Reconciling local knowledge with english curriculum.

Abstract

This project aimed at integrating local knowledge from participants’ communities into the ELT curriculum. The theoretical principles of an inquiry-based curriculum (Wells, 1996) oriented the study to address the local needs of students in a public school using the community-based pedagogy (Sharkey and Clavijo, 2012, Clavijo & Ramírez, 2019) to foster locally, situated learning. The goal was to identify how students position themselves towards community knowledge through critical inquiries in the ELT classroom. This study is framed under the tenets of qualitative, critical, youth participatory, action research (YPAR). It was carried out with a group of eleven graders at a public school in a semi-rural context in Bogotá. During three academic terms, participants researched their communities with the purpose of identifying assets and issues of concern, starting from a field experience of mapping the community, then designing projects, and interacting with leaders. The students used different research methods to carry out their inquiries, they described their local settings, contacted leaders, and interviewed them to better understand the complexity of community problems. Findings indicated that when students’ realities are included in the ELT curriculum, they use the language to communicate their ideas, inquire about topics of interest, engage in learning and understanding local realities in a more significant manner, and use their leadership and social agency. The result also shows that students’ reflections suggest possible solutions to the problematic situations they identified.