Emergence and Development of a Research Area in Language Education Policies: Our Contribution to Setting the Grounds for a Local Perspective on Policymaking

This article presents our narration of the emergence and development of a research area about the teaching and learning of the English language in Colombia and the creation of a research group named Critical Studies of Colombian Education Policies. The narration includes a description of the bilingual education policy in Colombia and a literature review of how the themes Different Shades of the Colombian National Plan of Bilingualism and Theoretical and Practical Concerns over Bilingualism have been addressed by authors of local journals, such as How, Profile, Íkala, and Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, in the issues published from 2008 to 2020. The description and literature review link the life stories of our growth as teachers and researchers as related to the research area and research group mentioned above. A final part of the narration refers to our contributions to the ELT field in Colombia through the following two themes: Dimensions of Language Policies: A Political Discourse Perspective and Making Teachers’ Agency Relevant: Bottom-up Approaches to the Study of Language Education Policies.

Language and Literacy Practices in Teacher Education: Contributions from a Local Agenda

Language and literacy practices in teacher education are decisive in the education of future language teachers. In this article, I share my beliefs as a teacher educator about language and literacy practices constructed with teachers in Bogota. Thus, my intention is to weave my professional narrative through the connections I can make from theory and praxis to explain teachers´ understandings of language and literacy through their life and literacy experiences and the way they organize their practice as language teachers. My research trajectory of thirty years documenting the local literacy practices within the research area of literacy studies and local pedagogies for social transformation has significantly informed my practice. University-school partnerships and international collaborations for research and teaching in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Manchester, in the USA, and Dundee, in the UK, have nurtured me personally and professionally. My understanding of literacy as a social practice evolved to critical literacies and I developed knowledge in community pedagogies and city semiotic landscapes through reflections and collaborations via working with teachers. Community-based pedagogies (CBPs) invite teachers to see their life and work in relation to places they live and teach as meaningful content for linguistic, social, cultural, ecological, and economic resources to inspire students´ inquiries and teachers´ transformative practices. The city semiotic landscapes are powerful literacies for language learning; therefore, they currently adhere to the research group´s agenda (2019-2021). I describe my understandings, contributions, and suggestions as concerns in the field of teacher education in Colombia. My conclusions raise awareness about the need to address these topics in teacher education programs in Colombia.

Language Assessment Literacy: Insights for Educating English Language Teachers through Assessment

At some point, language teachers need to be engaged in language assessment in their profession. Because language assessment is such a primary task for teachers, the field of language testing is encouraging research around the knowledge, skills, and principles that are foundational for sound assessment. In this paper, I provide a definition of Language Assessment Literacy (LAL), especially when it comes to teachers, by reviewing existing models. I then discuss ongoing issues in this area and end the paper by offering language teacher educators suggestions for fostering LAL among pre- and in-service teachers. In the article, I argue that, if more LAL initiatives take place, we are collectively raising the status and nature of language assessment and its impact on teachers’ professional development.

25 Years of HOW: A Celebration of Language Teaching and Learning

This article overviews the major themes and pedagogical developments that have emerged via the academic endeavors of practitioners and researchers in the last 30 years, while also touching on how my work adheres to these developments. The document starts with a brief historical background on the establishment of HOW as a resource for the academic community. The next part of the article deals with the theoretical tenets that have influenced my published works. One of those perspectives is the post-method pedagogy, which acknowledges the limitations of attempting to determine what the “best” language teaching method is for everyone, and proposes three parameters to guide language teaching and learning. The next perspective is the psychology of language learning, particularly positive psychology, which is a field that adds balance to the study of negative emotions in the classroom and can be the basis for interventions that aim at enhancing the language learning process. The final construct discussed in the article is metacognition, which refers to how language teachers adapt their mental processes and behaviors to the emerging demands of their context. The article concludes highlighting a number of topics that were relevant three decades ago and that will likely keep their relevance in the future: the complexity of education, the dynamic nature of context and meaning, and the examination of the role of context in the L2 teaching/learning processes, to name only three.

Colombian ELT Community and Scholarship: Current Pathways and Potency

This editorial article reflects on the paradigmatic changes that the Colombian ELT community has recently experienced due to the developments of local scholarship in varied topics. This editorial article makes the changes evident by introducing the papers for this special issue of HOW journal on its 30th anniversary. These include topics as interculturality, literacy, English language pre-service teacher construction and professional development, critical views about bilingual education policy, and the interrelation between gender and ELT. The local scholarship development in these topics displays a rupture with the ELT canon. By so doing, the Colombian ELT scholarship shows a potency that wields foundations for the ELT field in the country.

Comprehending Interculturality and its Future Directions in English Language Teaching and Teacher Education in the Colombian Context

Interculturality has to do with the personal relational aspects of caring about the other. In this sense, interculturality confronts and challenges untruths and stereotypes that deny the existence of diversity. This article aims to provide a comprehensive view of what interculturality means, as well as to contribute to current and future trends in the field of English language teaching and teacher education in Colombia. I present examples of intercultural practices as possibilities to understand and explore interculturality in ELT, and I share a review of studies that have undertaken this complex conception of interculturality.

Reconstructing a Personal Story about Being a Teacher Educator and a Researcher

This article presents an autoethnographic exercise focused on exploring my history as a teacher educator and researcher in ELT. With this article, I try to show, starting from my life experiences as a teacher and the different concerns that arose during them, my transformation as a researcher. Likewise, I analyze how these transformations are also derived from working with the pre-service English language teachers belonging to a research seedbed focused on doing autoethnographic research. Similarly, I show how my research work has helped others to establish a context for their research. Finally, the reflections derived from my experiences and what I learned while co-investigating in the research seedbed led me to see that continuing to work on the transformation of ELT education in Colombia is necessary.

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.

On the Professional Development of English Teachers in Colombia and the Historical Interplay with Language Education Policies

The professional development of English teachers is a significant area in language teaching and learning, as well as in teacher education. On the one hand, at least in theory, professional development initiatives respond to the teachers’ changing needs. On the other hand, it reflects the beliefs that different educational authorities and stakeholders have about English uses and education. In this self-study, I consider the professional development of English teachers in Colombia and its tight connection to the language education policies of the country. Following a chronological approach, I present the findings as landmarks that have contributed to my reflections and research around professional development and language education policies. Discussing the findings, I show how the discourses and decisions about teachers’ continuing learning represent certain views of language, second language acquisition, English language teaching and learning, and teachers as professionals. This self-study addresses some of the concepts that illuminate the discourses that have shaped English teachers’ professional development. Focusing primarily on the development of the National Program of Bilingualism, I underscore the power of these concepts over the major decisions made at the local and school levels. In the analysis of the past and present of teachers’ professional development in Colombia, I conclude on the necessity of maintaining critical scholarly work to contribute to the construction of local knowledge for future reflection.

Local Identity Studies of Gender Diversity and Sexual Orientation in ELT

While it is true that identity studies on the intersection between gender and sexual orientations with language teaching and learning are not new in the local context, the systematization of these studies as a body of knowledge is scarce. This article presents, first of all, a systematization of reference frameworks for this type of studies in historical perspective. Secondly, it presents a reflection on the collective achievements in this field of study. Finally, the article concludes with a brief reflection on potential actions at the research and pedagogical levels.