Learning Hope: An Autoethnographic Account of a Colombian English Teacher

• In Event: Autoethnographies of Critical Action Researchers: Trajectories to Equitable Learning Communities That Challenge Neoliberalism

Abstract

I will share an autoethnographic account of some of my lived experiences as a female teacher, teacher educator and critical researcher in Colombia.


I was born in Valledupar, a small town in the North of Colombia located near Venezuela, a region heavily affected by violence. During my childhood and adolescence I saw and experienced inequality and violence initially in the form of drug dealing groups, massacres, blackmailing, and the reduction of people’s free expression of political ideas. Being raised by a father who was an educator and a community leader helped me realize from an early age the power of language and education to affect change, to learn hope in the contingent Blochian sense (Bloch, 1995). Later, as a young woman, I moved to Barranquilla, a bigger coastal city to pursue my education as a language educator. This experience granted me the opportunity of an expanded interpretive perspective (Menezes de Souza & Monte Mor, 2021) as I met people from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds and had access to richer resources and possibilities to understand the project of society I wanted for myself, my family and community.


Using an autoethnographic stance, this presentation “attempts to recenter the researcher’s experience as vital in and to the research process” (Poulus, 2021, p.4). To that aim, I will revisit some of the projects I have engaged in to explain how they represent the variegated paths that converge into my identity∞ies as a female teacher, teacher educator and researcher. I will use some principles from complexity theory to explain the open, emergent nature of the configuration of my identity∞ies (Morin, 2005). I would like to make the point that my interaction with multiple agents (students, peers, co-workers, researchers) in different time frames (present and past), modalities (analogic and virtual) and geographical locations(Colombia and abroad) have affected the direction and stability of my life trajectories. It has affected the teacher-researcher I am constantly being and becoming.
I hope to illustrate how while walking my life as a teacher, teacher educator and researcher, I have gradually become more aware of the potential of critical stances (CAR) to help me position the classroom and the curriculum as powerful sites to experiment and learn how to be and become a critical educator in my context. Being a member of NCARE has facilitated my “Crisscrossing multiple (local and global) discourses, communities, cultures, languages, and/or political structures,” (Yazan et al., 2020. p.2) and has expanded my cognitive and language repertoire to move towards the aim of helping others in the process of being and becoming agents in a more equitable educational system. I have learned to hope.

Author

• Nayibe Rosado Mendinueta, Universidad del Norte