The Wisdom of Teachers’ Personal Theories: Creative ELT Practices From Colombian Rural Schools

Abstract

Stemming from a study of what it is like to teach English in rural Colombia considering both English language teaching policy and social challenges of these contexts, this paper explores different locally grounded English language teaching practices. Through the analysis of teachers' narratives and field observations, four examples of such practices are discussed. These examples highlight how teachers intuitively tend to make the most of their expertise, the limited resources available, and the local lingua-cultural repertoires in an attempt to help students make sense of English. From the perspective of language teaching as a socially sensitive practice, findings suggest that teachers' own experiential and situational knowledge constitutes a powerful platform from which valuable bottom-up practices are and can further be devised.Key words: Critical pedagogy, English language teaching practices, teacher knowledge, rural contexts.Partiendo de un estudio sobre lo que conlleva enseñar inglés en Colombia rural considerando la política de enseñanza de inglés y los desafíos sociales de estos contextos, este artículo explora prácticas de enseñanza de inglés localmente construidas. A partir del análisis de narrativas de profesores y observaciones de campo, se discuten cuatro ejemplos de dichas prácticas. Éstos resaltan que intuitivamente los profesores tienden a sacar el máximo provecho de su experticia, los recursos limitados disponibles y los repertorios lingüísticos y culturales locales para ayudar a dar sentido al aprendizaje del inglés. Desde la perspectiva de enseñanza de lenguas como una práctica socialmente sensible, estos resultados muestran que el conocimiento experiencial y situacional de los profesores constituye una plataforma fuerte sobre la cual se desarrollan prácticas valiosas.Palabras clave: conocimiento docente, contextos rurales, pedagogía crítica, prácticas de enseñanza del inglés.

Moving from What Do English Teachers know? to How Do English Teachers Experience Knowledge? A Decolonial Perspective in the Study of English Teachers’ Knowledge

“…It is but logical that these issues become of interest in the ELT field because that is what the ELT discipline is primarily concerned with; even so, other sources of knowledge are hardly ever considered. In fact, when describing other types of knowledge authors resort to saying that there also exists "a practical knowledge" or "the wisdom of practice" (Shulman, 1984, Cruz Arcila, 2018, or an "implicit knowledge" of teaching gained in "non-formal ways"…”

Critical Pedagogy Trends in English Language Teaching

“…The following three studies were conducted in Colombian rural contexts, something very interesting that is subject of analysis in the next section. Arcila (2018) conducted a study as part of a bigger research project that aimed to assess English teaching in rural Colombia and the challenges the context represents for teachers. The study explored seven English teachers' narratives, perspectives, and teaching practices.…”

Teacher Agency Through Collaborative Expertise-building

“…The teachers sharedand this should not be unfamiliar to teachers in similar spaces of the geopolitics of knowledgethat teacher training programs in the region would include well-funded workshops and seminars featuring 'experts' flown in a day before the activity and would usually leave the place immediately after their lectures were done. The goal mainly was to introduce the 'newest' and 'best' practices in the field, even if decades-old research has shown that such modes of teacher training were barely effective since what teachers would have learned could not be applied when they returned to their own classrooms and institutions (Cruz Arcila, 2018;Hu, 2002;Chowdhury & Le Ha, 2008). Alternatively, needs analysis needed to be seen not simply as a process of accumulating information but, more importantly, as an opportunity to actively listen to multipleeven conflicting --voices inside and outside the classroom, develop ways to systematically map out what has been learned by listening, and respond to these learnings in the form of localized elucidation and solutions to problems and needs of the specific contexts of teaching and learning.…”