Entretejidxs: Decolonial Threads to the Self, the Communities, and EFL Teacher Education Programs in Colombia ; Entretejidxs: hilos decoloniales hacia el ser, las comunidades y los programas de formación de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera en Colombia ; Entrecroisés : des fils décoloniaux vers soi-même, les communautés et les programmes de formation des enseignants d’anglais langue étrangère en Colombie ; Entretecidxs: fios decoloniais para o ser, as comunidades e os programas de formação de professores de inglês como língua estrangeira na Colômbia

In addressing the 21st century neocolonial research condition, in this article the authors firstly discuss how academia in general, and ELT in particular, may configure as oppressive colonizing sites. Secondly, they introduce their experience as pre-service and in-service educators who took part in pedagogy of possibilities (POP) at a university in Tunja, Colombia. Indigenous principles like interconnectedness and relationality and Chicanx/Latinx concepts, such as bodymindspirit, path of conocimiento, and spiritual activism were foundational to these educators’ POP. To them, pedagogy was a political act to resist the disembodied/disengaged/dispassionate nature of teaching/researching/being in academia and beyond. This four-year critical-community autoethnography uses testimonies, journals, and artistic creations as knowledge-gathering methods to analyze how decolonizing teaching-research practices informed the re-signification of these educators’ personal and professional identities. Theoretical coding revealed that POP permitted participants to engage in decolonial practices of self-recognition, re-construction, empowerment, growth, and healing. The analysis also revealed that decolonizing the self leads to adopting a positionality where values such as care and respect for one’s self and communities are paramount to moving forward social-justice-critical-decolonial agendas. The results suggest the need to re-signify pedagogical and educational practices in ELT beyond neo-liberal agendas, which propose rankings, individualism, and competition. ; Al abordar el estado del trabajo investigativo neocolonial del siglo XXI, en el presente artículo, los/as autores/as analizaron en primer lugar cómo la academia en general, y la formación en ILE en particular, pueden configurarse como lugares opresores y colonizantes. En segundo lugar, presentan su experiencia personal como docentes en formación y graduados que participaron en la pedagogía de las posibilidades (POP) en una universidad de Tunja, Colombia. Principios ...