Decolonizing ELT teacher education by incorporating knowledge of local communities in the teaching practicum

Context and participants

This study was carried out at a public university in the northeast of Colombia offering a tenth-semester Bachelor in foreign languages with emphasis on English. The participants of this study were three student-teachers (two women and one man), who were purposefully selected because they were doing their teaching practicum with an emphasis on community-based pedagogies. Participants’ ages ranged between 21 and 24 years old. Participants who were not doing their teaching practicum within the concept of community-based pedagogies were not included. One of the authors was the student teachers’ mentor or supervisor of the practicum and the second author was an observer. Both researchers actively participated in the data collection and analysis process. According to the Education Act 02041, Practicum has become a central part of teacher education programs in the country. Pre-service teachers start their practicum earlier in their programs (before they have finished the first 50 credits of the program). Following the policy, the Pedagogical practicum at the university where the study took place is divided in three stages: Observational practicum (3 to 5 semesters), guided practicum (6 and 7 semesters), and innovation practicum (8, 9 and 10 semesters).

The research project took place in the last stages of the practicum (innovation): “Pedagogical Practicum” I, II and III in the last three semesters of the program, during the second semester of 2020 and the academic semesters of 2021. In Practicum I, students carried out an analysis of the educational context, based on the outcomes of the analysis, student-teachers designed two pedagogical projects that were implemented, analyzed, and evaluated in Practicum courses II and III. Due to the emergency caused by COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulty to be in school contexts, the Practicum was done with the students enrolled in the English courses (pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper intermediate) in the same teacher education program. All the process took place through the platform Zoom, whose access was granted by the university.

Regarding community-based research experiences at the University, it is relevant to mention that teacher researchers belonging to the language teacher education programs at the school of languages at the university have conducted research that illustrates the impact of utilizing the human, linguistic, social, ecological and cultural resources in local communities. Their research and pedagogical goals were to explore, understand and analyze social and cultural issues that become part of the content of English courses and foster interdisciplinary work among professors from different programs at the university. Several professors from other programs (Social work, Laws, History, Civil engineering) were invited as expert guest speakers to illustrate students and teacher educators in the topics that they intended to explore in the English courses. Guest speakers give their specialized talks either in English or in Spanish.

Instruments for data collection

Semi-structured interviews

We designed and piloted a questionnaire for the semi-structured interview and administered it to the three participants. The authors designed the entire questionnaire based on the purpose of the project and the central tenets of community-based pedagogies and decolonial theories. The individual interviews took around 40 minutes each and we invited participants to join us through Google Meet. Each interview was audio-recorded and transcribed afterwards. We designed a questionnaire that contained five questions that would provide us with details about the ways they incorporated knowledge of local communities as resources for language teaching and learning during the practicum. Semi-structured interviews are considered by Horton et al. (2004) to be flexible both in designing and refining the interview questionnaire and in conducting the interviews. They believe that semi-structured interviews allow “the interviewees a degree of freedom to explain their thoughts and to highlight areas of particular interest and expertise that they felt they had”. The authors contend that “this form of interviewing also revealed certain issues that they had not previously identified, and which could be followed up in further questioning/as well as in later interviews” (p.340).

Curricular units

Curricular units consisted of the long-term planning that preservice teachers designed to sequence the main topics (identity and historical memory) that were addressed during the two academic semesters that lasted the implementation of the two pedagogical projects. Two curricular units were included in the study. The curricular unit’s chart designed by the researchers was used as a guide for students to structure their practice. Student teachers selected the themes considering the results of the needs analysis carried out in Practicum I. It addressed seven aspects that guided the pre-service teachers in their planning: stages & time, themes, objectives, learning resources, learning outcomes, language focus, and assessment. These seven aspects aimed at explaining to the pre-service teachers how to integrate local resources with language and literacy activities, language functions, grammar and lexis to engage students and help them achieve the learning outcomes. The curricular unit was the main source for pre-service teachers to design the lesson plans and materials used during the development of the pedagogical projects.

Final report

This document contains the description, implementation, analysis, and evaluation of the pedagogical projects undertaken during the teaching practicum. This document allowed researchers to know the rationale that underlies pre-service teachers’ decisions; theoretical, pedagogical, and didactic frameworks; as well as the main findings and conclusions they drew from the pedagogical projects. The final report was a group assignment presented by student teachers at the end of Practicum III.

Reflective journals

Student teachers’ reflective journals were used to document the way they experienced practice and dealt with situations in their practicum. Hubbs & Brand (2010) define reflective journaling as a method for enhancing understanding of course content, a strategy for making meaning, and a means for illuminating and critiquing student understanding.

Ethical considerations

Retrospective ethical approval was obtained from the Council of the School of Languages at Universidad Industrial de Santander, as recorded in the minute No. 16 session number 16, on May 26, 2023. At the beginning of the research process, researchers obtained written informed consent from the three participants, given the fact that the study was classified as “no risk” according to Resolution 8430 of the Colombian Ministry of Health, since this project does not include any sensible information about the conduct, personal information of the participants and will not harm participants physical or psychological integrity. In order to comply with the publication policies of the journal, we retrospectively sought and obtained ethical approval. In order to obtain informed consent, researchers invited the three student teachers to participate in the study. First, we contacted each participant by phone individually and explained the purpose of the study and the type of data that would be collected, as well as the instruments for data collection. We also explained that their participation was voluntary and did not represent any risk to their physical or mental safety. We also explained the procedures we would use to guarantee their anonymity, as well as their autonomy and freedom to withdraw from the study at any moment. The three of them accepted to be part of the project and signed the written consent.

Data analysis

We gathered the data from the three participants through online sessions during the year 2021. As we mentioned above our instruments were semi-structured interviews, the curricular units designed by the participants and their final reports. We organized the data into files and created folders in google drive to have the data available for analysis. We used a thematic analysis approach to identify recurring instances of the responses to the interview questions as well as the content of the curricular units and final reports. Thematic analysis is described by Braun and Clarke (2006) as “a flexible and useful research tool, which can potentially provide a rich and detailed, yet complex account of data” (p. 5). The researchers read and coded the data to discuss the emergent themes and to construct the final emerging categories that are discussed below.

The themes that emerged from the analysis revealed connections between student teachers’ didactic knowledge coming from English-speaking countries and local knowledge produced by Colombian scholars; the design and selection of learning materials that aimed at including voices of actors who experienced violence, discrimination, or exclusion; and the use of both languages English and Spanish as sources for learning and teaching. Considering the plurality and complementarity of factors that the themes revealed and informed by the theory of ecology of knowledges by Santos (2014), we titled the first category approaching knowledge from an ecological perspective; and the second category problematizing ELT to situate practice and make visible the local for teaching and learning.

Findings

In this section, we intend to discuss the findings through two categories followed by a brief definition of each one. Then, the reader will find the analysis and discussion of each category supported by samples of the data that illustrate the main points that we want to highlight.

Approaching knowledge from an ecological perspective

Colonial/modern models of monocultural thinking and knowledge prevail in today’s thinking and practice including university settings. The decolonial movement has claimed for the recognition of other forms of knowledge present in the global south. For Santos (2014) global social justice is intimately linked to global cognitive justice. Therefore, the struggle for global social justice must be a struggle for global cognitive justice too. Global cognitive justice makes visible suppressed, marginalized, or silenced knowledge and allows the copresence and coexistence of different types of knowledge. In other words, Santos (2014) advocates for an ecology of knowledges. In the data analysis process, researchers identified that preservice teachers recognized and included different types of knowledge in all the stages of the practicum. Below, we will discuss and illustrate these points.

The analysis of student teachers’ reflections and experiences during the practicum provided us with a wealth of situations that show them involved in multiple processes that implied decision-making for designing lessons, curricular sequences, teaching materials, and activities to engage students during the implementation. As mentioned by student teachers in the individual interviews, they devoted a great deal of time to finding relevant sources that included printed, visual, and multimodal materials and invited expert guest speakers (as suggested by the practicum professor) to inform the two projects. Student teachers included knowledge from different academic sources, disciplines, and community members to promote critical reflection on the main topics. We evidenced how student teachers approached knowledge from an ecological perspective first by including didactic knowledge coming English speaking countries and local knowledge produced by Colombian scholars. Second, by observing student teachers design and select learning materials that include voices of actors who have experienced violence, discrimination, or exclusion. Third, the ecology of knowledge was manifested using both languages English and Spanish (translanguaging) as sources for learning and teaching.

First, student teachers recognized that mainstream didactic knowledge about English teaching (mainly coming from England and the USA) and knowledge produced by local scholars and teachers became complementary sources of knowledge for the design, creation, implementation, and evaluation of their practicum projects. In the following quotation from an interview, participant 2 stressed the importance of local knowledge in the design of the curricular units:

The curricular unit, the lesson plans and the materials also depicted knowledge of mainstream didactics as essential for the design and the implementation stages of the projects. Student teachers approached speaking and writing with ease as competent users of the language and exhibited methodological knowledge that permitted them to scaffold the production of multimodal written and oral texts. Student teachers’ decisions focused on providing students with a sequence of activities through examples and relevant input that prepared them to create the final texts: Digital TED talks and digital storybooks. Thus, teaching about what a TED talk was by watching TED talks and analyzing the structure; presenting and explaining the key elements of a ted talk; improvising storytelling; teaching how to narrate past events; and guiding the creation of the TED talk were part of the process of guiding learners in the producing of their TED talks. This can be exemplified in the following excerpt.

Figure 1, an extract of lesson 21 is an example of the chart that student teachers used to plan the lesson objectives, teaching activities, and materials, to carry out a class. The lesson aimed at discussing social justice as the topic of the unit, while enhancing oral skills and familiarizing students with key elements of TED talks.

Figure 1. Chart lesson plan 21, February 5, 2021.

Grammar also played an important role in the projects as student teachers needed to make decisions about the levels of complexity of vocabulary (simple to sophisticated ways of expressing ideas) and grammatical patterns. They designed diverse and situated learning experiences and materials that helped learners to make meaning in more complex and elaborated ways and supported them in the creation of the multimodal texts. Evidently, grammar was at the service of creating TED talks and digital storybooks to tell stories of the lived experiences of exclusion, discrimination, and violence in Colombian communities.

Second, an ecological perspective of knowledge was present in the learning materials designed or selected by student teachers in order to include the voices of several actors who have approached violence, discrimination or exclusion from different lived experiences and viewpoints. This diversity offered a rich variety of knowledge coming from photographers, historians, artists, justice leaders, victims of violence and local community members. The knowledge of different actors was incorporated in the projects through expert guest speakers, friends and relatives, historical readings (Archivo Nacional de Memoria Histórica), documentaries, stories told by the victims of violence and photography. The previous voices became the main sources of knowledge for the learners to generate discussion and reflection on the key topics from multiple local perspectives and at the same time to learn the language.

In the final report, student teachers reflected on how knowledge of community members represented in the stories of the lived experiences were vital to help their learners to broaden their perspectives of exclusion, discrimination, and violence:

Finally, student teachers designed and used a variety of multimodal materials for meaning-making to complement the traditional written and oral ways to communicate in the language classroom. Through TED Talks, photography, documentaries, and films student teachers provided information to reflect on discrimination, social groups, identity, and Colombian historical memory. They were also used as examples for students to create their own TED talks to denounce the experiences of discrimination lived by people in their communities. This can be seen in the digital stories that learners produced (Story 6).

The story (Figure 2) depicts the situation of a Wayuu indigenous girl in the north of Colombia.

Figure 2. Story 5.

Note: The text and images are published with prior written consent from the author of the story who also consented to publish this figure. The names of the characters in the story are fictional but are associated to a real massacre that took place in Colombia in 2002, in Bojayá, Chocó.

Thirdly, another way to exemplify the ecology of knowledge is using both languages English and Spanish as sources for learning and teaching. Student teachers’ decision to use material and human resources that used Spanish as their first language and English as the target language evokes Ruiz’s (1984) theory about language as a societal resource. It works as an invitation to teachers to view languages as material resources in classrooms that contribute to expanding and understanding local knowledge as relevant to decolonize the school curriculum. Local expert guest speakers were an important human resource for expanding students’ learning of the topics studied. In this case the talks and the interactions took place in Spanish, so the language was not seen as a problem but as a resource to enrich the knowledge of the topics and complement the language-learning process.

More recently, scholars consider translanguaging as a complex process of interweaving languages in second or foreign language contexts. Li (2017) cited García (2009) to make her claim visible that “translanguaging empowers both the learner and the teacher, transforms the power relations, and focuses the process of teaching and learning on making meaning, enhancing experience, and developing identity” (15). We believe that in teaching and research, it is possible to use material, linguistic and human resources that come in Spanish or English to document a given topic. Materials for teaching were available in Spanish and in English and student teachers used them as they were implementing their classes. It is illustrated below.

Likewise human resources as guest speakers and experts were key in the development of the pedagogical activities as they enhanced the understanding of the topics developed from a local perspective. These experts from different specialized fields, available at the university and social organizations were invited by student teachers to share their knowledge and perspective of the local situations.

As illustrated in the category above, the information for the design of the curricular units and materials as well as for the implementation of the projects came from different yet complementary sources of knowledge. The recognition of and dialogue among different knowledges represented an ecology of knowledges. Thus, knowledge of mainstream didactics for foreign language teaching, mainly Eurocentric, was enriched with the one coming from the situated praxis of teachers and researchers in the Colombian context. Knowledge presented in official books, publications, documentaries, and the academic discourses was complemented with knowledges coming from the voices of ordinary people (victims, friends, relatives) who have lived situations of exclusion and violence. In the same direction, both native and foreign languages were viewed as rich resources in the different stages of the teaching practicum.

This plurality of knowledges represented different ways of knowing, being, seeing and interpreting the world from loci of enunciation. It also permitted student teachers to construct and understand teaching as weaving different experiences to help language learners to critically adopt an informed position and at the same time advance in the learning of language. For Pereira Borelli, Viviane Silvestre and Rocha Pessoa’s (2020, p.304), facing the challenges of teacher education otherwise, we need to “strive for collectiveness, plurality, and locality”.

Problematizing ELT to situate practice in making visible the local for teaching and learning

The teaching practicum at the university where the project took place is conceived as a stage in which student-teachers are expected to propose innovative projects for language learning. In the context of this research project, the teacher educator started by raising awareness about the importance of taking a closer look at the local (whose knowledge is valuable?; What problems do local people have? What cultural sources are visible?, how do people use language and what languages are visible in the communities?). By problematizing the concept of the local and its role in ELT, student teachers could identify and analyze to what extent the local resources have been invisible or narrowly understood and limited to a shallow view of learners’ likes and interests suggested in textbooks (hobbies, popular music, fashion, famous people, movies) and expand their view to include the context in more disruptive ways.

Escobar (2007) defines the local as concrete places in which people make sense of the world and from which knowledge emerges. For the author, local knowledge is the individuals’ mode of place-based consciousness. In the ELT field the local has also gained visibility, especially in the critical perspectives of the last decades. Kumaravadivelu (2003) from a postmethod perspective, remarks the centrality of the local, considering that it can generate location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative strategies for practitioners. In the light of the three principles of the postmethod pedagogy, particularity, practicality and possibility (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, 2006), Clavijo and Ramírez (2019) emphasize the relevance of associating learning with the local dynamics and lived experiences of the learners, relating it to the pedagogical knowledge that emerges from the daily practices of teachers, and creating environments that involve the students’ knowledge to explore with them their identity and ideologies, in order to position it in a social and political context.

Designing lessons to teach EFL using the local knowledge to explore the topics from a critical perspective was the approach we used to guide curriculum design and provide feedback about teaching to the student teachers in the regular feedback sessions with the mentor. As we mentioned above, problematizing ELT to situate it in the local realities implied focusing the practicum on aspects beyond the teaching of language skills. It required placing practice in the realities of students´ communities and inquiring about questions like whose knowledge is valuable; What problems do local people have? What cultural sources are visible?, how do people use language and what languages are visible in the communities? As students expressed it below, connecting language teaching with social and political realities of people in Colombia that implied gathering data from people in the communities about the armed conflict, historical memory, identity and exclusion provided genuine reasons to learn in classrooms.

Problematizing ELT also implied questioning the poor level of engagement, fostering inquiry skills, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) use, individual and group participation and language production learners are expected to carry out in the language classroom. We envisioned from the beginning of the practicum involving students in extensive reading of multimodal texts and different genres, writing of multiple texts such as critical reflections, multimodal digital books, creative writing, TED talks, videos, and reports. Their texts revealed the expanded view of teaching a language and placing local knowledge at the core of the teaching practice and the commitment of teacher educators and student teachers in constructing a new experience in their practicum.

In their writing of digital stories, students’ texts revealed the ways they became acquainted with many instances of violence in Colombia. Student-teachers presented different materials gathered from people’s narratives, documentaries, photographs, and local experts. Students created stories about the armed conflict describing the violent events using fictional and real characters in their digital stories as shown in the story (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Story 4.

Note: The text and images are published with prior written consent from the two authors of the story, who also consented to publish this figure. The names of the characters in the story are fictional but are associated with a real massacre that took place in 2004 in Bahía de Portete, Guajira-Colombia.

Learning to teach using multiple resources available in the educational context brought about successful experiences and challenges for student teachers in the implementation of the two pedagogical projects. They felt they were successful in teaching EFL by engaging students in experiences through topics that were critical to them.