Abstract
In 2004, the Colombian Ministry of Education implemented the Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo (PNB). A key objective of the PNB was to have high school graduates bilingual in Spanish and English by 2019. This chapter examines how colleagues view this objective and how national policies were enacted to achieve it. To garner colleagues’ opinions, the author visited an urban school known for implementing an educational model known as Escuela Nueva, a successful model of community-based education started in Colombia’s countryside in the 1970s. To guide his questioning, the author implemented an academic lens known as Responsible ELT. The lens incorporates concepts of English hegemony, critical language-policy research, and resistance in ELT. The chapter reports colleagues’ professional feedback in terms of how Escuela Nueva might, or might not, contribute to ELT practices within Colombia. Descriptions include details regarding considerations for Responsible ELT, how they may apply to questions of developing bilingualism in Colombia, and the extent to which these efforts toward this goal are successful.
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Notes
- 1.
Meaning “New School.”
- 2.
All translations from the Colombian document Estándares are mine.
- 3.
Canagarajah’s term periphery is related to Phillipson’s periphery-English countries, that is, countries where English is learned as a second or foreign language.
- 4.
The Colombian school system ends in Grade 11.
- 5.
My translation.
- 6.
Acronym for National Service of Learning, a Colombian public institution focused on the development of programs of professional formation.
- 7.
A town near Medellín.
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Lamus, D.R. (2023). English Language Teaching in Colombia: From Policy to Reality. In: Ekembe, E.E., Harvey, L., Dwyer, E. (eds) Interface between English Language Education Policies and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14310-6_8
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