Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación con Énfasis en ELT Education
URI permanente para esta colecciónhttp://hdl.handle.net/11349/26000
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Ítem The co-construction of school english language teachers' critical Identities through narrative positioningAbella Peña, Oscar Fernando; Mèndez, PilarResearch on language teachers’ identities in the English as a Second Language (ESL), Teaching to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and the English Language Teaching (ELT) in general has been a broad, extensive and multifaceted. While the field has achieved significant maturity, debates persist about how teachers in diverse educational contexts construct our identities through discourse and practice (Torres-Rocha, 2019; Trent, 2015). This study examines the intersection of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; McLaren, 2002; Giroux, 2014) and English language teachers’ identities to explore the critical identities (CIs) of school English language teachers (SELTs) in Colombia through the lens of narrative positioning and critical pedagogy. While research on language teachers’ identities has often centered on higher education practitioners, this study focuses on SELTs, addressing the challenges and tensions we face within a socio-political and educational context that prioritizes standardized language proficiency and test-oriented instruction over critical engagement with language learning. The educational system often seems to pressure SELTs to ensure that students achieve high scores on the SABER ICFES tests and develop a uniform, test-driven knowledge of English (Ardila & García, 2017; Gal, D. L., 2018). This emphasis on measurable outcomes, however, risks overshadowing the potential of language education to foster reflective thinking and discussions on students’ social realities. This study employs a qualitative methodology grounded in Collaborative Narrative Inquiry, integrating oral narratives, artistic triggers, and reflective discussions. By emphasizing horizontal relationships, the methodology facilitates co-construction of meaning and in-depth engagement with the participants’ experiences. Data was analyzed using narrative positioning theory in education, revealing how SELTs navigate systemic constraints, such as rigid curricula and administrative pressures, while fostering agency and resistance. Findings highlight the dynamic interplay between SELTs’ histories as students and their practices as educators, pointing to a transformation from victims of systemic norms to agents of change. Participants’ stories illustrate acts of resistance, the negotiation of power dynamics, and the critical reinterpretation of English as a tool for empowerment rather than assimilation. The research underscores the importance of reflective practice and collaborative dialogue in enabling teachers to challenge the status quo and align their pedagogy with socio-political realities. This study contributes to the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) by foregrounding the critical identities of SELTs, proposing pedagogical innovations rooted in context-specific challenges, and advocating for the decolonization of ELT practices. It reaffirms Freire’s notion of education as a political act and positions SELTs as transformative intellectuals capable of fostering social justice and critical consciousness in their classrooms.Ítem Tejiendo identidades docentes: un enfoque postestructural a las narrativas en profesores de ciencias 'bilingües'(Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas) Figueroa Salamanca, Carlos Sebastián; Guerrero-Nieto, Carmen Helena; Guerrero Nieto Carmen Helena [0000-0003-4011-788X]This dissertation explores the complex journey of science teachers who teach bilingually in Bogotá, Colombia, examining how they construct and reconstruct their identities through their experiences. Using a poststructural theoretical discussion enriched by biological metaphors, this research investigates how science teachers navigate between multiple languages, pedagogical approaches, and institutional demands while maintaining their core identity as science teachers. Through narrative inquiry and in-depth dialogic encounters with three science teachers, the study maps both the continuities that persist and the discontinuities that emerge in their professional trajectories. The research reveals how these teachers develop adaptive strategies to meet the challenges of teaching science in English while preserving their fundamental commitment to scientific education. Their narratives demonstrate remarkable resilience and creativity in navigating institutional pressures, linguistic demands, and pedagogical requirements. The analysis employs biological metaphors—metamorphosis, homeostasis, and ecological resilience—as interpretative lenses that illuminate different aspects of identity construction in bilingual teaching contexts. These metaphors emerge organically from the teachers' own scientific backgrounds and provide powerful frameworks for understanding their professional transformations. The findings suggest that the construction of bilingual science teacher identity is not a linear process but rather a complex adaptive system where multiple forces interact to shape professional development. This research contributes to our understanding of teacher identity construction in bilingual contexts and has significant implications for teacher preparation programs and educational policy. It demonstrates that successful bilingual science teaching emerges through what might be called "creative adaptation", a process that goes beyond mere response to environmental pressures to encompass active participation in shaping educational spaces.Ítem Narrativizaciones colectivas de las experiencias de los docentes en formación de inglés y su transición a la práctica profesional en el departamento del HuilaCastañeda Trujillo, Jairo Enrique; Guerrero Nieto, Carmen Helena; Guerrero Nieto Carmen Helena [0000-0003-4011-788X]This doctoral research explores, from a critical and decolonial perspective, the experiences of a group of pre-service English teachers during their transition to professional practice in the Department of Huila, Colombia, through collective narrativization processes. Using collaborative autoethnography, my own journey as a language learner, English teacher, and teacher educator is interwoven with the participants’ stories to understand how their professional identities are constructed in contexts shaped by colonial legacies, institutional tensions, and social inequalities. The methodology unfolded in three phases: writing individual autoethnographies, co-constructing collective narratives, and conducting post-graduation dialogic encounters. Analysis revealed three interconnected moments—crises, epiphanies, and epistemological theorizations—which respectively reflect clashes between expectations and professional realities, transformative learning emerging from critical reflection, and the development of locally grounded conceptual frameworks for English language teaching. Crises included experiences of discrimination, curriculum tensions, the imposition of hegemonic linguistic standards, and standardized assessment practices that perpetuate inequities. Epiphanies emerged through recognizing the value of inclusion, linguistic diversity, and student-centered teaching as tools to resist and transform the system. Theorizations, rooted in lived experiences, articulated the need for a more inclusive, context-sensitive model of teacher education that questions hierarchies and imported methodologies from the Global North. Findings show that initial English language teacher education, rather than being a purely technical process, is an arena of identity and political struggle where narrativization becomes a means to amplify traditionally silenced voices and propose changes toward social justice. The study concludes with a call to rethink initial teacher education as a dynamic, situated field that integrates local knowledge, fosters teacher agency, and dismantles the colonial structures that persist in foreign language education.Ítem Las experiencias de los profesores de inglés en la construcción de paz desde sus entre-medios coamplificadosAldana Gutiérrez, Yeraldine; Guerrero Nieto, Carmen Helena; Guerrero Nieto Carmen Helena [0000-0003-4011-788X]This research departs from the belief that peace construction is a concern for everybody in diverse disciplines or academic fields, among which Applied Linguistics to ELT, and peace studies can complement and support the academic environment. When problematizing English language teachers' experiences, who were located in different territories in Colombia, this inquiry aimed at coamplifying their experiences from their small voices. in this manner, the contribution of this study was not only conceptual or epistemological, but also methodological, since it problematized qualitative research in mainstream discourses. In doing so, it proposes Otherwise intuitive undoings (OIUs), which grouped everlasting methodological decisions with and for collaborators/participants herein. Diverse and disruptive knowledges were crafted to make our experiences heard, which resonated pluridimensional and directly relational to these teachers' hybrid bodies-selves. Some conclusions and derived implications are proposed in the form of some tribute to peace and praise to love. These ones suggest a gap to bridge, which have to do with further decisions and practical realizations of ethics in decolonial postures and peace construction in local and international settings.Ítem Historias de maestras de primaría acerca de la enseñanza del inglés en un colegio público(Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas) Castañeda Usaquén, Mireya Esther; Guerrero Nieto, Carmen Helena; Guerrero Nieto Carmen Helena [0000-0003-4011-788X]This dissertation addresses the conversations between nineteen female preschool and primary homeroom teachers of a public school located in Ciudad Bolívar in southern of Bogotá, Colombia and me. We discussed childhood, teenage, education, and work having as a main topic English, its learning, and its teaching. Our pair conversations were recorded, transcribed, converted into stories, and compiled to make a book called ¡El inglés entre nos…! Interpretation focused on the stories’ content (Barkhuizen, 2011; Bolívar, 2012) about English. Our stories represent both the source of data and the sites of co-theorization where thinking other-wise (Dussel, 2012; Fals Borda, 2017; Guerrero Arias, 2010; Meyer, 2013; Palermo, 2015; Suárez, 2011) were the lenses of interpretation. A decolonial option (Mignolo, 2011) was adopted to conduct this research to trace back our learning and working trajectories related to English to understand our being, knowing, and doing of the teaching of the language in our school. We share multiple ways of knowing that coexist (Santos, 2010). Therefore, the theoretical pillars to comprehend our stories rely on the coloniality in primary public schools’ quotidian lives, neoliberalism that denies the other in public schools, coloniality, and neoliberalism that institutionalizes the subjugation of public kindergarten and primary school teachers. Then, I use the hypogeum called our stories, as a metaphor to depict how our learning and working trajectories regarding English intertwine to generate epistemologies about English teaching in a public school. Our stories unveiled that having English lessons in primary school was a privilege; memorizing and cheating to pass exams were common practices in high school; English subject was a requirement in tertiary education; and English tests became barriers to continuing graduate studies. Similarly, our employment trajectories had three moments: firstly, it was found that some institutions pretended to offer bilingual education; secondly, prior to the schools’ merge, when teachers’ pleas were ignored and classes were distributed keeping in mind friendship and teachers’ talents, instead of working loads; the third moment showed that the teaching of this language provokes fear of making pronunciation mistakes, teaching poorly, and/or not being excellent teachers. The analysis evinced how we teach English to preschoolers, first and second graders, but we tend to avoid third, fourth, and fifth grades. Our learning and teaching trajectories allowed us to share our own epistemologies at five different levels: (i) we know our needs to teach and learn this language; (ii) we highlight the teachers’ qualities who are dedicated to teaching English to children; (iii) we question the state policies regarding teaching methodologies despite our own doubts about the matter; (iv) we recognize the barrier of language proficiency exams for accessing to graduate courses or transfers; (v) we could review the curriculum, design lessons and create meaningful spaces to practice listening and speaking in English. Finally, I advocate for policy makers and educators in B.Ed. or graduated programs targeted at teachers of children to broaden their views about English teaching in preschool and primary education of the public sector.Ítem Teacher Educators’ Interactional Identities within Classroom Interaction in the Field of ELT EducationLucero Babativa, Edgar Yead; Castañeda Peña, Harold AndrésThis dissertation presents a study on teacher-educator interactional identities in English language education. The study extends Conversation Analysis by doing co-analysis and member-checking with three participating teacher-educators to analyze the enactment of their interactional identities in language-based and content-based classes in three different undergraduate programs in English language education. Findings discuss the presence of multiple interactional identities composed of varied forms of being and doing as interactants in the occurring organizations of classroom interaction. These findings highlight the relevance of studying teacher-educator interactional identities to explain how English language education occurs during classroom interaction.Ítem Re-significando las Posiciones de los Observadores. Experiencias narradas de los Observadores ELT en ColombiaMartinez, Miguel; Mendez, PilarThis doctoral thesis demonstrates a careful analysis of the observers’ positions in English language classes. The topic focuses on the observations of in-service English classes, mainly from the Positions of the Observers who supervise, evaluate, and give feedback to English language teachers. In the ELT (English Language Teaching) field, it is common that teachers are periodically observed during classes for their performance of instruction. In fact, some of them do not agree with the class observation process. Others argue that the observation process is not necessary nor important. Some even do not pay attention to the person who observes the class and only keep in mind the rubrics used to observe. This study identifies some positions of the observers that are overlooked or are invisible in the educational community.Ítem Desembalaje del futuro sentido de las comunidades de los profesores de idiomas desde una perspectiva otra del conocimiento: descolonizando la investigación en la formación docente en ColombiaPosada-Ortiz, Julia; Castañeda-Peña, HaroldIn initial teacher education, community has been conceptualized around modern concepts such as Target Communities (Higgins, 2012), Imagined Communities (Anderson, 1983), and Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998; Wenger-Trayner, M. Fenton-O'Creevy, S. Hutchinson, Kubiak and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Target Communities are understood as mostly cohesive groups of people who speak a (standard) language in relatively homogeneous ways, and whose cultural practices likely differ significantly from those who study the target language of that community. This view of community constructs the English Language Preservice Teachers through the dichotomy of Native Speakers of English (NSEs) vs. Non-Native Speakers of English (NNSEs) (Higgins, 2012). Imagined Communities point out groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of imagination (Norton, 1995). Within this view, the world is a global village where everybody shares an affiliation by speaking English (Phillipson, 1992; Guerrero, 2010). Communities of Practice refer to processes of learning within communities by developing certain competencies. People who seek to affiliate to particular groups usually try to adapt to the community norms (Higgins, 2010). In this sense, the English language preservice teachers would adapt and would seek to be accepted by the target community by adopting the role of apprentice vs. master. The concepts mentioned above appear in the most recent literature in ELT and have been promoted by the Politica de formación y desarrollo profesional de educadores (Teacher education and professional development policy) in Colombia. According to that policy part of the support for beginner teachers is their integration into Communities of Practice that each institution should create (2013). The Ministry of Education in Colombia has also established the methodologies and standards that the ELTEPs should follow through Resolution 18563, September 15, 2017. For this reason, this study sought to achieve four main purposes: 1) to explore the senses of community otherwise of a group of English Language Preservice Teachers (ELPTs); 2) to re-interpret the term community from a perspective otherwise; 3) to characterize the communities the English Language Preservice Teachers belong to and 4) to identify the English Language Preservice Teachers’ identities present within these communities. In the first objective namely, exploring the senses of community otherwise, I introduce a transgression stemming from the Epistemologies of the South. It consists of using the term 'otherwise' as an adjective after the noun community. Therefore, I will use the expressions 'community otherwise' which entails other modes of knowing, sensing, and living within a context of a community (Escobar, 2007; 2018; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). With the second objective, I seek to re-signify the concept of community beyond the modern view of Target Communities, Imagined Communities and Communities of Practice, characterizing the communities as lived and described by the research collaborators. The main resources to co-construct knowledge were autobiographies and transcripts of the sessions in which the autobiographies were a joint construction between the research collaborators and myself. The research results show that their families, the university, the English Language Teacher Education Program (ELTEP), and the placement school, among others; are part of a constellation of communities of fear. This fear, however, becomes the lever that pushes Mariana, Cristian, Sebastián, and Luna to exercise agency not only in their learning process but also in their decision-making process. The research collaborators experience a series of emotions within these communities that cannot be generalized as each experience is unique and different. The communities can be characterized as kinship, interest/academic driven, and spiritual. The identities present within these communities are identities otherwise and are part of the research collaborators’ daily activities inside and outside the academic context. This study proposes an alternative theoretical framework that includes community as commodity, immunity, and struggle.Ítem Rastros del conocimiento otro... Experiencias de conocimiento de docentes de inglésCastañeda-Londoño, Adriana; Nieto Guerrero, Carmen Helena; Londoño, AdrianaIn this dissertation, I look into the quest for English teachers’ knowledge. Such inquiry is informed by theoretical tenets of the Epistemologies of the South (Sousa Santos, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2016, 2018) and Decolonial Thought (Mignolo, 2013; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). I focus my attention on practices of knowledge that come into play in the acts of teaching and learning as narrated by participating teachers like tipping moments in their professional lives in their testimonial narratives (Benmayor, 2012). What teachers narrate reveal knowledges that might go unnoticed when teaching and learning. What I mean is, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, methodological knowledge are not the only arrays of knowledge that teachers develop. It was observed that knowledge is experienced in different ways. Particularly important is the fact that knowledge is not just a cognitive experience, but a bodily and an emotional one. The families epistemologies and the knowledge gotten in previous personal and social struggles also comprise the teachers' knowledge.