Publishing in Local ELT Journals: A Way to Decolonialize Knowledge

Educational institutions, particularly those for higher education, seek to ensure their visibility and valid indicators for institutional accreditation processes through the publications of their teachers. Their projection is intimately associated with the circulation of their production in accredited publications whose reputations depend on their positions in prestigious rankings, databases, and indexing systems. That is why Colombia, in recent years, has experienced an increase in the number of scientific journals published in the country. This phenomenon was a reaction by academics to the obstacles for publishing in renowned journals, generally edited in hegemonic or central contexts, where it is presumed that knowledge is disseminated for the whole world. In this article, I analyze the role played by locally edited journals in the decolonialization of knowledge. I base my analysis on studies carried out in the fields of the English teacher as researcher and writer, academic writings, and the publication of scientific journals. I identify the contributions, suggestions and challenges for publications in the English Language Teaching area. I also stress the importance of strengthening professional communities, encouraging greater participation by professors in the dissemination of their work, and the need to value knowledge generated in peripheral contexts, without ignoring links with the global world.

Using concept maps to structure a small-scale literature review: an approach to research-based learning in pre-service teacher education

Research-based learning (RBL) is a useful tool for combining theory and practice in teacher education. However, pre-service teachers struggle with the idea of teacher as researcher. One popular (meta)methodology considered in educational research (and that is well suited to school research) is design-based research (DBR). Incorporating this approach into RBL as a method for developing teaching innovation in schools could be one way to include RBL in teacher education and place pre-service teachers in the position of teacher as researcher. This study explores the potential of using digital concept maps to support the conceptualization phase (during the literature review) of an RBL process based on DBR in a pre-service teacher-education course prior to the design of a teaching innovation strategy for schools. Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from a questionnaire administered to pre-service teachers and from the semantic evaluation of the concept maps of these teachers. Our results show an overall consensus among pre-service teachers that concept maps are useful for structuring small-scale literature reviews. Pre-service teachers also believe there is a strong possibility that they will use concept maps when they become teachers. We use our findings to make recommendations for university lecturers to use digital concept maps to design RBL activities based on literature reviews and with emphasis on teacher education.

Praxis, Pedagogy and Teachers’ Professionalism in England

The article considers current teachers’ participation in educational research in England and whether Stenhouse’s perception that such involvement was necessary to stall the political undermining of democratic teacher professionalism has been addressed. Stenhouse instigated the emergence of the teacher-as-researcher movement, whereby teachers engaged with a process that created knowledge and practice. From 1979, when the Conservative Margret Thatcher became Prime Minister, the increasing dominance of globalised knowledge economies turned knowledge away from being a process into a product. Teacher and student education became controlled and consumed by increasingly competitive educational institutions. Learning became aimed at assuring the attainment of higher grades to increase the country’s economic growth and profit, leading to democratic teacher professionalism being undermined. However, contemporary research by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has indicated that teacher professionalism should involve teachers in conducting classroom-based individual or collaborative research. In addition, a recent academic inquiry by the British Education Research Association has concluded that teachers as researchers, in both literate and practical terms, will have a positive impact on learner outcomes by developing an education system that has the internal capacity to direct its own progress. At the same time, the Department for Education in England commissioned a two-year study to assess progress towards an evidence-informed teaching system. Taking a systematic literature approach, the present article considers the extent to which current teacher education and practice encourage teacher research as a form of developing pedagogical practice, in other words, praxis, in order to re-establish democratic teacher professionalism in England. It also explores whether there are alternative practices to create the same, or a similar, outcome.

‘Doing’ socio-political sustainability in early childhood: Teacher-as-researcher reflective practices

Young children’s engagement in Education for Sustainability has focussed predominantly on their participation in environment-based initiatives or practices. Reasons for this include a notion that wider dimensions of sustainability, including social, political and economic areas of concern can be too complex and overwhelming for young children. When children experience learning around wider dimensions of sustainability, there is potential to develop genuine and critical understandings about global issues in a transformative and critical learning context. This article investigates how an early childhood teacher, in the role of teacher-as-researcher, engaged young children in a kindergarten classroom in an investigation of poverty as a socio-political aspect of sustainability. The authors focus on teacher-as-researcher critical reflections from action research data to contextualise how curriculum decision-making unfolded. Using critical theory as a guiding framework, the authors examine how knowledge around poverty was co-constructed between children and adults, thus unsettling the idea of teacher as ‘expert’. The authors advocate for early childhood teachers to employ a teacher-as-researcher role in sustainability education and to critically reflect on ways to embed a holistic approach to Education for Sustainability in early childhood contexts.

Performance, the Arts, and Curricular Change

The need to improvise and take action as a practitioner draws on Schwab’s notion of deliberation and the Greek concept of poiesis. Inspired by an impromptu discussion with students at a computer summer camp, the author uses the worksof Sarason, Eisner, and Stenhouseto show how practitioner performance, student audience, educational inquiry, teacher as researcher, and curricular change are interrelated.