ELT Local Research Agendas III

ELT Research Agendas III continues the conversation started in the previous two volumes, which main objective has been to map the research interests of our students and our own as faculty. It has been our interest as doctoral program and as ELT researchers, to reflect critically upon the our field and to propose a research path that points at, not only the issues that we consider worth studying, but also the ways in which these studies are conducted.

The first chapter serves as a window into reconstructing the epistemological building of this major in ELT Education as the three authors (who happen to be the teachers in the major) tell their professional stories to become part of the program in this University. In the second chapter, Andrea Gallo lays out her interest to explore on the dynamics of the implementation of a language policy in a small town near Bogotá. In a change of gears, in chapter three Catherine Benavides, using her EFL classroom as an excuse, presents her research interest in which she deals with issues of diversity, intersectionality and interculturality. the perspective of an English teacher in a public school where cultural diversity is the norm but where somehow becomes invisible. Jeisson Mendez delves into ELT Colombian textbook authors, in chapter 4, and tries to figure out who they are, what their struggles are and how they relate to the publishing industry. Chapter five brings the concerns of Oscar Abella into how English Language teachers move around their critical identities in an attempt to show that teachers’ identities are very complex and at times, paradoxical. Last chapter, written by Sebastián Figueroa proposes a groundbreaking topic in ELT and has to do with the identity of so called “bilingual science teachers” a topic which has not been widely explored and which might bring new ways of understanding what we understand by “bilingual education” and “bilingual teachers”. We hope this book engages different ELT practitioners into a vibrant dialogic conversation at different levels.