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Entretejidxs: Decolonial Threads to the Self, the Communities, and EFL Teacher Education Programs in Colombia

2022; Universidad de Antioquia; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.17533/udea.ikala.v27n3a02

2145-566X

Nancy Emilce Carvajal Medina, Flor Ángela Hurtado Torres, Mónica Yohanna Lara Páez, Mariana Ramírez Sánchez, Harol Arley Barón Gómez, Dayana Alexandra Ayala Bonilla, Cristian Moisés Coy,

Latin American Cultural Politics

In addressing the 21st century neocolonial research condition, in this article the au- thors firstly discuss how academia in general, and elt in particular, may configure as oppressive colonizing sites. Secondly, they introduce their own experience as pre- service and in-service educators who took part in pedagogy of possibilities (pop) at a university in Tunja, Colombia. Indigenous principles like interconnectedness and relationality and Chicanx/Latinx concepts, such as bodymindspirit, path of cono- cimiento, and spiritual activism were foundational to these educators’ pop. To them, pedagogy was a political act to resist the disembodied/disengaged/dispassionate nature of teaching/researching/being in academia and beyond. This four-year crit- ical-community autoethnography, uses testimonies, journals, and artistic creations as knowledge-gathering methods to analyze how decolonizing teaching-research practices informed the re-signification of these educators’ personal and professional identities. Theoretical coding revealed that pop permitted participants to engage in decolonial practices of self-recognition, re-construction, empowerment, growth, and healing. The analysis also revealed that decolonizing the self leads to the adoption of a positionality where values such as care and respect for one’s self and communities are paramount to move forward social-justice-critical-decolonial agendas. The results suggest the need to re-signify elt pedagogical and educational practices beyond neo- liberal agendas which propose rankings, individualism, and competition.