Decolonizing Foreign Language Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
Decolonizing ESOL: Negotiating Linguistic Power in U.S. Public School Classrooms
Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 2006
The year-long study that was the context for this article explored the complicated relationship among the shaping of ESOL as a school construct, the historical legacy of colonialism, and the contemporary influence of globalizing forces on the teaching of English worldwide and the lives of multilingual students enrolled in ESOL. In the context of a year-long critical feminist ethnography of four first-year teachers, this data-driven exploration examines each of three interconnected colonialist manifestations within the schools of the study: an embracing of the supremacy of English over other languages, related to the dominance within school walls of a monolingual model of identity; (2) an investment in keeping Self and Other dichotomous, reflected in a construction of the school category of ESOL as Other and deficit; and (3) the promotion of a White, NES, American norm and the consequent marginalization of ethnic minority, NNES, and immigrant status.
2022
The promotion of language ideologies, policies and pedagogies that treat languages as separate and hierarchical has become a central concern for critical education scholars. In this case study, I explore how school actors at Colegio Colombiano (CC), an international school in Colombia, engaged with critical approaches to bi/multilingual education to leverage the fluid identities and languaging practices of plurilingual teachers and students. In my first data chapter, I place CC within its larger educational context by showing how a logic of coloniality informs both public and private K-12 foreign language education in Colombia. This logic of coloniality reflects a hierarchy of actors within the field of foreign language education in Colombia with external international organizations holding significant power and influence over local priorities. I build on these findings to call international schools into current conversations about decolonizing language education in Colombia. In my second data chapter, I consider how school actors’ language ideologies impacted the creation and enactment of language policies at CC. I describe a spectrum to show how faculty demonstrated a significant shift away from hegemonic ideologies and oppressive language policies through an increasing recognition of the importance of Spanish. While explicit messages about English as superior were no longer officially promoted at CC, colonialistic ideologies and policies persisted which valorized English, denigrated Spanish, and completely ignored other societal and home languages. In my final data chapter, I explore how teachers and students engaged with translanguaging pedagogies. While many teachers expressed a desire to leverage their and their students’ plurilingual repertoires they felt limited by significant obstacles, including the school’s strict model of language separation. Elementary students generally demonstrated a willingness to engage with translanguaging pedagogies, while older students expressed a complex resistance as they negotiated their bilingual identities. In my concluding chapter, I return to the identified logic of coloniality to discuss how international school communities can unveil and interrogate colonialistic understandings of languages, language users and languaging practices. I propose the Decolonizing International Multilingual Education (DIME) framework as a tool to guide schools in the work of decolonizing their language programs.
Discourses of Coloniality in the Understanding and Practices of Translanguaging Pedagogy
2020
Dual language (DL) education has been regarded as a means toward equity and social justice for linguistic minorities. Several studies, however, question if DL programs can, in fact, overcome inequities in the education of emergent bilinguals. This ethnographic study followed these inquiries and explored how translanguaging theory and pedagogy could transform DL education to better serve social justice purposes in this US-Mexico border context. For translanguaging to achieve this, it is fundamental to know how DL educators understand and practice translanguaging in their classrooms. This study revealed that teachers' understandings and practices of translanguaging were embedded in ideologies of coloniality that reproduced normative whiteness and perpetuated processes of coloniality within these DL programs. Drawing from coloniality theory (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) and translanguaging theory (García, 2009) this study analyzed DL educators' discourses that reappropriate concepts intended to dismantle limiting views and practices to achieve equity in the education of emergent bilinguals. This study underscores the necessity of creating a culture of inquiry and ideological exploration when forming DL educators so that they may develop a stance focused on the goals of equity and social justice. Translanguaging pedagogy is a decolonizing tool that can create spaces where pre-service and in-service teachers learn to value their own linguistic richness and identities and to value their students' identities and linguistic repertoires, as well. viii
Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 2021
In times of geocultural subalternization of knowledge and education, English language teaching (ELT) is torn between subalternizing policies and subjectivating practices. Within this context, ELT teacher educators face policies and discourses aimed at framing their teaching practices, professional lives, and research agendas. However, at the same time, they are expected to engage in practices and processes that allow for personal adaptation and social change. Amid this ambivalence, this reflection paper makes a call to decolonize ELT in Colombia. To this effect, this paper reviews some basic epistemological perspectives such as colonialism and decolonial studies. Then, it proposes the decolonization of ELT, along with a grammar of decoloniality based on discursive alternatives about power, knowledge, and being with the potential of bringing about a transformative teacher subjectivation. The main conclusion is that the Colombian ELT community needs to first deconstruct dominant structures and strategies that enact epistemic and cultural dominance of the global north, and then construct alternative discourses and practices that acknowledge and disseminate the singularities of its knowledge and culture.
Decolonizing Language Learning, Decolonizing Research
Colette Despagne, 2021
This volume explores the socio-political dynamics, historical forces, and unequal power relationships which mediate language ideologies in Mexican higher education settings, shedding light on the processes by which minority students learn new languages in post-colonial contexts. Drawing on data from a critical ethnographic case study of a Mexican university over several years, the book turns a critical lens on language learning autonomy and the use of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in post-colonial higher education settings, and advocates for an approach to the language learning and teaching process which takes into account minority language learners' cultural heritage and localized knowledge. Despagne also showcases this approach in the unique research methodology which underpins the data, integrating participatory methods such as Interpretative Focus Groups in an attempt to decolonize research by engaging and involving participants in the analysis of data. Highlighting the importance of critical approaches in encouraging the equitable treatment of diverse cultures and languages and the development of agency in minority language learners, this book will be key reading for researchers in sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, applied linguistics, ethnography of communication, and linguistic anthropology.
Revista Sul-Sul, 2024
Language is a social practice and, therefore, is embedded within social, cultural, political, and economic relations. According to Benesch (2001), language is a site of struggle, a range of discourses competing for legitimacy in specific social contexts where power is unevenly distributed. Due to its transnational and transcultural scope, English is increasingly understood as a Lingua Franca that challenges the ideology of the supposed superiority of the native speaker, as well as the concept of the nation-state and the interrelations between language, territory, and culture. Furthermore, since the establishment of the Modernity/Coloniality group (Castro-Gómez; Grosfoguel, 2007), theories of decoloniality have been widely discussed in various academic fields, including Applied Linguistics and English teaching and learning. For this reason, Souza and Duboc (2021) argue in favor of a more performative decolonial praxis in order to identify, interrogate, and disrupt coloniality in different spheres of contemporary social relations, including language teaching and learning. In this sense, this article aims to reflect upon the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in teacher education as a key concept for promoting a decolonial approach to English language teaching from the Global South.
Foreword. In: Decolonizing Applied Linguistics Research in Latin America
Foreword, 2023
This collection explores the critical decolonial practices of applied linguistics researchers from Latin America and the Latin American diaspora, shedding light on the processes of epistemological decolonization and moving from a monolingual to a multilingual stance. The volume brings together participants from an AILA 2021 symposium, in which researchers reflected on applied linguistics in Latin America, and on the ways in which it brought concerns around social justice, the legacy of coloniality, and the role of monolingual English in education to the fore. Each chapter is composed of four parts: an autobiographical section written both in Spanish or Portuguese and in English followed by a reflection on the epistemological differences between versions; a discussion in English of the research project; a critical reflection on the epistemic practices and critical pedagogies enacted in the project; and the author(s)' understanding of the concept of decolonization and recommendations for further decolonizing the monolingual mindset of language teachers and learners. At once linguistic, epistemological, and political, the collection aims to diversify the concept of decoloniality itself and showcase other ways in which decolonial thought can be implemented in language education. This book will be of interest to scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education.
Language and borders revisited: Colonizing language and deporting voice in Spanish class
Critical Education, 2018
Spanish language education in the U.S. historically accommodates students who identify with English monolingualism and unmarked Whiteness as a normative cultural order. This distinctive practice relies on the imagination and maintenance of borders, including those realized as international geo-political divisions and discourse within Spanish classrooms themselves (Author, 2014). The present discussion of language ideologies centers student inquiry and discomfort (Boler, 1999) in a basic-level university Spanish classroom; my students’ own narratives and coursework are featured as examples. (In)visible borders are projected onto bodies and voices imagined to speak Spanish (Urciuoli, 1995), symbolically marking those racially, nationally, and/or ethnically different from White learners. An exercise in “critical photography” encouraged students to locate and disrupt these oppressive discourses in and outside our classroom. I share successes and failures with the ways in which our learn...
Revista Boletín REDIPE, 2021
This reflection article derives from the discussions and argumentative sessions that took place at the heart of a doctoral seminar on Decolonial Theories. With this paper, the author intends a twofold purpose: on the one hand, to present his perceptions about the literature analyzed and discussed along the seminar, and on the other, to shed light on how such literature can have a positive impact on the curricula of Foreign Language Teacher Education Programs. The ideas that the author puts forward are the product of discussions with colleagues and teachers; in that sense, the arguments presented here are open to further scrutiny and academic dialogue with other scholars. It is hoped that this article contributes to the current discussions on the construction of curricula, the teaching of foreign languages from an emancipatory perspective, and the search for social justice in education.