DECOLONIALIZING TEACHERS’ PRACTICES THROUGH CLASSROOM PROJECTS: FOSTERING POPULAR RESISTANCE AND UNIVERSAL VALUES IN EFL SETTINGS.

Abstract

This critical reflection presents an opportunity to rethink the pedagogical practices developed in Colombia, formulated under foreign theoretical and practical frameworks that not only conceptualize current political policies but also subordinate the local English teacher's endeavor. Therefore, popular resistance is a stance derived from the tenets of critical pedagogy and comprises a horizon of understanding to problematize the prolongation and suitability of these educative systems and practices that shape the teaching and learning of the English language from an exclusionary practice, conceiving local culture as homogeneous and ethnocentric. To address this issue, the structuration of knowledge dialogues between English teachers encourages the development of classroom projects that avoid reproducing Western culture, and privileges situated teaching and learning processes and zones of proximal development through project-based learning settings. These pedagogical dialogues challenge contemporary teaching practices under the umbrella of foreign and local government settings. Furthermore, this exchange among educative colleagues entails disempowering traditional classroom projects that preserve the Western culture status quo, towards organizing situated classroom projects based on local social issues, fostering on the one hand, resistance practices from other territories like The East against neoliberal economic policies, on the other hand, the agency of human rights and universal values as auto determination and solidarity respectively.