ELT Local Research Agendas I

The Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación (Interinstitutional Doctorate on Education) (DIE) program has a strong history of academic publications and the current volume continues that important tradition. The book takes part in the ongoing Enfasis series and introduces a new line, titled ELT Local Research Agendas. The student chapters found in the current volume are derived from research agenda position papers they wrote during their first year in the PhD program. The position papers are testament to the high quality of scholarship led by the three core ELT Education faculty.

The students have assembled comprehensive literature reviews for each of their selected topics. They engage deeply with theories across interdisciplinary spaces tying together theoretical strands developed in the fields of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, among others. As position papers, the student texts close with research questions and suggested courses of action. Now placed in this new context, the student chapters read as informed calls to action of high interest to all ELT researchers, both junior and senior, and across contexts. Put another way, they have formulated critical questions of glocal scale in that they are of immediate, timely interest to ELT scholars in the local context of Colombia but also at the much wider global scale across the world. One anticipates the demonstrable impact that these research agendas will have on continued ELT scholarship world-wide.

Also, it is valuable to note that, taken as a whole, the student contributions assert a decolonial and critical stance, and thus speak directly to issues of authority and legitimacy that current ELT professionals are struggling with (e.g., decolonialism, standard language ideology, language identity, teacher education, and poststructuralism). It is my understanding that this positioning within the decolonial and critical literature is part of a strategic effort to develop a local epistemology, or school of thought, to be identified with the ELT Education major. Without a doubt, this movement is clear to see in the current volume and one eagerly looks forward to continued articulation of that epistemology in subsequent edited volumes emerging from the program.