Aprender Inglés en la U-diversidad: Colombian Indigenous, Black, Rural, Queer and Migrant University Students Disrupting Colonial Language Policies and Curricula.

• In Event: Global cases studies in higher education

Proposal

In the Global South, where settle colonialism is an ongoing project, language policies respond to market-based needs as a mechanism to maintain and expand the existing colonial power (Anzaldua, 1987; Motha, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2000; Levinson & Sutton 2001). Language education and, more specifically, English teaching and learning, encompass violent and oppressive experiences for those who embody marginalized intersecting identities. Along with this, the English curriculum reinforces Eurocentrism as it affirms, validates, and perpetuates white patriarchal ideologies such as heteronormativity to dominate and silence the intersectional identities students bring to the classroom (Annamma & Winn; 2019). In countries like Colombia, Indigenous, Black, rural, and migrant university students are forced to learn English as a graduation requirement which disregards their linguistic lineage and repertoire (Bettney, 2022; de Mejía, 2020; Guerrero, 2009). This exertion of colonial power impacts students’ cultural identities and extends the eradication and displacement of their home languages and knowledges (Gutiérrez et al., 2021; Usma et al., 2018). Therefore, the combined power of these actions and other colonial structures that inhabit universities, set the perfect scenario in higher education for pushing out minoritized students (Soler Castillo, 2013).

Research on language education across the globe has explored how the colonial matrix of power, as described by Mignolo & Walsh (2018), unveils the direct relation between language teaching and learning and social status, gender, ethnicity, identity, race, etc. (Anya, 2017; Castañeda-Peña, 2018; Motha, 2014). As direct stakeholders of such relation, language teachers and researchers interested in the decolonization of English Language Teaching (ELT), have vastly supported the demand for the field to become aware and act upon the reproduction and perpetuation of racist ideologies in ELT policies and practices, by striving for spaces of resistance (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Garcia & Garcia, 2023; Kubota, 2020), with and within curricular reforms (Von Esch et al., 2020), as well as centering intersectionality to critically re-think ELT (Annamma & Winn; 2019; Kayi-Aydar et al., 2022), contributing to furthering anti-racist pedagogies and social justice approaches to language education. Yet, fewer research studies have explored how English Language learners with multiply marginalized identities can also become active resistance actors who push for the decolonization of ELT, by engaging directly into designing and developing curricula, material and lessons, and how this direct involvement may contribute to their permanence in higher education. This research project intends to contribute to this gap.

This report intends to show the results of the implementation of an English course collectively created from the need to facilitate spaces within ELT to value multiply marginalized identities and to contend coloniality in language education. The course is called Aprender inglés en la U-diversidad, and it was offered during the COVID pandemic. In particular, this case study explored how involving English language learners with multiply marginalized identities such as Black, Indigenous, queer, migrant, and rural in the design of the course content and material, afforded possibilities to decolonize ELT and contributed to their permanence in the University and the education system. The questions that guided such exploration included (1) in what ways does the involvement of English learners with multiply-marginalized identities in the design and execution of the English curriculum contribute to the decolonization of ELT? (2) how does this involvement contribute to their permanence at the university, if at all?

Co-creating and living Aprender Inglés en la U-diversidad as a place of resistance teaches us that students with intersecting marginalized identities need to be at the center of curriculum development. When teaching materials, guiding and discussion questions, suggested topics and the leading of the class are shared, negotiated and collectively designed, as it happened with the university students invited to this course (Aguirre et al. 2022), the decolonization of English Language Teaching can be possible. We conclude that this participatory dialogue and action take the form of resistance against the colonial matrix of power and fight back the countless systems that push marginalized students out of university communities.

Authors

• Maure Aguirre Ortega, Penn State University

• Yenny Chavarria, The University of Wisconsin-Madison

• CLAUDIA Patricia Gutiérrez, Universidad de Antioquia