas (1994) found that most participants considered British English “more prestigious, more formal, more elegant and sophisticated” (84). Australian, New Zealand, or Canadian English were not even considered. As a consequence, it is not surprising that in Colombia, native speakerism has been one of those ideologies that have got here to stay. People tend to believe that speaking like a native speaker (an imaginary, monolithic, irreal one) is an aspiration everybody should reach; this belief nests the idea that if English is taught by an idealized native speaker, it is even better (Mackenzie, 2021). Plans of study of undergraduate English teacher preparation programs pay great deal of attention to the development of the language and include a significant number of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes to this development. But they also offer other subjects to educate

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teachers holistically, because for us teacher educators, it is clear that being a teacher is more than just delivering a content. Language institutes, on the other hand, have been instrumental in spreading native speakerism blindly and have used it to promote their business (Correa & Guerrero-Nieto, 2022) when proudly state that the majority of their teachers are native speakers. When asked about the hiring requirements to work in these centers, all four known subjects agreed that language proficiency was the most important aspect. Whether they had an undergraduate or graduate degree was irrelevant. Teaching experience in some language institutes was a plus but not mandatory while in other centers it was completely ignored. The salary assignment was based on their results in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages test. The lower the test score the lower the salary and the lower the level they could teach. In the same line, native English speakers have more privileges than Colombian English teachers and have a head start just because they are native speakers. In Colombia there is a regulation that stipulates that 20% of foreigners can be under contract in formal and non-formal education institutions. Although language institutes observe this norm, the working conditions of native speakers versus Colombian English teachers are quite different. Native speakers have better salaries, are assigned the most challenging courses (under the false premise that they are better equipped to do so), do not have to carry out clerical chores, and are not asked to work double shifts while Colombian teachers are. These findings are consistent with de Mejía’s (2002) about the discriminatory conditions that separated native speaker teachers from their Colombian counterparts. Yergu: We, the non-native speakers were always given the basic levels; West and the other man (I don't remember the name of the other man, I only remember the one with blue eyes) he was always given the last professional level. Phoenix Saint: Native teachers were paid much more, not only were they pay much more, but the number of students for them was less, so while I could have, for example, 6 students, from A1, they could perfectly have 2 students at higher levels, and it was a permanent thing.

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As pointed out by Holliday (2006), under the native-nonnative speaker construct lays a set of beliefs that position the latter as inferior at all levels (language, intelligence, culture, skills, knowledge, etc.). Colombian teachers, despite having undergraduate or graduate teaching degrees (as we have mentioned earlier), are assigned the less challenging courses, while their counterparts, who in many cases have neither a teaching degree nor a certificate (Gómez-Vásquez & Guerrero-Nieto, 2018), are in charge of the most advanced courses. Privileging native speakers over Colombian ones is but one of the various strategies language institutes adopt to deskill the teachers. Another one is to “disguise” training as teacher development programs where clearly their objective is to train teachers into the language center’s practices to make efficient use of time and resources: Phoenix Saint: I have always seen that they are very interested in one receiving training, but trained for commercial purposes, that is, the training is about a pedagogy that is really disguised, well, their training has to do with customer service, with class organization, and with procedures that are disguised as pedagogy.

The known subjects in this study acknowledge that the so-called training was aimed at making them master the rules and procedures of the language center and not to improve their teaching skills. The way the language center is organized, as we stated above, in a Fordist fashion leaves no time or opportunity for teachers to bring their pedagogical knowledge to serve the needs of their students, let alone their research skills; teachers are not hired to think but to obey. Actually, when Marcos asked if they would support him to attend the most important conference for English teachers in the country the answer was no. Marcos: There is no support, in fact last year my talk was accepted for ASOCOPI, the conference was on-line, so I told them I was going to give a talk at ASOCOPI, so I wondered if they would give me a school leave or something, stating that I come from YYY, or a little logo … They told me no, so I gave my talk but I had to make the time up, I don't remember if I trade my days off or I had to make up the time, well I had to do something to be able to attend.

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Discouraging teachers’ participation in academic network contributes to their deskilling and sends the message that what is important is to follow the procedures by the book; what the owners of the centers really aim for is to have students finish their courses soon so they can have room for new students. Not being able to contribute to the development of the field through their intellectual work bounds teachers to serve as mere instruments in the delivery of a content.

Conclusions Our conversations with the four known subjects in this study opened a window for us to connect the dots among neoliberalism, internal colonialism, and the reification of English as a foreign language and how they operate toward the deskilling of teachers in language institutes. These three theoretical constructs intersect in the strategies presented in the findings: (1) Corporatization of teaching; (2) Routine hackwork; and (3) English proficiency over pedagogical knowledge. The hiring and working conditions adopted by the language institutes, their technical and instrumental way of positioning teachers, the discriminatory work assignments and salaries based on their geographical origin respond to, reinforce, and perpetuate the exploitation of teachers as well as the deprecation of the profession. In the previous section we discussed the negative consequences of the intersection of the three theoretical constructs in the professional lives of Marcos, Neku, Yergu, and Phoenix Saint. But these span beyond the professional selves to the personal ones. They have influenced the way these young professionals see their future, see their economy, see their possibilities toward social mobility, and see themselves as workers. As we mentioned above, they were born in the same decade neoliberalism was adopted in Colombia, so they are too young to know there existed a welfare State that protected their rights as workers (due to length constraints we did not discuss some unethical practices of language institutes in terms of salary and benefits). The submission practices that stem from neoliberalism turn into forms of internal colonialism that these young professionals easily accept and sometimes justify given the poor economic

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conditions of the country, the dominant ideologies about native speakerism plus the pervasiveness of the neoliberal ideology. To complete this triad of inequality, the reification of English as a good that can be bought strips away the possibilities teachers have to contribute to the enrichment of the ELT field, in which we, those who teach EFL/ESL/ELF/EIL, and who are mostly in the peripheries, have a say.

References Apple, M. W. (1999). Power, meaning, and identity: Essays in critical educational studies (Vol. 109). Peter Lang Pub Incorporated. Block, D. (2012). Economizing globalization and identity in applied linguistics in neoliberal times. In D. Block, J. Gray, & M. Holborow (Eds.), Neoliberalism and applied linguistics. Routledge. Block, D., Gray, J., & Holborow, M. (2012). Neoliberalism and applied linguistics. Routledge. Blum, D., & Ullman, C. (2012). The globalization and corporatization of education: The limits and liminality of the market mantra. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(4), 367–373 Cárdenas, R. (1994). El inglés americano y el británico desde el punto de vista de sus hablantes nativos y no nativos: Estudio de actitudes y diferencias lingüísticas. Lenguaje, 21, 74–97. Correa, D., & Guerrero-Nieto, C.H. (2022). Traces of coloniality in Colombia’s Linguistic Landscape: A multimodal analysis of language center’s English Advertisements [Manuscript submitted for publication] Universidad de Antioquia, Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. De Mejía, A. M. (2002). Power, prestige and bilingualism. Multilingual Matters. Díaz-Borbón, R. (2018). Las políticas educativas en Colombia en la era neoliberal. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Duménil, G., & Levy, D. (2011). The Crisis of Neoliberalism. Harvard University Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Longman. Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Greenwood Publishing Group. Grosfoguel, R. (2018). ¿ Negros marxistas o marxismos negros?: una mirada descolonial. Tabula Rasa, (28), 367–385.

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Gómez-Vásquez, Y., & Guerrero-Nieto, C.  H. (2018). Non-native English speaking teachers’ subjectivities and Colombian language policies: A narrative study. PROFILE Journal, 20(2), 51–64. González Casanova, P. (2006). Colonialismo interno (uma redefinição). In A. Bnoro, J. Amado, & J. González (Org.). A teoria marxista hoje: problemas e perspectivas (pp. 395–420). CLACSO. Guerrero-Nieto, C.H. (2007). Applications of the Vygotskian concept of mediation to SLA. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 9. ISSN 0123-4641. Guerrero-Nieto, C.H. (2008). Bilingual Colombia: What does it mean bilingual within the framework of the national plan of bilingualism? Profile, 10, 27–45. ISSN 1657-0790. Guerrero-Nieto, C.H., & Quintero, A. (2009). English as a neutral language in the Colombian National Standards: A constituent of dominance in English language education. PROFILE, 11, 135–150. ISSN 1657-0790. Guerrero-Nieto, C.H., & Quintero, A. (2021). Elementary school teachers in neoliberal times: The silent voices that make educational policies work. PROFILE Issues in Teachers Professional Development, 23(1), 27–40. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. Holliday, A. (2006). Native speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385–387. https:// doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl030 Levidow, L. (2004). Neoliberal agendas for higher education. In A. S. Filho & D. Johnston (Eds.), Neoliberalism: A critical reader. Pluto Press. López-Gopar, M. E., & Sughrua, W. (2014). Social class in English language education in Oaxaca, Mexico. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 13(2), 104–110. Mackenzie, L. (2021). Discriminatory job advertisements for English language teachers in Colombia: An analysis of recruitment biases. TESOL Journal, 12(1). Martínez-Luengas, M., & Méndez, P. (2023). Exploring the ELT observer’s subject positions: Tensions, negotiations, and contradictions. International Journal of Instruction, 16(1), 685–706. McLaren, P. (2005). Critical pedagogy and class struggle in the age of neoliberal globalization: Notes from history’s underside. The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 2(1), 1–24. Ministerio de Educación Nacional. (2006). Ley 1064 de Julio 26 de 2006. Available: https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/portal/ejes-­tematicos/ Normas-­s obre-­E ducacion-­p ara-­e l-­Trabajo/104704:Ley-­1 064-­d e-­ Julio-­26-­de-­2006

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Ministerio de Educación Nacional –ICONTEC. (2007a). Norma Técnica Colombiana 5581. Mignolo, W.  D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7–8), 159–181. Miranda-Pulido, L (2022) La difusión de ideas de la OCDE y del BID en la construcción de las políticas educativas. Un estudio de caso sobre las políticas educativas en el departamento de Cundinamarca. Tesis de grado. Universidad de los Andes. Motavita, F., & Motavita, A. (2019). Hilos invisibles: La incidencia del neoliberalismo en la vida de los docentes. Master’s thesis. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Available: https://repository.udistrital.edu.co/ handle/11349/15256 Ortega, Y. (2023). Symbolic annihilation: Processes influencing English language policy and teaching practice. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2023.2215361 Quintero-Polo, A., Duarte-González, C., & León-Castro, A. (2022). Identity as a source of agency for transformative English language teachers. Educación y Humanismo, 24(43), 110–128. https://doi.org/10.17081/ eduhum.24.43.5758 Rendón, J. (2019). Exploring EFL teachers’ activity and identity construction through the path of private institutional policies. Master’s thesis. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Available: https://repository.udistrital.edu. co/bitstream/handle/11349/23083/RendónAlfonsoJesicaPaola2019.pdf?seq uence=1&isAllowed=y Reta, E. (2009). Las formas de organización del trabajo y su incidencia en el campo educativo. Fundamentos en Humanidades_ Universidad Nacional de San Luis-Argentina. Año X, Número, 1, 119–137. Sayer, P. (2012). Ambiguities and tensions in English language teaching: Portraits of EFL teachers as legitimate speakers. Routledge. Sayer, P. (2018). Does English really open doors? Social class and English teaching in public primary schools in Mexico. System, 73, 58–70. Vasilachis, I (2009). Ontological and epistemological foundations of qualitative research. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(2).

11 Examining Racialized Practices in ELT: Enhancing Critical New Horizons Sandra Ximena Bonilla-Medina

Introduction Our role as English teachers is developed in multiple entanglements that have to do with the engagement in a variety of discourses circulating in society. Some of those discourses deal with teaching profiles, language views, learners’ dispositions, and others that are simultaneously involved in other kinds of complexities that compromise our worldviews and, subsequently, affect how we see what we do as teachers and individuals (Norton, 2000). Stitching the patch of this tapestry of unauthorized outlooks on second languages education and policies in Colombia, this chapter explores the field of race as one of the discourses and complexities that construct the task of language teaching. Usually, when talking about race, its abstractedness is maintained in ethnicity as a common referent

S. X. Bonilla-Medina (*) Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8_11

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(see, e.g., Castro-Suárez, 2010; Artunduaga, 1997). Nonetheless, this chapter goes beyond skin color or ethnical superficial descriptions and does not limit the exploration to these aspects (Ng’weno, 2007). On the contrary, race is situated, and it is problematized in those visions that make us believe that ethnicity, nationality, regions, and other categories are embodied in essential identities which are immutable despite the contexts and historical moments (Telles & Flores, 2013; Knowles & Alexander, 2005). Consequently, race is concretized by providing a look at what teachers of a language institute in Bogotá think the general goals of learning English are. In this context, this chapter interrogates the way discriminatory discourses and social practices are reproduced on and over different educational actors without race awareness (Bonilla-Medina, 2018). The ultimate aim of this chapter is to provide language educational actors (teachers, learners, policy makers, etc.) a view on how the understanding of race, as a conceptual frame, underscores racialized configurations of what education, language, language speakers, cultures, and English teaching, in general, are and how those constructions engender the need to develop more inclusive, multicultural, and social justice-­ oriented practices.1

 he Complexities of Circulating Discourses T in Society In this section I explain how I see language constructs reality and how this reality constitutes an organized word that we have taught us to obey and which I imply, we need to turn to an unauthorized look. In this view, I see language constructs the world, and this understanding helps us view how we are constructed in the complexity of language or discourses. Wetherell and Potter (1992) explain that language constructs our perceptions, and those are shaped by social relations, then language is indeed a  This chapter is derived from an interinstitutional research between The EAN University, Caro y Cuervo Institute, and Francisco José de Caldas University. The name of the study was “Raza y educación en segundas lenguas español-inglés: hacia pedagogías del empoderamiento multicultural y justicia social”. Institutionalized research from Centro de Investigaciones de la Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (CIDC). 1

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social construction. In the same line of thought, language as a social construction implies a mutual relationship with social practices so, while language constructs reality, social practices are developed as a reaction to social structures (Pennycook, 2022). Nevertheless, social practices usually cooperate with social structures. In this sense, exploring discourse in society is a view to understand social practices, but it is also a way to understand society itself. Following this view, discourse is complex and approaching it would mean constructing paths to better map social relations. Methodologically, discourses can be seen as conformed in layers or levels that feed each other and that establish bridges to construct the interpretation of the world. At a macro level, we can situate discourses that constitute institutionalized and normalized practices, usually accepted (Philips & Jorgensen, 2002). Within those discourses, individuals make up parameters of behavior and moral values that constitute static relationships and images of who they are. These images and relationships are what we know as social structures and comprise organized institutions based on cultural representations that are subsidized with language (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Macro levels of discourse are saliently represented in national and international policies and they are even seen in norms that are based on those policies at more specific contexts. While it is true that those macro levels of discourse strongly influence people’s practice and shape forms of being and seeing the world, there are other layers of discourse that constitute what a social practice can be. I am now referring to the micro levels of discourse, the sphere of individuals’ action, in which they may reproduce those macro discourses or develop interpretations over those discourses and take forms of accommodations or develop forms of practice in opposition or resistance. This layer of discourse appears to depend on levels of critical awareness individuals achieve by analyzing the organization of society (Crookes, 2013; Delgado & Stefancic, 2000). Then, these discourses are represented in what individuals express as part of their personal opinions and particular ways of understanding their lived experiences. Last but not least, an important level of discourse would be the meso level which is the one that implies those social parallel conventions made by different cultural groups or communities interpreting their own

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constructions and re-signifying views on reality (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Before, these discourses were hardly disseminated by subtle means and were spread usually in face-to-face interactions. However, with the explosion of mass media those discourses have gradually and rapidly increased that dissemination (Kenway, 1998) and this has caused both an increase of effects of dominant discourses stated at a macro level and the revelation of other discourses that display resistance to those dominant discourses instead. This multifaceted relationship is what is referenced here as the complexity of circulating discourses in society and this is also the basis for the discussion I will develop to explain the worldviews created in the ELT context.

 irculating Discourses ELT C Constructing Worldviews The ELT field can be said to be a discursive world constructed not that long ago, at least in the Colombian context. It appears that around the 1960s, the boom of teaching English became famous, and this also came along with the rise of English teaching methods worldwide. From that time, teaching English in the country has been regulated and, as Castañeda-Trujillo (2020) argues, “responding to foreign agendas that have installed ideologies on how to teach, when to teach, what to teach, and who teaches whom” (p. 220). More prominently than in other educational fields, English language teaching has been highly influenced by foreign criteria framing educational actors and practices. This is because, different from other educational areas such as natural science or social science, educational policies to teach English have been imported and borrowed from foreign countries following the belief of territorial ownership of language and knowledge (Rudolph & Yasan, 2018). Therefore, that belief on language ownership has included not only the importation of general guidelines in policy to develop educational practice but that importation has also outlined programs mandating specific institutional organizations (such as bilingual education vs. regular

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education) or curricular impositions (such as English centralized educational practices), and standards and international requirements (such as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages [CEFRL] or international exams for English certification). Those regulations have also included profiles of teachers and students based on language proficiency ideals most of the time distant from reality (Ramos-Holguín, 2019). These dispositions have been already brought to criticism by, for example, judging that bilingual education has been implemented without a clear conceptualization of what bilingualism is or implies (De Mejía, 2006), or that educational practices centralized in English have modified curriculum and government demands, but they have shown no preparation or infrastructure to be able to accomplish those requirements (Cruz-Arcila, 2018) or that the CEFRL has been a device undervaluing the contextual socio-economic and cultural conditions of the country by establishing alien goals and expectations. Despite these criticisms, practices in ELT appear to increase toward equating educational policies and practices to unfamiliar goals designed and implemented from abroad. Therefore, organizing the ELT panorama into foreign ideals and representations that have shaped actors’ views and practices for a long time by stating teaching profiles, language views, learners’ dispositions affects what we do and who we are as language educators and actors; something that, in accordance with Schatzki, have established pattern[s] of actions in [ELT] that constitute practices maintained through regulations (Schatzki, 2002), thus leading to continuity and perpetuation of ways of being and doing. In this sense, I coincide with Kumaravadivelu (2016) addressing this situation as a problem in the field because ELT actors have constructed imaginaries and practices that have idealized native speakers, methods, and materials backed on homogenized perspectives that have subalternized teachers as professionals and learners as language speakers. Thus, those ideologies have compromised our worldviews and subsequently affect the way we see what we do as teachers and individuals (Norton, 2000). This is an aspect that I will now touch on to link the discussion of race and ELT.  However, this makes it necessary to explain first how I tackle race as a concept that goes beyond the skin color.

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Race Beyond the Skin Color To understand race as a concept it is necessary to depart from its origins, so we can identify its up-and-coming configurations in discursive practices (Tamboukou, 1999). According to Rattansi (2007), race is a concept that emerged motivated by biologists’ and economic interests in the construction of society. In the biologists’ interest, one of the most important was the Darwin’s theoretical constructions of the origin of humankind. Those theories classified human beings in features that were determined by their phenotype or physical characteristics and those assumptions were the basis to assign cognitive and intellectual difference in their corresponding association. In the economic interest, race is explained as a strategy of the powerful populations to establish hierarchies with the less powerful populations and take economic advantage on them based on the idea of racial difference. Those theories sound quite influential; however, there is another theory that appears to be associated with a social construction which, I see, particularly related to language and its role in constructing realities while also coinciding with what has been asserted from the beginning of this chapter. This theory explains that race is a concept socially created, tagging individuals with racial categories, and situating them in realities grounded on those tags; therefore, these individuals could find themselves in situations of privilege or disadvantage due to those labels assigned. Following this discussion, Banton (2002) and Bernasconi (2001) affirm that there is a clear division between a biologist and a socio-­ constructivist view of race because there is an intention to demonstrate phenotypical differentiation as innate. This is an aspect that produces a hierarchical social construction fueled by economic interest deepening hierarchies of superiority and inferiority (Gates, 1986; Murji & Solomos, 2005; Omi & Winant, 1993). In this way, this interest turned this concept of race into a subjugating ideology oppressing based on skin color and physical appearance. In this context, Bonnet (2000) illustrates this well when he explains how scientific discourse of race was so strong to achieve self-identification with centrality on whiteness and Eurocentric views that undervalued non-white identities; this is the case of Asians

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who came to believe they were yellow marking their difference as populations “of color”. Indeed, this demonstrates the power of language involved in the appreciation of racial difference constituting not only physical difference in hierarchies but also socio-cultural and material disparity. One of the strongest ideas in this last theory of race as a social construction has to do with understanding that race as created and reinforced in social practice (Banton, 2002; Bernasconi, 2001). In this line of thought, race is curiously perceived as real but it is also denied (Chadderton, 2009); in other words, race is created as an illusion of reality (Knowles & Alexander, 2005). In this vein, discrimination is a social phenomenon derived from the social construction of race, but it is also maintained through other tags that do not necessarily represent the original referents of race and skin color; race can also be based on other labels with diverse referents, nevertheless, connoting similar hierarchical relationships (Murji & Solomos, 2005). This understanding also involves race materialized in relative direct complexities such as ethnicity, nationality, regionalisms, language, and other ones such as religion, gender, or class. I will refer to those as layers of race and racialization which in the ELT context become crucial to understand how the circulating discourses of ELT have constructed racial difference and how this has also produced and reproduced unnoticeable race and racism. Consequently, this is what I refer to as a reality that needs to be dismantled and disobeyed so unauthorized looks help us uncover new realities purporting resistance.

 he Discourse of Race Constructing T the ELT Task As previously explained, race and racism have been manifested in multiple shapes in different fields, perpetuating differences in hierarchical terms, many times with referents of skin color, as it is commonly recognized, but many other times, hidden or ingrained in social practices. The reason why discrimination has been imperceptible is because it has been assumed in parameters of normality. This is the case of the ELT field, in which discourses have maintained what has been coined in decoloniality

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as epistemic racism (Castro-Gomez, 2000). Epistemic racism is inspired in a conceptualization of epistemic violence explaining power exerted in constructions of knowledge and subalternizing certain identities (Spivak, 1988). Those subalternized identities are usually the ones that appear to be different from the idealized—and normalized—dominant white European identity. Núñez-Pardo (2020) refers to this as a type of coloniality that “has been perceived in the socio-cultural expressions of the modern experience of individuals, to the extent that everything that originates from Western countries is more valued” (p. 115). In this sense, epistemic racism has been embedded in the discourse of ELT through different, as mentioned above—macro, meso, and micro—levels of social practice, and has constructed idealized white images represented in language speakers, contexts, cultures, and characters. Then, despite that race has not usually been associated with the field (Kubota & Lin, 2006), there are practices that have taken race for granted and have assumed those ideas when taking relevant decisions underlying racial asymmetry as a common ground. Recapping the discussion on the section of circulating discourses of race, this assumption of race in asymmetrical relationship explains the fact that at the macro level, educational policies in Colombia show the tendency of borrowing or adapting foreign guidelines rather than producing them in the local context. This shows how, although race is not mentioned and does not have to do with the common referents of skin color, there is power exerting subalternization on ELT policy makers because they undervalue local knowledge for the appreciation of foreign production. This generally happens without questioning neither the origins nor the ends and benefits of this unidirectional relationship; therefore, this way of thinking is naturalized or normalized; consequently, producing and reproducing epistemic racism. This is what I allude as “the discourse of race constructing the ELT task”. Now, going back to the understanding of social practice at the macro, meso and micro levels, it can be said that the English teaching field has been permeated by those beliefs that situate whiteness at the highest level of a hierarchy. The example of policy reflects this epistemic violence constructed in a macro level, but if we follow educational practice developed by teachers, it can also be seen that, orchestrated with those policies, and

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negotiated with practices at the meso level, they likely be in the reproduction of those discriminatory practices. Macedo (2019) makes a relevant reflection in this sense by analyzing the dominant discriminatory discourses in ELT by detailing the social, cultural, political, and even economic effects of working in the field without awareness of this existence. This author asserts that the ELT is a camouflaged elitist space where English associates an ideal native speaker while this idealization constructs language learners as odd, in deficit and consequently those ideas disdain who they are and their origin, ignoring their background. Expressing his rejection on this type of racism founded in ELT, he maintains that learners’ cultural funds of knowledge and their organic relationship with the community are generally minimized and swept under the rug. Therefore, this is an exemplification of how race as a discourse has constructed ELT practices and how different actors have assumed whiteness and euro-centrism as a regime of truth (Said, 1976). This accommodation to whiteness and euro-centrism without questioning is a racialization of practices, in other words, a modern view of race which substitutes skin color but exert the same discriminatory practices and racism.

The Case of a Language Institute As said before, racialization is a practice that, through discursive representations and ideologies, has perpetuated the field of ELT historically but has been hidden in regimes of truth and has been assumed rather than questioned. From now on, through a short-scale research I conducted at a language institute in Bogotá where I used to work, I will explain how ELT continues producing and reproducing those discriminatory discourses. Language institutes in the city have proliferated the last ten years not only in the city and the country but also around the world. Obviously with globalization and the international demands, English has gained particular importance that propel linguistic policies pointing this language in the first place. In this way, there are usually private institutes (solely constituted enterprises) but also institutes derived

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from private and state universities that are in charge of organizing and coordinating education, mainly, in foreign languages. The language institute I analyzed is part of these institutes organized as part of a state university. Curiously, despite the institute I am referring to here is part of a state university that purports to educate mostly students from very low income; internal regulations demand self-economic sustainability. This implies that the income of the institute should supply its own needs. This precise point is relevant because despite that the university has general educational goals, language institutes in Bogotá have additional policy guidelines that mandate certain practices regardless of if they are completely private or if they are derived from a (state) university. Some of these ideas will be part of my debate in the following section in the production and reproduction of racialized discourses and practices in ELT. But, to provide some other details, I can also say that this language institute offers courses in various languages such as French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and recently, in an innovative policy of plurilinguism (Universidad Distrital FJC, 2021), is introducing some native indigenous language and Spanish as a foreign language, mainly to students of the same University but also to the external community. Nevertheless, English is predominant as it grabs most of students inside and outside; consequently, most of the teachers and academic coordinators are part of the ELT team. This expansion of English is what makes it worth to justify a focus on analyzing racialization in the field.

Production and Reproduction of Racialized Discourses Articulating my discussion above with the different levels of discursive practices and accounting to what Ricento and Hornberger (1996) have pointed out in the metaphor of policies as peeling an onion, I will now deploy my analysis of the production and reproduction of racialized discourses in the language institute. I will then refer to the macro levels of discourse represented in those policies that may encourage dominant

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discourses of ELT while reproducing imperceptible discriminatory practices. First of all, I have to say that this institute was created in 2001, and this initiative was driven by anticipating the upcoming explosion of bilingual policies in education that were already being prepared by the government and later socialized with the rest of the population. From the beginning, teaching languages for the external community in this initiative of creating a language institute appeared to be the main motivation. However, underlying interests such as the production of benefits that would subsidize other university needs and projects also reveal that this creation would also pursue economic benefits; that languages in the institute were going to be commoditized under the premises of educating the community (see Universidad Distrital FJC, 2001). Languages in this way were seen as a way to fulfil needs that were insufficient with the government support, a phenomenon which aligns with the instrumental criticism that has been continuously pointed out as neoliberal practices that misrepresent the goals of education (Libreros, 2002). One of these views explains how human beings and social exchanges are transformed in mechanisms of marketing, what Macedo (2019) eloquently explained in ELT as the hidden racism that would promulgate the need to learn a language with little care on the manners in which this would bring imperialism in the shape of stratification and other consequences, usually deepening social class. Later in 2004, with the emergence of bilingual policies of education in the country, the institute was immersed in the macro (on the policy and programs derived) as well as in the meso levels (mass media) of circulating race discourse of English in the effort to translate what national and international policies dictate in internal practice. That is, racialized discourses of ELT disseminated through policies were also shaping the institute organization and particular institutional policies. This was, firstly, seen in the urge to increase English courses and programs that, as I explained in the previous discussion, came out to be the main referent in national policies obscuring the interest in other languages. Evidently, this also produced an understanding of English as more profitable, therefore, irrefutably necessary. This effect explains how, nowadays, despite that the institute has worked on the development of a linguistic policy that highlights the value of diversity of language and cultures (Universidad Distrital

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FJC, 2010), English prevails, gathering most of the institutional attention and affairs. In this fashion, these circulating discourses have influenced the different actors to whom the benefits of the institute were programmed. For example, language teaching to children is offered only in English, first, because courses are authorized to be open just when there is a required number of students enrolled, which in other languages is usually not fulfilled. But, more importantly, because in those opening demands, the institute has to provide evidence of economic stability. Then, the emphasis on satisfying policy requirements has been accompanied by the neoliberal intentions of economic profit and marketization, which so far has been satisfied by English, producing stratification and discriminatory practices over plurilingualism limiting access to multiple languages in equal conditions (Usma, 2009). That said, in addition to the already mentioned criticism of the bilingual policy and programs (organized in that frame and the Eurocentric views, whiteness-centered practices and its consequences), language institutes have also been regulated by particular policies. I regard here the booklet of Guidelines 29, for human and social development (Ministerio de Educación, 2007a) and the Colombian technical Norm 5580 (Ministerio de Educación, 2007b). Both are governmental documents that have been created in order to provide specific parameters to education institutes for human work and development.2 The first booklet is in general areas of education while the second chiefly focused on language institutes. Analyzing these documents from the view of racialization points that they do not only establish parameters for institutional organization but that they also embed the reproduction of ELT epistemic racism. This is because, as it was mentioned before, neoliberal interests delineate those actual guidelines and practices. For instance, the idea of developing competences for the well (economic) being is the premise to formulate the guide 29. Here, I rely on the criticism made on the discourse of competence in which technical interest underscores over human and intellectual development (Guerrero-Nieto, 2008). That is, this booklet emphasizes on the importance of training individuals with the skills to live in a global  Human work and development is a category that the government has created in order to describe training involving work which is not professional. 2

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world that also demands economic capacity, something which is only reached with productivity and hard work (Gillborn, 2010). On the other hand, the Norm 5580 trusts these and general linguistic policies at national and at international levels, such as the ones provided in the rubrics of the common European Framework which comes to be the backbone to establish curricular goals and practice to the language institutes. Then, epistemic racism reflected on policy makers’ decisions is reflected in the dispositions that are mandated at these institutes. In this particular language institute, these guidelines have meant a constant controversy to negotiate its state university educational goals which entail equity, democratization, and access while contradiction suggests that students must be appreciated in the frame of European standards (stated in the CEF). On the one hand, this appreciation ignores that many students approach the institute with a desire to learn the language but with limited economic resources. On the other hand, these guidelines also demand international certification to teachers to validate their language knowledge ignoring the fact that they have been studying a professional career where the language was the core of their disciplinary learning practices. This illustration above supports how, by following the metaphor of the onion, going from one layer to another, racialization/discrimination in ELT has been developed at macro and meso levels of discourse and practice and this has been hardly appreciated as such. I will now refer to some examples of how these racialized discourses have been translated into the practice of teachers at the same institute so I can later state my view on the need for more inclusive, multicultural, and social justice-oriented practices.

Racialized Discourse at Micro Levels of Practice I collected data along with my academic team through interviews with the teachers of all areas and who volunteered to be part of the research. The data reported here comes only from the ones who teach English. Those interviews were semi-structured where the main idea was to understand teachers’ views of language teaching and practice. In exploring

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those teachers’ perceptions, we identified there was a predominant reproduction of racialized discourses in different dimensions of their professional work and identity. Because of the length of this chapter, I will only illustrate an example of how this happened in regard to the way they constructed their professional identity addressing educational goals framed on the global market. These findings also reveal discrimination in terms of how this view restrained teachers’ own educational practices. In this context, when we asked a teacher about the most important goal for him as a teacher, he answered the following: T: what students want is to learn English for their Jobs and professional life, according to what they have been saying these years, students think of language proficiency as a bridge that allows them to reach a higher economic level, such as access to travelling and work opportunities abroad.

There are several aspects to highlight here which resemble the discussion stated in this chapter. First, the prevalence of the discourse of English as a commodity and, based on this, the idea that learning English must be addressed to get a job or to enrich professional life to higher economic success. This is emphatic on many of the interviews developed. In this specific example, emphasis is also viewed when the participant states, “what students want is to learn English for their jobs and professional life”, resuming that nothing else is more valuable when learning a language than learning the language itself. Therefore, this models a static view on practice derived from a neoliberal perspective that also restrains the teacher’s professional role which is limited to teaching the language and only for marketing purposes (see also Guerrero-Nieto, in this volume). This restriction of his professional view is what can be confirmed on the following extract in the same conversation when he was asked to display his ideas on how to include social issues in class as part of the contents: T: although I would like to agree [to teach other themes in English], the themes to be developed in the course, it is difficult to achieve that because it is necessary to cover the syllabus contents, time is tight, you have to manage it well.

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Reflecting his interior desires addressing various areas beyond the language itself, this teacher contradictorily displays a position favoring productivity. In this sense, addressing other areas different from language, for him, would be a waste of time to be able to cover the linguistic contents proposed (as it is suggested in the general policy guidelines); therefore, that time should be managed cleverly to be able to achieve the curriculum-­ stated goals. This disposition shows how dominant discriminatory discourses develop into more particular discriminatory practices that minimize even teacher capacity to break static dominant (white European) dispositions that come orchestrated in macro and meso discourses and that materialize in his micro practices and beliefs.

 he Need to Develop More Inclusive, T Multicultural, and Social Justice-Oriented Practices By trying to identify the influence of racializing discourses in ELT, I have come to understand their power and the effects of developing practices for different actors without awareness of this existence. This is what I have called the construction of an unjust but accepted reality and this is why I call for a necessary turn to an unauthorized look to language education that allows to perceive different and more importantly, just realities. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight the importance of unmasking those practices that come to racialize the field and that we assumed as a regime of truth. It is necessary that we develop critical attitudes to observe the reality so we do not fall into dysconsciousness, which King (1991) defined as a stage in which reality becomes acceptable without questioning what triggers its organization. As a discourse analyst, I see in ELT racialized dominant discourse that there has been a submissive and compliant attitude toward the historical construction of the field that is calling for disruption and resistance. This disruption deals with departing from the awareness of those discriminatory practices exerted on multiple levels and with different materializations of practice, so actors (students, teachers, stakeholders in general)

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become agentive to transformation. In this sense, I point out more inclusive, multicultural, and social justice-oriented practices that at the macro, meso and micro levels lead our orientation. That is, changing our gaze to see the realities that have been obscured in the ELT dominant discourses, then including views that orient other voices (different from the white-­ dominant profiles) we have been exposed to, to explore other realities. For example, to risk producing our own policies by specifying the context needs. At the meso level, I start by questioning what comes to be thought as the true in different informative means and establishing parameters of evaluating this through the lenses of plural rather than monolithic and homogenized views of reality. And, at micro levels, I call for developing classroom practices that purport to enhance social justice visibilizing the multicultural and multilinguistic characteristics of every context in which our practice is seen.

Conclusions Throughout this chapter, I have developed an analysis of the racializing discourses circulating and constructing the ELT context historically as a reflection of a reality that has been constructed in injustice. This analysis has involved an explanation of race beyond the common understanding of skin color to be able to elucidate various types of racializations enmeshed in labels and static identities that have constructed the actors’ views in the field. This exercise is itself an unauthorized, disruptive, and critical practice to understand the complexity of power relationships organized within those racializations. From my view, those power relationships also cause discriminatory practices and perpetuate subalternizations and oppressions that are usually accepted and normalized while maintaining the status quo. I have displayed these multifarious layers of racialization on the basis of the metaphor on policies coined by Ricento and Hornberger (1996) regarding peeling the onion to understand how practices translate policies (or dominant discourses) in negotiation with needs and contexts. In this analysis, I have taken the example of a language institute where I used to work and where I inquired about teachers’ practices and views as orchestrated with the macro and meso levels of

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racialized discourses of English teaching and where I found that teachers’ discourses and practices usually aligned those discriminatory discourses. I end up saying that it is necessary to disrupt these racialized discourses by developing practices that break the rules of traditional language practice, that is, that turn to an unauthorized look to question what has been established as a regime of truth. More importantly, I set the need to develop more inclusive, multicultural, and social justice practices.

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Index1

A

Access, 48, 65, 65n4, 68, 69, 71, 72, 78, 79, 83, 143, 145–148, 179, 220–222 Accreditation, 169 Achievements, 18, 19, 24, 38, 45, 51, 86, 124, 142, 146, 151, 153, 192 Action research, 18 Agency, 9, 26, 69, 125, 164–182, 201 Agendas, 8, 22, 57, 72, 80, 85, 93, 164, 165, 171, 182, 193, 212 Alternative views, 16 American, 48, 85–87, 132, 194 American English, 202 Andean dialectal version of Colombian Spanish, 100 Anglonormative, 143–145, 147

Anglophone countries, 22 Arendt, Hanna, 23 Assessment, 17, 65, 69, 70, 152–154, 165, 169 Autobiographies, 27 Autoethnographies, 27 B

Banks, J. A., 15, 20, 22 Barkhuizen, G., 169, 172, 173 Basic Learning Rights: English, 69, 72 Basic Standards of Competence, 70, 72 Basic Standards of Competences in Foreign Languages: English, 37, 69 Bilingual action plans, 39, 40, 43, 48, 49

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. H. Guerrero-Nieto (ed.), Unauthorized Outlooks on Second Languages Education and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45051-8

229

230 Index

Bilingual education, 36, 38, 39, 51, 79–81, 212, 213 Bilingual education for indigenous, 38 Bilingual learners, 88 Bogotá, 6, 35–51, 101, 129, 144, 149, 152, 195, 210, 217, 218 B1 and B+, B2, 40, 41, 152 Bourdieu, P., 56–58, 65, 108, 148, 148n2 British, 64, 85, 86 British Council, 37, 45, 49, 65, 69, 81 British English, 87, 202 Budget, 46 C

Cambridge University Press, 69 Canonical traditions, 15, 19 Capital accumulation, 142 Capitalist society, 58, 60 Certification, 41, 42, 44, 65n4, 124, 213, 221 Colombian Andean Spanish, 108 Colombian bilingual teachers, 78 Colombian Framework for English (COFE), 80, 82 Coloniality of being, 100, 101, 108 Colonializing discourses, 83 Colonial research legacies, 26 Commodification, 36, 122, 124, 125, 169, 170, 177 Commoditization, 38 Commoditized, 149, 154, 219 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), 40, 70, 72, 83, 152, 203, 213

Communal narrativizations, 27 Communicative competences, 18, 38, 39, 44, 70, 106 Competitiveness, 63, 71, 72, 81, 142, 148, 166 Competitivity, 78 C1, 125 Context-responsive, 166 Cook, V., 88 Corrective measures, 59 Critical, 4, 6, 8, 9, 15–17, 24, 25, 36, 41, 47, 49–51, 56, 70, 77–93, 122, 126–128, 133, 137, 142–144, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155–158, 164, 166, 167, 170, 173, 176, 179–182, 190, 202, 209–225 consciousness, 26, 156 discourse analysis, 4 interculturality, 4, 7, 89 perspective, 4, 5, 78, 90–92 stance, 47, 146 Critical Collaborative Autoethnography, 8, 121–137 Critical race theory (CRT), 20, 126, 135, 150 Cross-cultural awareness, 87 Crystallized identity, 107 Culture/cultural, 17, 21, 22, 37, 48, 61, 67, 84, 87, 89, 100–103, 105–107, 110, 114, 122, 127, 132, 134, 135, 146, 178, 197, 204, 210, 216, 219 awareness, 100, 106 dimension of learning, 100 diversity, 51, 80, 146 heritage, 111 institutes, 65 representations, 211

 Index 

Curricular Guidelines, 37, 154 Curricular Guidelines for Foreign Languages, 81, 82 Curriculum, 4, 6, 8, 17, 20, 40, 42, 55–72, 89, 91, 124, 143, 158, 169, 177, 213, 223 D

Decolonial, 4, 15, 16, 24, 27, 99–114, 136, 149, 150, 193 Deficient native speakers, 88 Demonumentalizing knowledges, 25 Depression, 122 Development, 8, 17–20, 38, 42, 44, 45, 47, 50, 56, 77–79, 81, 84, 85, 91, 92, 99, 124, 129, 132, 141–149, 154–157, 165, 166, 180, 202, 204, 205, 219, 220, 220n2 Developmentalist discourse, 146–148 Disciplinary micro-field, 6, 55, 56, 64–68 Disciplinary power, 55–57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 69–71 Discipline, 56–61, 63, 67n5, 71, 172, 190, 199 Discriminatory, 10, 20, 22, 123, 203, 205, 210, 217, 219, 220, 223–225 Disobedient, 5, 8, 15–29 Dominant discourses, 15, 16, 26–28, 67, 67n5, 72, 146, 202, 212, 218–219, 223, 224 Dominant English varieties, 88 Doxa actors, 58 Dussel, Enrique, 101 Dysconsciousness, 23, 223

231

E

Eastern languages, 145 Economic profits, 168, 169, 196, 220 Economic success, 179, 192, 222 Effectiveness, 17, 68, 166 Efficiency and efficacy, 18, 192, 193, 196, 198 ELE (Español como lengua Extranjera), 7, 100, 101n1, 104, 106 Elites, 56, 80, 147, 178, 191, 194, 196 ELT research, 15–29, 122, 126 Emotional fulfilment, 146 Emotion competence, 19 Emotions, 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, 127, 172 English as a Foreign Language (EFL), 8, 81, 86, 87, 90, 200, 202, 205, 206 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), 7, 84–87, 90, 206 English as an International Language (EIL), 78, 84–87, 206 English as success, 15, 21, 23 English language student-teachers, 8, 121–137 English language testing, 65, 69, 71, 72 English neutrality, 69 Entrepreneurs, 57 Episteme, 58, 63 Epistemic racism, 216, 220, 221 Epistemic silence, 122, 125, 126 Epistemic violence, 216 Ethnic communities, 38 Ethnicity, 10, 17, 21, 23, 209, 210, 215

232 Index

Ethnoeducation, 81 Eurocentrism, 15, 20 Event, 56, 58, 64n3, 101, 133, 171–173, 190, 198 Exitismo, 63, 63n2 External policies, 39 Extractivist methodologies, 25 F

Financial resources, 46 Fordist approach, 200 Foreign language teaching, 36, 42, 46, 80 Formative research, 126 Foucault, M., 56, 57, 59–62, 67, 67n5 Freedom of choice, 168 French, 39, 61, 64, 80, 145, 147, 218 G

Gender, 5, 17, 19, 122, 126, 152, 215 General Law of Education, 37, 80, 82 German, 102, 145, 147, 218 Global capitalism, 146 Global citizens, 62, 145 Global South/s, 20, 25, 26 Globalization, 9, 21–23, 26, 38, 39, 42, 50, 63, 70, 72, 78, 131, 164–182, 190, 193, 217 Guía 22: Basic Standards of Competence, 70

H

Harassment mechanism, 199 Heterarchical, 194 Heterodox, 58, 67, 72 Heterogeneity, 22, 144 Hierarchies, 22, 23, 102, 132, 135, 147, 166, 214–216 High socio-economic strata, 79 Holman Jones, S., 122, 129 Homogenization, 20–23, 151 Honor-based discipline, 59, 71 Human and social development, 220 Human capital, 83 Hybridization, 104 I

Ideology(ies), 1, 2, 5, 15, 17, 21, 68, 110, 122, 125, 126, 136, 154–157, 168, 169, 202, 206, 212–214, 217 Indigenous communities, 48, 78, 80 Indigenous language, 6, 7, 48, 80, 218 Inequality, 7, 78, 83, 89, 108, 114, 133, 136, 147, 148, 178, 206 Inferiority, 125, 130, 134, 214 Inner circle, 77, 78, 84–87, 91 Instrumental, 8, 17–19, 23, 36, 42, 177, 179, 191, 200, 203, 205, 219 Instrumentalization, 26, 122, 126 Interactions, 24–26, 37, 50, 58, 68, 85, 86, 101, 102, 107, 114, 127, 128, 172, 200, 212 Intercultural communication, 86, 143

 Index 

Interculturality, 4, 7, 21, 89, 104–106, 145, 146 Intercultural perspectives, 37, 87 Intercultural speaker, 100–102, 104 Interlingual perspective, 37 Internal colonialism, 9, 189–206 International agendas, 22 International exams, 39, 213 International governmental organizations, 65 International standards, 21, 82 Intersecting, 27, 164 Invisibilization, 42, 125, 126 Invisibilizing, 20 Invisible form of bilingualism, 80 Italian, 145, 147, 218

233

Language policy implementation, 82 Language teaching, 2, 5–7, 16–19, 24, 25, 35–51, 69, 70, 77–93, 99–104, 121, 125, 126, 144, 147, 149, 150, 152, 157, 168n1, 190, 191, 193–194, 209, 212, 220, 221 Levels of proficiency, 70 Linguacultural backgrounds, 85 Linguistic-cultural conflicts, 104 Local contexts, 16, 23, 37, 216 Local core cultural values proposed, 91 Localized, 24, 25, 45, 149, 150 Local knowledge(s), 79, 90, 91, 93, 125, 165, 216 Loci of enunciation, 26 L2 user/L2 learner, 86–88

K

King, J., 21, 22, 79, 80, 223 Knowing and knower, 25–28, 105, 123, 128, 150, 156, 167, 172, 194, 197 Knowledge production, 17, 20–24 Knowledges otherwise, 25 Kubota, R., 85, 150, 169, 170, 216 L

Lack of preparation for teachers, 92 Lack of resources, 83, 92 Language institutes, 4, 5, 10, 191, 193, 195–200, 202–205, 210, 217–221, 224 Language learning, 17, 19, 37, 40, 83, 101–102, 142, 145, 147, 149, 152, 155, 166 Language pedagogies, 100, 142, 166

M

Macro, 37, 38, 44, 167, 182, 211, 212, 216, 218, 219, 221, 223, 224 Maldonado-Torres, 22 Marketization, 80, 220 Martín Rojo, L., 56, 64n3, 69 Master narrative, 8, 141–158 Material ways of living, 141 Matrix of power, 27 Means of correct training, 55, 62 Mechanisms of marketing, 219 Mental wellbeing, 201 Mercantilist dynamics, 143, 148, 168n1 Meso, 167, 211, 216, 217, 219, 221, 223, 224 Mestizo, 113, 113n7

234 Index

Methodological decisions, 27 Micro, 125, 167, 211, 216, 221–224 Mignolo, W. D., 21, 25, 150, 194 Ministry of National Education (MEN), 38, 81, 82, 124, 125 Minority language groups, 80 Miscegenation, 107–112 Modern school, 56 Monoglossic, 155, 156 Monolingual speaker, 101 Moralizer, 62 Multicompetent language users, 88 Multicultural, 16n1, 78, 210, 210n1, 221, 223–225 Multilingual, 51, 78, 106, 146 Multiple identities, 109 N

Narrative inquiry approach, 167 Narratives, 8, 9, 122, 135, 136, 141–158, 164, 167, 171–181 National Bilingualism Plan (PNB), 5, 38, 39, 44 National Quality Commission, 124 Native communities, 104 Native indigenous language, 218 Native languages, 35, 38, 40, 42, 48, 80 Native speaker, 37, 84, 86, 88–91, 122, 125, 126, 130, 132, 196, 202–204, 213, 217 Native speakerism, 1, 22, 202, 203, 206 Native-like, 56, 57, 64n3, 65, 85, 87, 88, 169 Neoliberal associations, 143 Neoliberal regimes, 142, 143, 149

Neoliberal structures, 143, 157, 168n1 Non-native speakers, 85, 125, 135, 203 Normalized, 16, 19, 51, 164, 190, 197, 211, 216, 224 O

Ontology/ontologies, 3, 15, 19, 25 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 20, 175, 179–182 Orthodox, 56, 58, 59, 63, 70, 71 Other foreign languages, 36, 48 Other ontologies, 5, 15–29 Outer and the Expanding circle, 84, 87 Overcrowded classrooms, 92 Ownership of the language, 84 Oxford University Press, 65 P

Paradigm shift, 7, 77–79, 87–90, 93 Pedagogical and research doings, 24 Pedagogy/pedagogical, 4, 6, 9, 59, 60, 89, 91, 100, 101, 126, 132, 137, 141–158, 166, 190, 204 awareness, 77, 90, 91 competencies, 44 practices, 93, 123, 148–152, 157, 158, 166 of research, 28 strategy, 123, 124, 129, 134, 136, 137

 Index 

Peripheries, 2, 3, 20, 108, 168, 193, 194, 202, 206 Personal development, 132, 146 Personal experience, 23, 126–128, 146 Plurilinguism, 218 Pluriversal, 26, 27 Policies, 1–11, 35–51, 55, 67, 69, 78–83, 85, 87, 90–93, 109n5, 124, 141–143, 149, 150, 152, 156, 157, 164, 166, 167, 171, 175–179, 182, 191, 192, 193n2, 209–213, 216–221, 223, 224 Policymakers, 49, 67, 165, 166, 181 Policy-making, 45 Politicians, 1, 57 Politics, 17, 24, 25, 43, 67n5, 84, 167 Portuguese, 109, 145, 147, 218 Positionalities, 15, 24–27 Positivist epistemologies, 18, 19 Post-development theory, 8, 142, 144 Power, 9, 11, 16, 19, 21–23, 26–29, 37, 43, 55–72, 89, 105, 108, 122, 131, 134, 135, 145, 150, 152, 155, 164, 167, 171, 172, 176, 215, 216, 223, 224 Predominant, 35, 36, 42, 164, 218, 222 Prescriptive models, 17 Prevailing models of bilingual education, 79 Primary school teachers, 42, 92 Privatization of education, 178 Privilege, 6, 7, 20, 22, 25, 67, 80, 93, 144, 191, 203, 214

235

Problematization, 5, 8, 18, 19, 156, 180 Productivity, 166, 169, 196, 221, 223 Product-oriented, 166 Professional development, 18, 38, 42, 44, 50, 81, 92, 129, 165 Professionals, 4, 9, 10, 27, 44, 56, 59, 65n4, 68, 70, 89, 122, 125, 131–134, 137, 164, 170, 173, 182, 191, 194–197, 201, 203, 205, 213, 220n2, 221, 222 Profitability, 168, 180, 190 Public and private education, 79, 83 Punishment, 59, 60, 134, 198 Q

Quality, 38, 40, 41, 63, 69, 72, 88, 89, 92, 104, 124, 141, 151, 166, 169, 180 Quality in education, 56, 69, 70, 72 R

Race, 4, 5, 10, 21, 114, 122, 150, 157, 194, 209, 210, 213–217, 219, 224 Racialization, 16, 150, 215, 217, 218, 220, 221, 224 Racialized field, 15 Racism, 10, 22, 105, 122, 136, 156, 215–217, 219–221 Raizal communities, 38 Reclaiming, 28 (Re)claim their voices, 122

236 Index

Reification of English, 2, 10, 189–206 Reified, 2, 68, 191, 193 Relatos, 27 Religious leaders, 57 Reproduction of foreign educational models, 37 Research companions, 27 Research groups, 49, 65 Resistance, 43, 45, 49, 50, 67, 150, 151, 154, 157, 158, 177, 181, 211, 212, 215, 223 Revitalization, 38, 48 S

Santos, B. S. de, 150 Santos, I., 103 School machinery, 59, 63–65, 71 Scientific discourse, 67n5, 214 Self-as-teacher, 167, 170 Shohamy, E., 56, 65, 166 Silencing mechanisms, 131 Situated practices, 93 Skin color, 210, 213–217, 224 Social mobility, 68, 148, 205 Social practices, 21, 68, 69, 121, 150, 173, 177, 210, 211, 215, 216 Social structures, 141, 211 Socio-critical perspective, 164 Sociolinguistic justice, 156, 157 Spanish, 2–4, 6, 7, 35, 37–39, 42, 50, 64, 79, 80, 100, 101, 104–108, 105n2, 110, 111, 113, 134, 153n5, 154–158, 192n1, 200n5

as a foreign language, 7, 99–114, 218 as a heritage language course, 154–157 learners, 104 Standard English, 6, 55–72, 86, 87 Standardization, 22, 80, 165, 169, 192 Standardized tests, 39, 40, 42, 151, 152 Statistical sample, 42 Stereotypes, 101, 105, 106, 135, 152 Stories, 27 Stories, 3, 109, 126, 127, 133, 164, 167, 171–173, 177–182 Strategic alliances, 197 Strategic allies, 49 Struggles, 1, 2, 20, 25, 27, 29, 45, 46, 69, 83, 123 Subalternation, 150, 154, 158 Subalternization, 16, 216, 224 Subalternized, 25, 213, 216 Subalternized categories, 22 Subjectivation, 55 Subjectivities, 24, 26, 28, 44, 60, 83, 150 Suggested English Curriculum, 82 Supranational education policies, 164, 167 Surveillance, 62, 199 T

Targeted schools, 50 Teacher education programs, 78, 81, 89, 92, 123 Teacher-researchers, 9, 24, 27, 47, 65, 167, 181

 Index 

Teachers’ identities, 44, 131, 169 Teachers’ voices, 36 Teachers’ work, 36 Teachers’ professional identity, 19 Teaching methodologies, 18, 24 Teaching profession, 18, 132, 192, 198 Teaching Spanish, 99–114 Technical understandings, 24, 142 Technocratic, 151, 152, 158 Technocrats, 6, 57, 58, 166 Tensions, 43, 56–60, 106, 147, 166 Territories, 2, 7, 23, 24, 78, 104, 109, 112, 179, 194 Testimonios, 27 Tests, 40, 56, 64n3, 65, 70, 71, 153, 201, 203 Training, 40–42, 47, 49, 55, 62, 65, 100, 101n1, 143, 146, 169, 199, 204, 220, 220n2 Transformative intellectuals, 165, 170

237

U

Ubuntu, 25 Uncritical positioning, 146 United Way Colombia, 37, 45 Urban and rural schools, 83 Utile and docile human beings, 57 V

Validate theories, 18 Vasilachis, I., 123, 194 W

Welfare, 36, 58, 191, 205 Whiteness, 15, 214, 216, 217 Whiteness-centered practices, 20, 21, 220 White privilege, 21 Work and human development, 81 Working-class, 58, 60 World Englishes (WE), 78, 84–87 Write to right in the process, 122