DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2014.2.a00

Editorial

Towards a ‘figured’ and ‘imagined’ world for the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal

En dirección hacia un mundo ‘figurado’ e ‘imaginado’ para el Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal

Harold Castañeda-Peña
Editor

Welcome to this new issue of the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal. This time a new layout is presented addressing the challenges of becoming a digital journal for the applied-linguist academic community. This effort has been cooperatively constructed by the joined efforts of the CIDC Journal Coordinator at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, the Editorial and Scientific Committees, the editor and his editorial assistant and the valuable contributions made by authors and peer reviewers. As expressed by Holland, Skinner, Lachicotte and Cain (1998) in relation to identity and agency, this making of a figured world for our journal has been a heteroglossic exercise where multiple voices are entangled together and where the vantage point of our dialogism rests in a plural collective experience that shapes angles of a re-visited identity.

New identity angles here imply “trajectories of participation” (Wortham, 2006) as this shift to a digital journal also encompasses the lived history of our journal in its printed version during an important number of years. All the historical moments the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal has gone through are part of its own social identification and academic learning shared with its readership. But right now the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal as part of its own trajectory aims at making part of an imagined community (Kanno & Norton, 2003). This imagined community refers to “groups of people [let us say academic journals], not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of imagination” (Norton, 2013, p. 8). It is the time to be positioned differently in the academic world and all efforts have been geared towards such an aim. We hope that in a couple of years these goals are fulfilled redirecting us towards new horizons and academic challenges. As part of this new trajectory we have already claimed that it is hoped that

our explicit goal of ‘transversal dialogue of implied and applied linguistics knowledge’ stimulates debate and reflection on the senses of researching about Education and professional development of language teachers, Literacy processes and new literacies in two languages and Discourse studies in educational contexts as scenarios where the social and plural occur. (Castañeda-Peña, 2014, p.4)

In relation to Education and professional development of language teachers, Ekiaka-Nzai, Feng and Reyna demonstrate via a pedagogical intervention how pre-service language teachers could easily access the ‘cyberlearning’ world to qualify their future language teaching practices. Similar practices around initial teacher education are constructed by Viáfara who centers teachers’ academic learning in peer-tutoring under the premise that it is by participating in communities how pre-service teachers could best become community members and learn. In the same line of argument, Carreño, substantiates the idea of collaboration as social means to claim membership and progressively develop one’s own sense of belonging. Echoing these ideas, Ortiz de Zárate, Walper, Aros, Hidalgo, Siebert and Rojas, exemplify how inclusive education is about creating access to a linguistic code and opportunities to participate in plural contexts. It is within this context that Tassara and Villalón claim that language education needs now to be efficiently managed as this helps language learners build identity and also allows them to exchange ideas with other nations re-shaping background and new forms of existence using both their own mother tongue and their own foreign languages.

Regarding Literacy processes and new literacies in two languages, Gómez demonstrates the positive effect of introducing innovation in the EFL classroom in a principled way under the premises of the relational teaching approach. Mariño presents a case study where principles of CLIL are carefully examined when applied in situ in terms of positive impact and challenges. Aiming at the implementation of principled classroom assessment, Janssen, Meier and Trace present a Rasch analysis which could be methodologically understood as one possible element of literacy assessment.

In relation to Discourse studies in educational contexts, Montoya presents classroom discourse as an ethos, an epistemological and ontological site that is co-built by participants within the nexus power/knowledge. In a more instructional direction, Soler discusses how scientists choose to show themselves in the process of knowledge communication and provides pedagogical clues on how to explicitly teach these strategies. With a shared pedagogical perspective, Fonseca goes back to the functional roots of discourse analysis to make connections with the study of culture when one is simultaneously teaching a foreign language.

Finally, as it was stated above, it is hoped this issue of the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal to be a path breaking newly-born digital number that allows our readership to continue thinking, researching and discussing contemporary applied linguistics topics to become part of a ‘figured’ and ‘imagined’ academic community in the near future.