Abstract:This qualitative research was done in a class of English Oral Practice 2 in an undergraduate English teacher education course in Brazil. Grounded on the conception of language as practice, the first author of this article developed a problematizing pedagogy focusing on race/racism and language as space of power. Resorting to class activities (a question of a written test, an oral test, and a feedback session) and the professor’s diary, we analyzed the students’ accounts about the course and the meanings they c… Show more
“…In my view, it is a clear example of how colonialities operate in language classrooms, as I consider that these topics strengthen colonialities in the sphere of economy, gender, sexuality, language, spirituality etc., ending up maintaining "dominant structures of knowledge and power" (WALSh, 2007, p. 26). however, as we have argued elsewhere (PESSOA, 2014;PESSOA;hOELzLE, 2017;PESSOA;BORELLI;SILVESTRE, 2018), there is much more to subjectivities than what is shown in the life of textbook characters and we consider they should be better explored, especially in university teacher education courses.…”
Section: Subjectivities In English Lessons At a Teacher Education Und...mentioning
In this article, we discuss the challenges of teacher education for the 21stCentury, taking decoloniality as a possible way to resignify our praxis. One of the challenges in decolonial thinking is to problematize the coloniality of knowledge (LANDER, 2005), which is established through the privilege of scientific knowledge and the invisibilization of other forms of knowing. In this respect, Castro-Gomez (2007) affirms that the university is an institution that contributes significantly to the maintenance of this logic. As university teachers directly involved in language teacher education, we have sought different ways to develop our praxis as a decolonial project (WALSH, 2013). In this article, we discuss decoloniality and present three praxes in which our objective was attempting to live language teacher education otherwise.
“…In my view, it is a clear example of how colonialities operate in language classrooms, as I consider that these topics strengthen colonialities in the sphere of economy, gender, sexuality, language, spirituality etc., ending up maintaining "dominant structures of knowledge and power" (WALSh, 2007, p. 26). however, as we have argued elsewhere (PESSOA, 2014;PESSOA;hOELzLE, 2017;PESSOA;BORELLI;SILVESTRE, 2018), there is much more to subjectivities than what is shown in the life of textbook characters and we consider they should be better explored, especially in university teacher education courses.…”
Section: Subjectivities In English Lessons At a Teacher Education Und...mentioning
In this article, we discuss the challenges of teacher education for the 21stCentury, taking decoloniality as a possible way to resignify our praxis. One of the challenges in decolonial thinking is to problematize the coloniality of knowledge (LANDER, 2005), which is established through the privilege of scientific knowledge and the invisibilization of other forms of knowing. In this respect, Castro-Gomez (2007) affirms that the university is an institution that contributes significantly to the maintenance of this logic. As university teachers directly involved in language teacher education, we have sought different ways to develop our praxis as a decolonial project (WALSH, 2013). In this article, we discuss decoloniality and present three praxes in which our objective was attempting to live language teacher education otherwise.
Our objective is to discuss decolonial and, mainly, posthumanist perspectives, as we engage in an inter-epistemic dialogue, which encompasses discussions on matter and language. At first, we address Indigenous thoughts in order to relate them to decolonial and posthumanist worldviews, briefly concentrating our attention on some arguments concerning their relation, and we justify our choices. We draw on critiques of colonial and humanist ideas about humans, nonhuman others and matter, and we then discuss traditional conceptions of language. From a posthumanist framework, we approach understandings of language that directly intertwine it with materiality. Based on the problematizations we present, our aim is to expand understandings of what it means to be human and perceptions of language, as we become involved in a project that seeks to see and go beyond human hubris. Therefore, we encourage an onto-epistemological review of language, based on its entanglement with matter.
The decolonial accounts made by a student teacher motivated us to problematize discourses about the “unpreparedness to teach languages at schools”, recurrent in the area of language teacher education in Brazil, and confront them with accounts of other student teachers and of applied linguistics, poststructuralist and decolonial scholars. In this interpretive study, discussions on the themes language, the subject and teaching, coming from the empirical material, led us to a perspective of teacher education as an “impossible but necessary project” (LOPES; BORGES, 2015) and to the need to educate language teachers “to talk” (SKLIAR, 2006), in view of the great complexity of teaching contexts.
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