Decolonizing ELT teacher education by incorporating knowledge of local communities in the teaching practicum

Despite significant advances in the epistemological frameworks that guide teacher education in Colombia and elsewhere, it continues to be governed mostly by traditional Eurocentric paradigms. Decolonizing teacher education requires epistemological moves to resignify the plurality of local knowledges and praxis. This article aims at reporting a qualitative research project carried out with three student teachers of a teacher education program with emphasis on English, at a public university in the northeast of Colombia. The main objective was to explore and reflect on how EFL pre-service teachers incorporated knowledge of local communities as resources for language teaching and learning during the practicum. Data were gathered over a three-semester period through pre-service teachers’ lesson plans, materials, a final academic report, and a semi-structured interview. Data were analyzed based on the principles of thematic data analysis. Findings revealed that student teachers approached knowledge from an ecological perspective coming from different ways of knowing, seeing, being and living in the world. At the same time, the ecology of knowledges helped them to overcome the challenges they faced during the project.