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Introduction
Lingering on Latin American sentipensar is an intellectual exercise invoking a shift of paradigms, but also putting forward strategies and statements to foster the spirit and the reconquest of our hopes as makers of the contemporary world, all in one epistemic and acting performance. (Iglesias, 2019, p. 277, our translation).
“¡Los amooooo!” [‘I love you!’] wrote doctoral student-researcher Sebastian in a meet-up chat during a research seminar we were co-teaching with another colleague through emergency remote learning (ERT). We vividly remember this episode because this expression of affection moved us deeply.
The topic of the session was extractivist practices following the dissident work of Gómez-Barris (2017). She argues that the extractivist view refers to “state and corporate logics that map territories as commodities rather than perceive (sic) the proliferation of life and activities that make up the human and nonhuman planetary” (p. 133). The session also drew on the protest of Bolivian sociologist Rivera Cusicanqui (2010) against the masculine, perhaps imperial, thinking of decolonial male and mestizo theorists under the motto “alábenlo al tonto que lo verán trabajar” [Praise a fool, and you may see him work] (Rivera, 2010, p. 64). Finally, we drew on Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s (2021) ideas of radical indigenous resistance to the extraction-assimilation system in the territory of her community in Ontario.
Also, for that research seminar session, we invited Señora (a title used in Colombian Spanish along with first names as a show of respect) Martha to talk about her life and activism, so that she could illustrate local extractivist practices first-hand. Her activist practices are related to the collective struggle of peasants claiming that the environmental license granted to a large cement company would ruin the biodiversity and ecological resources in the rural territory where Señora Martha had settled as part of her herstory and where she ran an environmental initiative.
Then, what caused Sebastian to write with such emotion in the chat? Sebastian is a doctoral student-researcher in education majoring in English language teaching (ELT), who works at a state high school as a bilingual science teacher. In a follow-up interview -conducted in Spanish and mediated by information technologies due to the pandemic, we asked Sebastian about his motivations. We focused on his testimony and drew on his small story as a starting point to make sense of our involvement in pedagogization processes. Small stories are understood in narrative inquiry as a new turn and are used as engagements to construct a sense not only of the self but of the kind of investments made in understanding the world rather than in representing it (Bamberg, 2010; Georgakopoulou, 2006).
This article will confer centrality to small stories such as Sebastian’s to make sense of our pedagogical practices in the education of ELT doctors but it will also draw on examples provided by two recently graduated alumni from the ELT PhD program: Adriana (Castañeda-Londoño, 2021) and Julia (Posada-Ortiz, 2022). Adriana and Julia are both language teacher educators with experience teaching English. Thus, we can fairly say that our stories have intersected with those of our students, in the case of Sebastian for more than two years and in the case of our graduates for more than six years. In the case of Sebastian, he explained to us:
Bueno, escribir “¡Los amooooooo!” ¡Eso fue espontáneo! Siento mucho cariño por mis compañeros y profes y siento muchas cosas bonitas por todo el proceso. Ha sido un espacio muy humano ¿sí? Poderlo discutir y poderlo hablar y poder decir qué pienso decir qué siento y escuchar a mis compañeros sobre su pensar, sobre su sentir, comprender la visión de la Señora Martha fue un espacio más de “vamos a comprender esto y vamos a comprender por qué nos sirve”. La clase hace que las relaciones no sean de extracción de información sino de “realmente quiero comprender”, hay una clara exposición de mi yo como persona que quiere comprender algo.
[Well, writing “I love you!” … was spontaneous! I am really fond of my classmates and teachers, and I think so positively about the whole process. It was a very humane event, wasn’t it? To be able to discuss and talk about it and be able to express what I think and what I feel, and to listen to my classmates about their thoughts and feelings to understand Señora Martha’s vision was an opportunity, like ‘we are going to understand this, and we are going to understand why it is useful to us’. [Sharing this with] The class means that we are not only dealing with extracting information but something like ‘I want to understand’. It is the stance of my own self as someone who intends to understand something] (Sebastian, narrative interview, February, 2022).
Sebastian’s testimony opens an exciting way to reflect on traditional pedagogies where knowledge is considered as already given and determined by an exclusive knower being the theory and/or the teacher (Flórez, 2001). On the other hand, this article focuses on discussing how English teachers’ doctoral education in Latin America deals with “students’ subjection-emotion manifestations throughout the educational doctoral process […] as part of an emotion-based doctoral pedagogy” (Castañeda-Peña et al., 2022, p. 217) aiming at decolonizing language teacher education.
A brief literature exploration suggests that research studies about doctoral education most often report on curricular and program success (Alrasheedy, 2020; Bentley, 2013; Everson, 2009; Nieman & Cheng, 2011; Notaro et al., 2013; Reynolds, 2010; Smith et al., 2003; Tekian, 2014). Another central theme relates to the achievements of doctoral students (Austin, 2009; Calabrese et al., 2007; Davis et al., 2018; Geesa et al., 2020; Geesa et al., 2021; Gilly, 2004; Sims & Cassidy, 2016; Zambo, 2014). Another body of research is devoted to the implications of doctoral study for both doctoral candidates (Buss, 2020; Carrillo & Rubel, 2019; Paufler et al., 2020; Pervez et al., 2020; Rapp et al., 2001; Wasburn-Moses, 2007; Williamson, 2019) and teachers (Amrein-Beardsley et al., 2012; Austin, 2009; Bentley, 2013; Boyce, 2000; Tam & Rousseau, 2000; Tekian, 2014; Thomas & Reeve, 2006).
Overall, it can be seen that despite examining the experience of doctoral students and doctoral teachers, existent research focuses mainly on the level of perceptions and program evaluation that correlate with the program’s curricular success. However, it seems that this trend in the field of doctoral education research can be complemented by employing a bottom-up view from the eyes, emotions, and experiences of those who participate in doctoral education (e.g., postgraduate teachers and student-researchers).
In this framework, Sebastian’s narrative experience enables an intellectual exercise that invokes a pedagogical crack (Walsh, 2015) in doctoral education: Think with your heart and feel with your head. This refers to the pedagogical sentipensar drawn from Latin American thought and Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda’s (1925-2008) formulations. These sociological ideas are based on the radical democracy of the Kaziyadu Amazonian ecological-racial socialism and the amphibious culture of the “Hicotea Man”. The latter arises from fishermen in the Saint George River at San Martín de la Loba, in Colombian Caribbean. In the same line, as the epigraph opening this introduction, this article aims to “foster the spirit and the reconquest of illusion as builders of the contemporary world in a single epistemic act of episteme and action” (Iglesias, 2019, p. 277). Thus, this article aims to present and discuss decolonial pedagogizations of doctoral education in ELT through the expression of Sebastian’s emotional response to the educational processes he is going through, drawing on his small story, and adding to it examples of other two former students, as mentioned above.
To achieve this single epistemic act (Iglesias, 2019), the article first reflects on pedagogization as a way to decolonize traditional understandings of pedagogies seen as curricular success (see the Episteme section). Then it introduces transformative actions that could help decolonize doctoral education and language teacher education as constitutive of decolonial pedagogizations (see the De-linking section). These transformative actions are part of our personal and professional engagement in decolonizing language teacher education. Such engagement is far from becoming a pedagogical all-embracing recipe. Instead, we commit to submerging ourselves and language teacher educators in educational processes geared towards humanization (e.g., think with your heart and feel with your head) in contraposition to automatization, standardization, and universalization. Finally, the article delves into a critique of these decolonial pedagogizations for language teacher education, embracing the diverse onto-epistemological constitution of subjects participating in graduate educational processes.
Episteme
Coloniality tends to be understood as the conjunction of a triad that combines power (Quijano, 2007), being (Maldonado-Torres, 2007), and knowledge (Lander, 2000). According to Grosfoguel and Mignolo (2008),
In the historical process, the triad was formed, on the one hand, by the European invasion of America and the slave trade, in the name of the salvation of souls and economic progress. Through positive rhetoric of salvation, this requires the slave trade, the exploitation of the indigenous people, and the expropriation of their lands. Thus, the positive rhetoric of modernity justifies the destructive logic of coloniality. Both the positive logic imposed on those who do not wish to have it set on them and the lethal logic of coloniality engender reactions and responses that, for obvious reasons, we call decolonial. (p. 31)
There are strong criticisms toward this triad position not only related to the extractivist practice (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2010) (e.g., colonialism within colonialism) but also to the white-mestizo work that has characterized a niche of Latin American male thinkers defending a decolonial position. Although there is not enough space in this article to entirely describe the critique of this masculine and white-mestizo origin of decoloniality, it is essential to highlight the work of decolonial feminisms. Some of these include the reflections of Lugones (2008) and Mendoza (2016), among others. It is also relevant to observe that the decolonial stance has been considered in three ways: a thought, a turn, and an option. In this line, Grosfoguel and Mignolo (2008) contend that the relationship between thought and the decolonial is the set of ideas that do not necessarily correspond to Western rationality. They also argue that the decolonial turn implies either a change of pathways or the advent of one particular moment of importance. Either meaning suggests that there is an option: The decolonial one.
This paper advocates for decolonial options (in plural) for applied linguistics to language teacher education. This implies accepting that such educational context is or has been colonized. Yet, while coloniality is exerted in the triad, coloniality of knowledge will be used as the focus of reflection for practical purposes here. Thus, we argue that there is coloniality of knowledge in applied linguistics concerning English teachers’ education. But what is meant by the coloniality of knowledge in that educational context? To answer such a crucial question, we need to consider applied linguistics in English teachers’ education as intimately associated with capitalism and Anglo-centered/Eurocentric knowledge as imparted in Latin American universities. In Lander’s perspective (2000), the coloniality of knowledge is about
[…] categories, concepts, and perspectives (economy, state, civil society, market, classes, etc.) turned into universal categories for analyzing any reality and normative propositions that define what should be for all the planet’s peoples. This knowledge becomes the standard for investigating and detecting the shortcomings, retrogressions, constraints, and perverse impacts resulting from the primitive or traditional in all other societies (p. 246).
What normative categories, concepts, and perspectives of the doctoral education of teachers of English could be associated with the coloniality of knowledge? Following our reflection elsewhere (Castañeda-Peña, 2018; Méndez-Rivera, 2018), we can list, among others, the following elements where coloniality of knowledge objectifies teacher education practices, linguistic knowledge, and subjectivities.
The first trace of objectification has to do with the universalization of the subject who learns and teaches the foreign language. Despite acknowledging the differences and diversity that characterize both teachers and learners of English as subjects, they are universalized when looking for comprehensive theories to explain foreign language acquisition and learning processes. By the same token, it is reified through the standardization of how the foreign language is learned and taught. How the foreign language curriculum is segmented follows the universal theories mentioned above, and in this way, standardization is instated, e.g., proficiency levels and so-called best teaching practices.
Additionally, there is an objectification of the foreign language. The language learned becomes an object external to the realities of the subjects who know it. This externalization turns the language into a model to be grasped. Any process that departs from this norm is exoticized or discriminated. For example, the phobia created towards language learners’ accents considered non-native and the segregation of the non-native teacher, etc.
Lastly, such objectification takes the shape of processes of subjection to capitalist and modern models under the umbrella of linguistic imperialism. Learning the language also becomes a commodity to benefit capitalist purposes. This subjects learners and teachers to a contemporary industry geared toward hegemonical knowledge, culture, and economy.
All the elements above, normalized in different settings, have exerted violence and control over other ways of being, knowing, and acting. This control has resulted, for example, in a tremendous grid of testing-certification and comparisons for the ELT community in the global south trying to emulate the global north and Western rationality.
Although the attack of capitalism and its counterpart modernity seems to be unstoppable in many domains, including education, we firmly believe there is still room for resisting the coloniality of knowledge in ELT education. Precisely, the decolonial option has opened up possibilities to fight against the must-be discourses of modernity (Jordão, 2021). It has also dismantled the complicities between applied linguistics, colonialism, and capitalism (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020) potentially perpetuated by language teacher education programs. The examination of this claim interpellated us to find other ways of resistance in education. Our work as mentors allows us to embrace pedagogies otherwise to problematize the restrictive pedagogies of foreign languages and language teacher education. We align our understanding of otherwise with Walsh (2015) for whom this is “other ways of being, thinking, knowing, sensing, feeling, doing and living” challenging “the hegemony and universality of capitalism, Euro-centered modernity, and the Western civilizatory logic, including its […] binary-based foundation” (p. 12). So, our pedagogy transits towards a surfacing pedagogization in applied linguistics to language teacher education absent for many years within the pedagogical thought in Colombia.
Emergence of Pedagogies
Reflections on pedagogies from a local and historical perspective are fertile ground to ask for the activism or exclusion of English teachers in the foundations of the teaching career in Colombia. Much is owed to the Colombian Pedagogical Movement (CPM) (Acevedo, 2013; Peñuela & Rodríguez, 2006). This started in the 80s as a multi-layered strategy to fight against social and political thoughts of teachers as mere technicians, subjected to norms, rules, and discourses that marginalized them from national decisions regarding their profession and education.
Even though the CPM was born in the center of a teachers’ labor union, its political agenda was guided to subvert the most traditional type of struggles for wage demands. From a political point of view, the CPM was a movement that sought to rescue teachers from historically oppressive practices in which they have been positioned as subalterns. Teachers’ reflections upon themselves guided them to think of pedagogy as a knowledge domain to construct teachers’ identities as maestros and intellectuals while aspiring to be seen as workers of culture in society (CEID-Fecode, 1984a, 1984b, 1984c). By maestro (a masculine noun), we refer to the entire teaching body including cisgender and non-binary people, a use that follows the common use in Spanish. In Colombian Spanish, ‘maestro’ has the aception of ‘master’, a word that praises the task of educating. All in all, the CPM was very influential in the educational history of Colombia and their influence has been acknowledged all across Latin America. It is a part of advanced pedagogical reflections and discussions in teacher education, relations between teaching and research, and teachers’ subjectivity as political-cultural influential characters.
Nonetheless, this political agenda did not seduce ELT intellectual production in Colombia. When reviewing what Colombian ELT scholars wrote in the 80s and 90s, there are no mentions of the kinds of struggles led by the CPM. So, this leaves ELT intellectual production in Colombia behind for more than two decades compared to other peers in education. Consequently, our countries’ ELT scholarly work was subsumed in a subaltern or marginalized condition. It was until the early years of the new millennium that the academic community started witnessing critical takes (including critical pedagogies) in the literature.
In the last decades, some local scholars have turned their interests to pedagogy and critical pedagogies (Clavijo-Olarte & Sharkey, 2019; Fandiño, 2017; González, 2015; Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero-Polo, 2021). They have denounced the commodification of English and informed the ELT community about the danger of these practices in teacher education programs if criticality is not exercised. Although these inspiring voices are read, more actions are needed to continue exploring the effects of consensual colonialism in the ELT field.
That is why it is essential for ELT education to comprehend its relation with pedagogies otherwise and not only with linguistic approaches to English language and teaching. Elements of pedagogies of crossing (Alexander, 2005), pedagogías insumisas (Medina, 2015), trans/queer pedagogies (Orozco, 2019; Planella & Pié, 2017), and decolonial pedagogies (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Walsh, 2015) could enrich this potential for constructing pedagogical knowledge. What these pedagogies have in common is that they rebel against a universalizing pedagogy of knowledge. They also stand out for their origins and roots in feminist, black, peasant, indigenous, and queer knowledge. These knowledge(s) are traditionally taken for granted and invisibilized.
While it is true that these positions have their explicit or implicit concern for the geopolitics of knowledge in common, there are also significant differences open to scholarly debate. For example, Mignolo and Walsh’s (2018) proposal of decolonial pedagogies is rooted in Latin American decolonial thought in which contemporary and historical pains (the colonial wound), cracks, and new sowings that are oriented to activism and pedagogical action are recognized. It moves from substantive to political action as part of pedagogization. In contrast, Orozco (2019), in the framework of trans and queer pedagogies, highlights the problem of the predominant whiteness and cissexuality of those who propose the decolonial turn and the inability they have shown to overcome binary and heteronormalized categories about the body (la cuerpa in Orozco’s words), identity, and sexuality. To this is added, but with a different angle that embraces a transnational and not-so-local dimension, Alexander’s (2006) crossing pedagogies in which sacred subjectivity is incorporated. Lastly, with another posture, pedagogías insumisas (Medina, 2015) challenge the ethnic education that has been standardized in several Latin American countries.
We acknowledge these potential contributions, addressing them as part of a different publication. As for this article, we present below the transformative actions that we consider part of pedagogizations of English teachers’ doctoral education framed in decolonial pedagogies.
Pedagogy and Pedagogization
Doctoral education for English teachers that attempts to instate global south perspectives in a decolonial spirit is much needed. In doing so, these south-oriented programs could be trying to subvert canonical contents of applied linguistics (e.g., what to teach, how to teach, how to speak effectively), adopting a more pedagogical sentipensar to be thought-affective. This means embracing educators’ subjectivity, putting together mind, soul, affection, and emotions, and constituting a political subject that co-constructs knowledge in ELT. Thus, actions of relational pedagogies could problematize colonial practices in ELT education in depth. Although the literature on the matter is scarce in revealing how pedagogies otherwise are performed in the doctoral education of English teachers, we acknowledge pedagogization as a decolonial option for applied linguistics in language teachers’ education.
This decolonial option is based on pedagogization rather than its worn-out correlate: Pedagogy. The critical is part of this pedagogization, but this is not simply an abstract postulate. The critical is a way of existing in and with the world and relating to it. According to Walsh (2015), in her documented conversations with Freirean ideas, the critical is
a stance, posture, and attitude; an actional standpoint in which one’s own being and becoming are constitutive to the acts of thinking, imagining and intervening in transformation: that is, in the construction, creation and ‘walking’ of a radically different world. (p. 10)
The point for applied linguistics on English teacher doctoral education will be to define its ideological and actional standpoint. In this light, it is relevant not to forget that Walsh (2015), commenting on the work of anthropologist Linda Tuhiwai Smith, reflects that "all too frequently paradigms, postures and views -‘often regarded as deriving from Freirian approaches’- have worked to negate and obscure the methodological standpoints, practices, processes, and approaches of feminist theorists of color, ethnic minorities, and indigenous peoples" (p. 15.)
Accordingly, we support a critical pedagogization constituted through our own lived experiences of colonialism as bilingual learners, teachers, teacher educators, and mentors of future doctors in education majoring in ELT. We concur with Walsh (2015) in the sense that making pedagogy and pedagogization plural is a way to disrupt the singularity and pre-packed unity that the concepts may carry when exercised and realized in practice. Therefore, pedagogies and pedagogizations entail “practices, strategies, methodologies, and ways of making and doing that interweave with, and that is constructed in, resistance and opposition, as well as in insurgence, affirmation, and re-existence (as rehumanization), in imagining and building a different world” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 88).
In addition, Albán-Achinte et al. (2016) argue that a decolonizing pedagogy aims “to open up areas of dialogue that breakthrough both the contents that are called into question and the hierarchical formats that characterize the production-transmission of works/knowledge derived from the modern/colonial paradigm that governs us” (pp. 82-83). For example, Villa and Villa (2010, 2013) examined this actional standpoint in the Colombian Caribbean drylands. For these educational researchers, pedagogization is context-sensitive, and it is about putting contextualized processes where the actional standpoint takes place. Pedagogizations are not about trying out pedagogical formulas or recipes to validate how functional or practical teaching-learning is; there is no interest in legitimizing a teaching method to achieve scientific status. This is about turning pedagogy into action to move and activate political, cultural, and situated social processes. Consequently, such an actional standpoint of any pedagogization is rooted in de-linking processes.
De-Linking
Following Walsh’s (2015) ideas, to construct, create, and walk a different herstory of applied linguistics in English teacher doctoral education transcends acknowledging how deeply engrained some elements of the coloniality of knowledge are in applied linguistics. These elements (see the Episteme section), some of which we named above (i.e., universalization, standardization, objectification, and subjection), are constitutive of a colonial pedagogical situation from which we could de-link. This is crucial because “if knowledge is colonized, one of the tasks ahead is to decolonize knowledge” (Mignolo, 2007, p. 451). Therefore,
De-linking presupposes to move toward geo and body politics of knowledge that, on the one hand, denounces the pretended universality of a particular ethnicity (body politics), located in a specific part of the planet (geopolitics), that is, Europe where capitalism accumulated as a consequence of colonialism. De-linking then shall be understood as a decolonial epistemic shift leading to other-universality, that is, to pluriversality as a universal project (Mignolo, 2007, p. 453).
The complexities of de-linking entail a series of resulting struggles that need to be told. Sebastian’s testimony made us reflect upon our fears, uncertainties, and challenges according to our convictions as mentors. One particular moment of importance in our doctoral program is identifying and questioning contemporary colonial situations that affect doctoral language teacher education and our role in perpetuating these situations. This leads us to a dialogue of reflexivity that we continue carrying on with our students, which is not only epistemological but also methodological and ontological. Different questions emerge while de-linking an informed actional standpoint from a pedagogization perspective. What does it mean to educate doctors within southern epistemologies? Is it our goal to contribute to mainstream viewpoints of curricular success? Apart from our accumulated knowledge, are we prepared to subvert what the traditions in research and contents have demanded? Although there are no definitive answers to these inquiries or straightforward recipes to be followed, we let ourselves be seduced by what relational pedagogies have to offer.
Consequently, de-linking has disrupted how we relate to our students to decrease hierarchies and vertical relationships, showing our vulnerabilities as teachers and researchers and our active listening (Freire, 2004) and deCUlonial escucha (Ribeiro, 2017) to understand the difficulties of transforming our relationalities. In this sense, although the decolonial option presents the question of heterarchical relations as a counterpoint to the fight against domination practices (Castro-Gómez, 2007), in practical terms, this exercise is sometimes painful because it is not easy to change the logic and the rules that have subjected the classroom to rational speaking and relationalities. Below, we describe submerged guiding, deCUlonial voicing, and cultivating heterarchical relationships as co-constructed ways of (de-linking) decolonizing doctoral education of teachers of English. By writing about this, we are not attempting to validate our de-linking as an applicable and transferable actional standpoint to all educational contexts, not even to all educational contexts of doctoral education for teachers of English. Indeed, we intend to share how we struggle within a de-linking commitment to putting into action political, cultural, and situated social processes that relate to ELT in the context of supporting educational processes of maestrxs at the doctoral level.
Submerged Guiding
[…] fue un espacio más de “vamos a comprender esto y vamos comprender por qué nos sirve”. La clase hace que las relaciones no sean de extracción de información sino de “realmente quiero comprender”, hay una clara exposición de mi yo como persona que quiere comprender algo. [(it) was a space [to act like] ‘we are going to understand this, and we are going to understand why it is useful for us.’ The class makes relationships to be not about extracting information but rather like ‘I want to understand’. I present myself as someone who wants to understand something]. (Sebastian, narrative interview, February, 2022)
A viewpoint is a place where we can get a good view of something. It could also be understood as the mental attitude of determining a person’s opinions or judgments. There is a degree of detachment from that something being viewed or from that influence shaping someone’s mental state in both cases. We could say that this is part of normalizing a subject-object knowledge relationship transferred to teacher education programs to standardize learning-teaching. The viewpoint conceived in this way implies observing deeply but above the surface. Alternatively, a submerged perspective would signify seeing from below and seeing from within; in other words, it means viewing from below the surface.
Submerged guiding has led us to de-link from traditional comprehensions of viewing and made us reflect upon the type of relationships between subjects that we endorse when teaching doctoral research seminars. Such guiding is partly rooted in our comprehension of Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo’s proposal of geo-choreographies turned into metaphor use. For the artist, geo-choreographies are referred to as gestures and movements of the body that connect geography, environments, and political dissidence.
We embrace the meaning and practice of using metaphors in that it entails an act of self-identification with ways of being and thinking more relationally. It is a perfect example of our idiosyncrasies and oral traditions in Latin America in face-to-face communication though not widely accepted by (Western) academia. In this vein, when Sebastian states, “I present myself as someone who wants to understand something,” he is, willingly or not, bringing up existential phenomenology as a source to constitute a submerged viewpoint. This is a foundation used by pedagogies of crossing (Alexander, 2005) where Sebastian’s I is informed by his race, gender, social class, formal, and informal educational background, and so on. Then, the I is on its own metaphorical, since this is a self-identification process.
Therefore, submerged guiding sets the ground for communication and intersubjectivity. As mentors, teachers, and lifelong learners, we take off our clothes to dive into deeper waters with the possibilities of facing serendipity in the quest for exploration. And we, as doctoral research seminar convenors, remain that vulnerable. Adding to self-identification processes, some of our doctoral students have used submerged metaphorical viewpoints resorting, for example, to textile metaphors of unraveling threads to ravel them back into tapestries and to sports metaphors like being part of soccer teams to play together not against each other. Other more advanced doctoral students have achieved submerged points of view through co-authored poetry (Posada-Ortiz, 2022) and testimonios (Castañeda-Londoño, 2021) that relate to heterarchical relationships in research processes (see below).
Deculonial Voicing
Poderlo discutir y poderlo hablar y poder decir qué pienso decir qué siento y escuchar a mis compañeros sobre su pensar, sobre su sentir, comprender la visión de la Señora Martha. [To be able to discuss and talk about it and be able to say what I think and what I feel and to listen to my classmates about their thoughts and feelings to understand Señora Martha’s vision] (Sebastian, narrative interview, February, 2022)
There are various understandings of the locus of enunciation. However, the basic premise is anchored in the idea that the knower is geo- and body- politically implicated in what is known and with whom the knower knows. In other words, knowers and the known cannot be separated as they voice their own knowledge. This is why we use the term voicing to break with epistemological voicing. As Djamila Ribeiro claims: “We need to break with silences” (2017). She has also claimed that everyone has their place of enunciation, which must be run with criticism, responsibility, and respect. This critical handling is vital because some have always been able to speak on their behalf and that of others. However, and this is the criticism made to decolonial thinkers in the Latin American decolonial turn, some have not even been able to claim their locus of enunciation and have been rather forced to listen to the colonizer and the de-colonizer.
By the same token, we borrow the political idea of the deculonial (Orozco, 2019) to criticize decolonial theorists for the fact that voices otherwise have been suppressed and annihilated from the debate. Deculonial voicing is rooted primarily in Brazilian black feminism and the use of Portuguese cu marks the “possibility of collectively constructing zigzagging paths with/from/for the southern bodies with an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and indeed, anti-colonial perspective” (Orozco, 2019, p. 107). At the same time, we would like to underscore Orozco’s implication that the epistemological South has been left aside from the global discussion. In that sense, the South would be considered "the ass of the world" (el culo del mundo) (Orozco, 2019, p. 87). There are voices in Latin American decolonial thought that have not been even heard; they have not been able to discuss or to talk about. We refer mainly to feminist voices with Latin American roots and not necessarily to other decolonizing voices geo- and body- politically situated in the north. This is relevant, since, according to Soria (2017),
Latin America is one of the names of the colonial experience that will serve to delimit a Latin American locus of enunciation which, rather than indicating a simple geographical place or region that defines a gaze, is thought of as a perspective or epistemological space. (p. 4, our emphasis)
Although we could not agree more with the latter perspective, we strongly believe in the need to establish an epistemological plurality that welcomes a multiplicity of loci of enunciation within Latin America and within Latin American applied linguists who reflect on language teacher education at all levels. To decolonize the education of teachers of English at the doctoral level, we think that in the actional standpoint, students could also feel-think (sentipensar) as Sebastian has been doing, as one way to fight against the coloniality of knowledge. He states it plainly when he says he appreciates: “To be able to discuss and talk about it and be able to say what I think and what I feel and to listen to my classmates about their thoughts and feelings to understand Señora Martha’s vision”.
Notwithstanding, our deculonial voicing has been one of the most challenging actions to achieve in pedagogization. To locate the epistemologically speaking subject is not as simple as solely stating, for example, “I speak as a mestizx”. This is because the word that is heard is political. Deculonial voicing is political as an educational activity. We agree with Orozco’s ideas when they claim the urgent need for a:
school that makes visible and explicitly addresses the issues of cisgender, male, white, heterosexual privilege, racism, machismo, sexual orientation, and gender identity discrimination […] xenophobia... not only in a perspective of “respect” and “inclusion” of the different and diversity but also in a perspective of political education of subjects that question the colonial structures and powers that generated and generate the need to create, legitimize, naturalize and institutionalize these oppressions. (2019, p. 87)
Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge and overcome our immersion in whiteness, power relationships of any kind, and the structure that oppresses by exploring what is oppressed and experienced as oppression. “I speak as a mestizx” could incidentally reinforce a contemporary colonial situation if addressed uncritically as coloniality of knowledge could be experienced differently. Any subject could speak from a mixed-race background but still, unintentionally support or not an epistemology that is white, military, heterosexual, Christian, middle class, etc. To what extent are teachers of English, doing doctorate studies, willing to work on surfacing their deculonial voice? And how willing are they to humanize their relationships with others? These are related questions to be explored further in other articles. However, it is necessary to emphasize that making explicit the place of enunciation is part of this decolonial pedagogization in doctoral education in ELT that we wanted to present through Sebastian’s small story as a lived and embodied experience that is the central objective of this article.
Cultivating Heterarchical Relationships
This actional standpoint in teacher education comprises three keywords: cultivating, heterarchies, and relationships. It is based on Greek sociologist Kontopoulos’ (1993) ideas adopted by decolonial theorists. As explained above, as mentors, we promote a shift in our relationship with doctoral students that consists of a less hierarchical perspective in our research seminars. We talk about cultivating because power relations change from a hierarchy to a horizontality with distributed powers that do not happen out of the blue. Establishing trust and humanity to (re)exist differently has been necessary. Heterarchy is indeed a structure full of complexity when it comes to power. But it is required to enter into that complexity to know and learn with the other (not about the other). Thus, some have no power over others (e.g., professors over research students), but all participants in doctoral research seminars have some degree of influence over others.
Consequently, several alternative logics of the exercise of power about ELT knowledge are (co)constructed and not extracted or deposited into empty vessels. This highlights the idea that co-constructing heterarchies as pedagogization is not simply a matter of including voices out of mutual respect for diversity or those with different opinions. Instead, it is a political, educational, and formative action. The heterarchical relationship is the means, the process, and the end. In turn, mutuality is an important pedagogization feature of this proposal of co-construction of heterarchies, and this does not occur because of a pedagogical mandate. Sebastian frames his expression of affection in unplanned freedom.
With our graduate students (e.g., Sebastian (3rd cohort), and both Julia and Adriana (1st cohort), we have learned that this relational pedagogy used in doctoral research practices can build, through decolonial work, the care and compassion for the other, the mutuality, the respect, and the diverse representation of knowledge in ELT as Julia has claimed (Posada-Ortiz, 2022). We have also learned from this heterarchical relationality that communal reading and interpretation of reading ELT experiences implies verbal sharing and learning to listen to each other. In this regard, Adriana has taught us that this oralization of knowledge entails the cultivation of spontaneity, dialogue, and intuition (Castañeda-Londoño, 2021).
Critique
By sharing this pedagogization built on an actional standpoint that is rebellious and challenges the transmissive and extractivist vision of knowledge in the doctoral education of teachers of English (at least in our state University), we do not intend to imply a universal and standardized guide of best pedagogical practices. Rather, we think of (re)existing with others in the sense of humanizing our relationships and breaking with hierarchical schemes that hold the power of knowledge. Thereby, we advocate decolonial options in pedagogical terms (e.g., submerged guiding, deculonial voicing, and heterarchical relationships).
Still, we critically propose a discussion to the academic community about ELT from a south and plural perspective on whether pedagogization through submerged guiding, deculonial voicing, and heterarchical relationships truly problematizes colonial relations. We believe it does. In this article, we have narrated with examples our processes of (re)existence with some of our students (i.e., Adriana, Julia, and Sebastian). We have positively remarked on Sebastian’s emotional response in one session of our research seminar (e.g., writing “los amoooooo” as his reaction to getting introduced to la Campesina Señora Martha, readings on economic and intellectual extractivist practices, etc.). We talk about (re)existing in the sense of humanizing to resist standardization, universalization, and subjection. But there is a long way to go vis-a-vis decolonial doing and pedagogization within south epistemologies. Despite this constantly evolving south thought as one decolonial option, the ELT community in Latin America must seriously ask what their chosen decolonial options are and from whom they are decolonizing within a pedagogization framework. We reckon that the experience of the colonial wound is diverse. Not all geopolitically established territories live, have lived, or are living coloniality similarly, at least in terms of the doctoral education of teachers of English.
In our experience, our epistemological reflexivity has allowed us to introduce different contents in our research seminars. These both consider our local research agendas in ELT and oppose mainstream top-down designed research courses according to research textbooks written by state-of-the-art north scholars. These north-based contents are closely related to colonial situations and have subjected the ELT field to disciplined obedience towards universalization, automatization, and standardization.
As an epistemic act, we write together and work together, making visible scholarly work close to our ways of thinking and feeling (De Figuereido & Martínez, 2021). In this vein, the contents of the research seminars we are problematizing are inscribed in a resistant tactic to modernity-coloniality. We claim our right to produce knowledge, actions, and subjects for our realities (Mignolo, 2009; Sugiharto, 2020). In other words, the struggles of the selves intertwined with educational problems unveil English language teachers’ history of oppression as technicians and consumers of knowledge (Méndez-Rivera et al., 2020).
This history of oppressions cannot omit embodied gender and sexual orientations, epistemological blackness, epistemological feminisms (in plural), and the never-named indigenous epistemologies in the Latin American contexts. All these absences must be anticipated in ELT education to leverage context-sensitive decolonial options. It seems that these conversations remain open and unattended in applied linguistics to language teacher education in Latin America. In the context of the usa, for example, whose indigenous peoples were and are confronted with a specific type of colonialism, the idea of decolonizing education has been boldly criticized. Tuck & Yang (2012) ask for scholars who claim the need to decolonize schools, curricula, and students’ minds to acknowledge the indigenous contributions to decolonial frameworks for education. This is fair as they argue that
Decolonize (a verb) and decolonization (a noun) cannot easily be grafted onto pre-existing discourses/frameworks, even if they are critical, even if they are anti-racist, even if they are justice frameworks. The easy absorption, adoption, and transposing of decolonization is yet another form of settler appropriation. (p. 3)
This is why, in our research seminars, we welcome research projects in which the research problem or colonial situation in ELT is connected to teachers’ bodies, experiences, and concerns beyond their position as a researcher (Ortiz & Arias, 2019). Although we are submerged in a sea of uncertainties and contradictions, we do not have alternatives other than continuing this submerged guiding, deculonial voicing, and heterarchical relationships in which we care, work, and think with our students.
Conclusion
Teaching and learning experiences for the education of teachers of English at the doctoral level are scenarios of resistance, creation, and invention that need to be introduced and discussed across global south contexts. From a pedagogization perspective that draws on submerged guiding, deculonial voicing, and heterarchical relationships, we are reshaping our professional identities to make visible our conditions as woman, man, mestizos, middle-class, afro-descendant, Colombian, citizens, teachers, gender diverse, and so forth. Our research seminars are spaces to integrate richer discussions far distant from those ruled by the canonical contents of applied linguistics. However, more dialogical encounters among south-located ELT scholars should be promoted to comprehend diverse experiences of pedagogizations and the decolonial engagement of educational contexts attended by teachers of English. This will, in one way or another, “foster [our] spirit[s] and [our] reconquest of hope as makers of the contemporary world” (Iglesias, 2019, p. 277) in ELT, supported by decolonizing actional standpoints.
