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Learning a foreign language incorporates cognitive, communicative, emotional, and social aspects. Some of these aspects have to do with the structure of the language being studied; some others deal with social and psychological issues that influence the environment where the learning process takes place. This reflection paper addresses various emotional aspects that can bring up positive outcomes along the foreign language learning stages. Elements such as motivation, attitudes, levels of anxiety, acculturation, ethnicity, and personality are considered for this work. Readers should be able to find useful ideas for their ESL/EFL classes.

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This case study reports how three high-school teachers from two state schools in Colombia enacted the National English Suggested Curriculum by the Ministry of Education. The teachers' trajectories of action were analyzed through semi-structured interviews, teachers' narratives, and lesson observations. Using the ecological model of agency as a framework, we situated teachers' steps within projective, iterational, and practical evaluative dimensions of agency. In this paper, we provide additional dimensions of teacher agency, which can help to expand theoretical and empirical knowledge in the field. Findings show that teachers cope with the changes derived from policy differently. The analysis presented in this paper can inform the creation and promotion of future curriculum policies in similar contexts.

This paper showcases a literature review in 13 Colombian refereed journals, covering the last decade, from 2011 to 2021. Data were collected from the virtual platforms where each journal hosts published issues. A thematic analysis was conducted with the sample of papers. The purpose of the review was twofold. On the one hand, it aimed at establishing the main research concerns of Colombian scholars regarding the place of culture in the context of Foreign Language Teacher Education programs. On the other hand, the review aimed at exploring the implications for curriculum design in Colombia that can be drawn from culture-related literature produced by scholars in the last decade. Results suggest that the treatment of culture-related issues in Foreign Language Teacher Education programs has gained currency, although scholarship in the last decade has mainly focused on a diagnostic stage.

In this paper, we, two transnational doctoral students and language educators of color, engage in a reflexive dialogic conversation focusing on the positionality of our identities. Utilizing duoethnography research methodology, we explored our academic and professional journeys in post-secondary education in our home countries and an Anglophone context. A discussion on negotiating our positionalities in our immediate academic, professional, and sociocultural contexts is provided. We argued that unveiling one's positionality requires a prolonged reflexive engagement that assists in establishing quality in qualitative research and exploring fluidity in positionality. We closed with implications and invitations to use duoethnography as a path to self-exploration, solidarity, and allyship.

This study describes the factors that enhanced students' construction of arguments when participating in culturally infused discussions at an undergraduate English as a foreign language British Culture course. The research was conducted at a university in Northwestern Colombia. This paper presents a section of the results of a larger project whose objective is to identify the elements that aid participants in building and elaborating arguments in culturally infused discussions. Socratic questioning was an integral element of the discussions. To attain the purpose of this study, a qualitative single-case design was employed. Findings show that the factors facilitating the construction of arguments could potentially be peer scaffolding, previous knowledge, connection to participants' reality, and curiosity and inquiry. This study makes important contributions to the field of critical thinking skills work in English as a foreign language setting, particularly argumentation, as it sheds light on relevant aspects to foster students' collaborative argumentation.

This paper reports the results of a qualitative action research study conducted with children from a private Colombian institution. This study aimed to analyze the learners' cognitive and knowledge outcomes measured according to the revised Bloom's taxonomy once content and language integrated learning was implemented. Data were gathered through an interview with the learners' parents, observation, and video recordings. Results give evidence that learners develop different processes simultaneously, classified by the mentioned taxonomy. This taxonomy is a helpful approach for English learners since it allows them to perform cognitive and knowledge processes without following rigid systematic learning. As a conclusion, this implementation with children allowed participants to develop cognitive processes with greater emphasis in levels 3 and 4 (apply and analyze), whereas level 2 (understand) was developed as part of the process. Meanwhile, the factual and conceptual knowledge dimensions were strengthened. Finally, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge is developed through the implementation itself.

This paper reports a mixed-methods study at a public university in Colombia. It describes the classroom assessment practices and challenges of 75 novice foreign language teachers. To gather the quantitative data, the participants completed an online survey. For the qualitative data, 11 key informants participated in one-on-one online interviews. Findings revealed that novice teachers predominantly used summative assessment in the classroom and aligned their assessment instruments to large-scale tests. Moreover, novice teachers faced many challenges with classroom assessment, including determining how to assess their students, developing assessment instruments, and interpreting and using assessment scores to inform teaching and learning. In conclusion, novice teachers need more knowledge, skills, and support to handle daily assessment-related tasks.

This paper calls for a shift related to English language-in-education policy and inclusive education initiatives in Colombia to ensure that English language learners with disabilities receive equitable and inclusive classroom instruction that is context-appropriate. We call for English language initiatives and policies to draw from theories and practices from both the Global South and the Global North in order to teach towards inclusive education. Trends in both English language teaching and inclusive education have drawn upon the Global North for solutions, which cannot be systemised to fit one international standard. Instead, using the Colombian context as an example, the present paper suggests a localised approach to meeting the educational needs of English language learners that incorporates inclusive education at the institutional level. This model would favour the work of scholars within the region to ensure that all students receive equitable classroom instruction that builds in Global South epistemologies and localised ways of knowing.

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data envelopment analysis: its growth rate, major collaboration networks, the most important and popular research topic. A total of 169 related publications were collected and analyzed from 1988 to 2021. The analysis results show that: Publications published every year have increased sharply in the last six years; The quality of publications is relatively high as publications tend to be published in journals with high-ranking indexes; Countries with the most influence in studies on this topic are: Italy, China, Spain, the USA, and the United Kingdom; Authors with the most influence in this research direction are Agasisti T., Abbott M., Doucouliagos C., Avkiran N.K., and Johnes J.; The research cooperation among countries and among affiliations is not strong. Finally, the paper has provided recommendations for future studies based on the findings.

At some point, language teachers need to be engaged in language assessment in their profession. Because language assessment is such a primary task for teachers, the field of language testing is encouraging research around the knowledge, skills, and principles that are foundational for sound assessment. In this paper, I provide a definition of Language Assessment Literacy (LAL), especially when it comes to teachers, by reviewing existing models. I then discuss ongoing issues in this area and end the paper by offering language teacher educators suggestions for fostering LAL among pre- and in-service teachers. In the article, I argue that, if more LAL initiatives take place, we are collectively raising the status and nature of language assessment and its impact on teachers' professional development.

This paper reports an exploratory sequential mixed-methods and action research study of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology at a state institution in Florencia (Colombia). The study aimed to explore the implementation of CLIL in a virtual learning environment and its implications for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning during the health emergency caused by COVID-19. The data collection instruments were a single interview, observations, reflective journals, classroom artefacts, and a questionnaire. The findings reveal that the CLIL methodology contributes to English learning. Thus, the results show the significant role of keywords and content vocabulary, contextualized lessons, assignments, and virtual games in fostering the students' listening skills, oral production, motivation, critical thinking, and development of cultural awareness. Hence, the outcomes demonstrate that the integration of virtual tools benefits the CLIL methodology in the virtual learning environment. Finally, the paper contains evidence supporting the implementation of CLIL, the contributions to EFL learning, and suggestions for further studies.

The various possibilities that social media offers to language learners and teachers have long been recognized by researchers within the field of language instruction, and many studies have been carried out in an attempt to address and unpack its potential contributions. This paper aims to review such research on the use of mainstream social media in language teaching and learning published in "Computer Assisted Language Learning," a top tier (i.e., Q1) journal indexed in major citation index systems (e.g., Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus), between the years 2016-2020 inclusive. For the purposes of the study, a total of 23 articles that meet the selection criteria is reviewed and presented in five sections. The first section deals with the majority of the articles, which are found to be on the use of social networking in language teaching and learning. In the following sections, studies on the use of videoconferencing, wikis, blogging and forums are discussed. Collectively, the studies reviewed in this paper outline a critical role for the use of social media in language instruction and the study aims to provide valuable insights for researchers, teachers and learners.

English teachers' professional development responds to individual needs and societal discourses about teaching, learning, and language use. This paper reports the findings of a case study that explored the factors that increased or limited the active and committed participation of nine Colombian teachers of English in professional development programs. Findings suggest that English teachers are invested in their professional development if they may develop three imagined identities--as proficient English speakers, ELT experts, and ICT competent users--and their affiliation to an imagined community of "bilinguals." The teachers' journey to the imagined identities and the imagined community is full of conflicting emotions amidst the socio-political context of their work and the country's language education policies.

In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the investigations of the last 54 years focused on the teaching of topology and its applications in the learning of other areas of knowledge was carried out. The articles that appear in the SCOPUS database were taken into account under the search criteria of the words topology and teaching, connected with the Boolean expression AND in the search field ABS. As a result, 329 articles were obtained which, based on the PRISMA methodology, were reduced to 74 papers. In them publication trends, impact of publications, citation frequencies, among others, were compared. In addition, its use was identified for learning topology at different levels of training, areas of knowledge where this discipline is most applied and strategies used to teach these applications.

Higher education institutions have been complicit with the ongoing coloniality project that reinforces and perpetuates inequities, dismisses interests, knowledges, alternative discourses, and world views different from Western European thought (Bell, 2018; Dastile & Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013; Harms-Smith & Rasool, 2020). Education is rooted in colonialism, which raises doubts about the feasibility of universities implementing a decolonial agenda (Dhillon, 2021). To contribute to the conversation about decolonial praxis and the documented efforts in the literature on how to enact a decolonial rehumanizing agenda, this paper presents a systematic literature review of works from the Global South that attempt to disentangle universities from colonial practices in higher education. The works reviewed describe a variety of practices from pedagogical practices, curriculum changes, and institutional connections with marginalized communities that make visible knowledges, languages, and perspectives traditionally excluded from universities.

Language assessment literacy has gained recent attention in the field of language testing, particularly on teachers' profile. However, the literature on LAL is limited regarding teachers' perceptions of language assessment courses. In this paper, we used a case study method to characterize the perceptions of eighteen English language teachers into three components of an online assessment course: contents, activities, and impact on their professional development. For data collection, we used a questionnaire and a focus group interview. Findings indicate that the teachers perceived course contents as organized, relevant, and useful; they also considered test analysis and collaborative tasks as valuable. Regarding professional development, the teachers explained that test-analysis tasks made them aware of their mistakes in assessment. Finally, the teachers suggested that the course raised their awareness of what language assessment is and does. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for LAL courses elsewhere.

This paper of a literature review presents the construct of interactional identities as part of the study of classroom interaction in English language teaching education. The paper defines interactional identities in the field of English language teaching. By listing studies on the matter, the relationship of this construct with classroom interaction is presented from global and local perspectives. Three reasons for studying interactional identities in the ELT field are discussed in the final part of the paper whose conclusions invite to incorporate this construct into the study of what teachers are and do for language learning and use in classroom interaction in English language teaching education.

Large-scale language testing uses statistical information to account for the quality of an assessment system. In this reflection article, I explain how basic statistics can be used meaningfully in the context of classroom language assessment. The paper explores a series of statistical calculations that can be used to examine test scores and assessment decisions in the language classroom. Therefore, interpretations for criterion-referenced assessment underlie the paper. Finally, I discuss limitations and include recommendations for teachers to use statistics.

In this paper, the authors identify and analyze public policy and the investment and expenditure that the governments of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay commit to make in the development and procurement of textbooks, books and digital content for primary and secondary education (K-12). The aim is to identify and propose a roadmap for developing policies that advance the principles of the Paris Open Educational Resources Declaration. In the region, digital content coexists with and complements the traditional ones. Paper textbooks continue to have a leading role in the education systems of the region. In this context, the authors assess how the acquisition of traditional and digital materials occurs and offer some recommendations to the governments to adjust their public spending policies on educational resources development and procurement. [This paper was presented at the OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Conference (Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 23-25, 2014).]

We characterize the thematic trends of the "Geometry and its Applications Meeting." This meeting is held periodically in Colombia, country in which our study was carried out. We used a taxonomy of key terms specific to mathematics education to code the proceedings of this meeting. The study variables are purpose, educational level, pedagogical notions, and topics. We establish the thematic trends in terms of the values of the variables. We describe their evolution over time and, using a normalization process, we compare the extent to which geometry topics are treated with respect to the other variables. The meeting has disseminated activities and curricular innovations to a lesser extent. The community that attends the meeting is focused on the theoretical development associated with geometry and on higher educational levels. The papers that address pedagogical notions focus on learning and the classroom. The topics with the highest percentage of research are geometry in three dimensions and Euclidean geometry. We suggest that the meeting should promote the dissemination of curricular innovations and give more attention to the notions of teaching, curriculum and assessment in both research and innovations. We perceive the need to address learning and teaching in preschool and primary education.

Critical language teaching education has become an inescapable endeavor for language teacher education programs. To contribute to this effort, this paper outlines the implementation of an English course from a critical, intercultural perspective, during the first semester of a language teacher education program in Colombia. It also reports the ways preservice teachers responded to this implementation as evidenced in data stemming from their oral and written outcomes and from course evaluations. Results indicate that this approach to language teaching allowed preservice teachers to affirm their multiple identities as they developed and strengthened their language skills in English. Data also indicate that looking at the world from a more critical perspective entailed contradictions and challenges for preservice teachers and the teacher educator.

This paper reports a qualitative narrative study that explored the trajectories of English language teachers' identities before and after their participation in a master's program in English language teaching at a Colombian public university. After analyzing the data gathered through oral narratives and narrative interviews, results showed that teachers' identities are part of an endless process nurtured by experiences at the academic, pedagogical, and personal levels. We found that such experiences were constantly cultivated and analyzed in the master's seminars, which positively influenced the development of the participants' identities by making them more reflective and critical practitioners. Most teachers reported developing higher levels of social commitment, critical-reflective engagement, and research-oriented practices due to their graduate academic experience.

The current discussion about assessment in the language teaching context--involving topics such as immigration and citizenship, and university entrance--has brought with it the issue of justice in assessment. Although in Colombia such concerns are not generally discussed, it is important to consider fairness when it comes to classroom assessment. This paper presents a review of five Colombian well-known journals during the period 2009-2020 aiming to identify the scholarly discussion regarding language assessment and testing in the country. Findings suggest that Colombian researchers are concerned with fair and democratic assessment practices, and the involvement of students in peer- and self-assessment practices to improve learning and promote autonomy. Also, there is a perceived need for more teacher education in language assessment.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the digital knowledge emerged in the context of the information society and that has introduced new cultural profiles in young people, called digital natives by the academic literature. It is approached according to hermeneutic theoretical and methodological principles where, through the analysis and reflection of different research experiences, it was possible to unveil these digital knowledges in the teacher training processes to respond to the learning styles of contemporary student profiles. The study allows to conclude that there is a great opportunity for the construction of contemporary cultural profiles, both of university teachers and students, as well as of the university community itself, with an impact on the educational processes when making decisions, in their training from the appropriation of a culture and the good use of information and communication technologies and experiences that have left the pandemic by the COVID-19. This adaptation and innovation have allowed to create and recreate family, academic and work life, looking for alternatives of constant change and where this stage of emergency has been an opportunity for growth in knowledge in science and technology, together with public policies as part of the training processes.

A bibliometric analysis was carried out on the production and publication of research papers related to the study of the management variable in the quality of education in Latin America. The purpose of the analysis proposed in this document is to know the main characteristics of the volume of publications registered in Scopus database during the period 2016-2021 in Latin American countries, achieving the identification of 1183 publications in total. The information provided by said platform was organized by means of tables and figures categorizing the information by year of publication, Country of Origin, Area of Knowledge and Type of Publication. Once these characteristics were described, a qualitative analysis was used to refer to the position of different authors on the proposed topic. Among the main findings of this research, it is found that Brazil, with 589 publications, is the Latin American country with the highest production. The area of knowledge that made the greatest contribution to the construction of bibliographic material referring to the study of management in the quality of education was Medicine with 538 published documents, and the type of publication that was most used during the period mentioned above was the journal article, representing 71% of the total scientific production.

This paper reports qualitative research on constructing critical thinking scenarios in online legal English classes at a private university in Colombia. This study aimed to enhance law students' critical thinking skills development in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom through virtual tools by implementing a descriptive case analysis. Data were gathered through a journal, a survey and a focus group. It was demonstrated that when students are trained in critical thinking, they learn to develop specific abilities such as reasoning, making proposals, identifying and solving problems, making inferences, making decisions according to their prior knowledge and the context needs. Furthermore, the strategies contributed to improving students' communication skills in the foreign language.

Within the spirit of conspiration, this article brings together contributions from participants of the PhD-led UCL Reading and React Group 'Colonialism(s), Neoliberalism(s) and Language Teaching and Learning', which ran in 2019/20. Weaving together various perspectives, the article centres on the dialogic nature of the decolonial enterprise and challenges the colonial concept of monologic authorial voice. Across the reflections on participants' own engagements with questions of decolonising language teaching and learning, we pull together three threads: the inherent coloniality of the concepts that shape the very disciplines we seek to decolonise; the need to place decolonial efforts within broader contexts and to be sceptical of projects claiming to have completed the work of decolonising language teaching and learning; and the affordances and limitations offered to us by our positionalities, which the reflexivity of the conspirational encounter has allowed us to explore in some depth. The article closes with a reflection on the process of writing this article, and with the assertion that decolonising the curriculum is a multifaceted and open-ended process of dialogue and conspiration between practitioners and researchers alike.

This paper outlines a description of research carried out at a public university in Colombia where students of the Hospitality and Tourism Management program took four general English levels in 2017 as a requirement to graduate. According to the data collected, these levels were not enough to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to interact in English. This need, determined through questionnaires, and a CNA report were the starting point of this research study, whose main objective was to enrich students' language learning skills and knowledge through a CLIL curriculum. This participatory action research is framed within a qualitative study. After designing, implementing, and piloting one unit, including four lessons, we determined that not only students' language learning skills can be improved but also their confidence, participation, solidarity, and awareness of their and others' learning process through the activities designed and strategies proposed by this approach.

Fostering spoken communication in a foreign language classroom is not an easy task. With that in mind, this paper explores a proposal to motivate students' L2 oral communication through the practice of narrative games called tabletop roleplaying games adapted as task-based activities. It implied an action research process in which the teacher-researcher with his students reflected and intervened on the identified problematic situation: Lack of oral communication in L2. In that sense, it started with a diagnostic test that showed the current state of verbal communication in L2 in a Colombian rural public school. Next, the teacher-researcher chose to appeal to the gamification of the classroom along with the adoption of a task-based framework to activity design aiming to improve students' motivation to take the risk of communicating in L2. The teacher-researcher applied sets of activities that progressed from traditional role-play to a tabletop roleplaying game. In accordance, video recordings, narratives, artifacts collections, and semi-structured interviews were essential to collect data. Afterward, the teacher-researcher analyzed the data with an emic approach to identify patterns in the information that uncovered the categories and subcategories of information. Consequently, the teacher-researcher concluded that the students feel better motivated using L2 if the learning environment offers opportunities for social interaction, collaborative work, and scaffolding in task-based exercises embedded in a fictional world game.

Knowledge and experience, mediated by reflection, are essential components in teacher education and development programs. This paper discusses core elements that have guided ELT education in the last years and analyzes the case of five English language teacher educators who--in the Colombian context--reflect on their own pedagogical practices through narrative. I guide the discussion by four probing questions that generate a reflective overview of English language teachers' knowledge-base, identity construction, and decision-making when it comes to localizing knowledge. This reflection uncovers teacher educators' gains and challenges as it becomes input for those others who are at different stages of their teaching career.

Media literacy training is an urgent need of our time. Educational institutions must stand as fundamental domains to collectively address reflection on digital and media environments and prepare school-age citizens to constructively deal with the impact of the media. To do so, a paradigm shift to approach the issue is required: a critical awareness of the new scenarios created by the media and a broad reflection on their characteristics. A new framework where the spotlight is on the media, the surrounding environment is an essential reference point and training proposals are based on results and evidence. This study is part of a Design-Based Research, aimed at the creation, implementation and evaluation of a Critical Media Literacy program for high school students at the Escuela Normal Superior del Putumayo (Colombia). In this paper we present the results obtained by applying the Alfamed media competence "pre" and "post" questionnaire to the students participating in the program. The results obtained show a significant improvement both in the overall level of students' media competence and in four of the six dimensions that make up the theoretical reference model ("Technology", "Language", "Ideology and Values" and "Production and Dissemination").

Education in Spain and Latin America has been experiencing an ever-increasing use of English as a medium of instruction at all levels and across curricula. Bringing the vast research-literature into a reflective dialogue is paramount to advancing the discipline and to refining English teaching practices. As such, this literature review systematically situates English-as-a-medium-of-instruction literature related to higher education within the Iberian-American school contexts where Spanish was the students' first language. Thus, the paper asserts that while research that addresses methodological approaches, processes, procedures, and their effects in instruction is significant, there is still a pressing need for framing English-as-a-medium-of-instruction research within the reciprocal relationship existing among communication, classroom culture, social values, the classroom climate for learning, and ultimately, the students' learning.

This paper reports a collaborative autoethnography on a first teaching practicum at Universidad Surcolombiana. The study aimed at how we, as novice researchers and preservice English as a foreign language teachers, make sense of our teaching experiences in our first teaching practicum using collaborative autoethnography as a research method. The data were collected by reflective journals and ethnographic observations. Results show the meaning that we give to our experiences, before and during the covid-19 pandemic, by recognizing and analyzing our sociocultural context. Additionally, we were immersed in a virtual learning environment where we had the opportunity to confront unforeseen changes imposed by the pandemic, familiarize ourselves with possible issues that teachers grapple with, and imagine new ways to be ourselves.

This paper describes the implementation and student learning outcomes of a nationwide professional development program for lower secondary and upper secondary school teachers to integrate computational thinking into the K-12 curriculum. Computational thinking comprises important concepts and skills that all students should develop to take an active role in a global society. However, teaching computational thinking is challenging. There are few teachers with the knowledge and skills to integrate computation into their courses. In this program, the participating teachers implemented a set of lesson plans that included both unplugged activities to scaffold student learning, and 'plugged' activities following a use-modify-create learning progression with the Micro:bit device to practice these skills. The study used a quasi-experimental design to compare students' level of computational thinking between the program participants and a control group. The results suggest a positive effect of the learning activities on student computational thinking knowledge and skills as compared to the control group. This result persists after controlling for school context and student gender. This study provides an explicit approach to implementing these activities in the context of a developing country and assesses their effectiveness in a large-scale study.

This paper presents a study that looked into the structuring of tasks that may foster oral fluency in an intensive eight-week course with 25 young adult and adult learners of English as a foreign language in a format of tutoring sessions for conversation. The action research involved two teachers and a research advisor, coauthors of this paper. Researchers identified two drawbacks: learners claimed that instruction was not helpful for them to use English outside the classroom, and that they had difficulty in retaining information in long-term memory. With surveys, interviews, observations and videos, the research team gathered data on students' progress, goals, performance and beliefs. The pedagogical intervention with "Task-Supported Teaching" (TST) produced these results: a) TST promoted cooperation b) the degree of participation correlated with the students' purpose for learning English, and c) TST raised awareness on the acquisition of speaking.

In the field of applied linguistics, for the past fifteen years, there have been discussions about language assessment literacy (LAL)--the knowledge, skills, and principles related to assessing language ability--(Davies, 2008; Fulcher, 2012). However, the field lacks research on the professional development of language teachers, particularly pre-service language teachers, through training in language assessment. Our paper focuses on the preliminary findings of an action research study whose goal is to identify the impact of a language assessment course for pre-service teachers in a language teaching program in a state university in Colombia. Data collection for the diagnostic stage of the action research cycle used a multiple-choice questionnaire for student needs and wants, an open questionnaire for professors, an interview with an expert, and researchers' journals. Preliminary findings indicate that there is a need to combine theory and practice of language assessment, with an emphasis on current methodologies for language teaching, assessment in bilingual education, and local policies for assessment. The paper highlights recommendations and challenges when designing a language assessment course based on insights from existing literature and includes implications for professional development.

This paper shows the results of a pedagogical experience with a group of pre-service English teachers during their first semester of teaching practicum. The data were collected by means of reflection papers written by them, and then the resulting papers were analyzed under the principles of codification of grounded theory. The results show that pre-service English teachers develop a sense of awareness of the context they work on. Also, the mentor teacher is important in such understanding, because she or he provides theories and personal experiences that contribute to the reflection. Finally, we conclude that pre-service teachers' reflections could contribute to curriculum development, so, it is advisable that language teacher education programs provide the mechanisms to give them a voice.

Master degree programs have rapidly increased in Colombia to the point where they are one of the most favored options for English teachers seeking to bolster their professional development. This survey study characterizes eighty participants, their five master programs, and their perceptions concerning the influence these graduate courses exerted on their teaching. While participants' pedagogical and research work seemed to have benefited the most from their studies, their practices involving language policy and administration were regarded as distant from what they learnt. Findings suggest that innovation, reflection, and collaboration permeated participants' overarching categories of development. Challenges to respondents' integration of their newly acquired education with their teaching included competing ideologies and agendas exhibited by stakeholders in school communities.

This article introduces a special issue of EPAA/AAPE devoted to recent higher education reforms in Latin America. The last two decades have seen much policy development in higher education in the region, examined and discussed by scholars in each country, but dialog with the international literature on higher education reform, or an explicit comparative focus, have been mostly absent from these works. By way of presentation of the papers included in this issue, we first provide an overview of major policy changes in higher education in the Latin American region since the 1990s. We then turn to the six works in this special issue to describe the theories and methods supporting them. Next, we illustrate how general analytic categories can be derived from single or multi country case studies to illuminate themes capable of cutting across the particulars of national contexts, with their unique traditions, policy paths, and politics. Our three common threads are, first, the types of drivers for reform, that is, how policy change originates, either bottom-up from the institutions, or top-down from the government, and various possibilities in between. Second, understanding challenges to institutional autonomy in a continuum of intensity of state intended intervention in higher education. Third, explaining different levels of strain between public and private sectors in higher education based on conditions of competition for economic resources. While the papers in this special issue do not cover all countries, nor all issues on which policy has been crafted in the last two decades across the region, the collection of articles herein account for topics of enduring importance: faculty work in Ecuador, financial aid in Colombia, public policy decentralization in Argentina, quality assurance models in Colombia and Uruguay, the emerge of new institutions and universities in Argentina and Uruguay, and social justice, access, and inclusion in higher education, in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. The articles presented in this special issue provide much insight onto higher education policy in Latin America and, additionally, offer ample opportunity to develop social science knowledge on the basis of strong comparative work.

The current paper reports an experience implementing a small-scale narrow listening scheme (one of the varieties of extensive listening) with intermediate learners of English as a foreign language in a Colombian university. The paper presents (a) how the scheme was designed and implemented, including materials and procedures (the process); (b) how the students performed in the different activities with an emphasis on time spent watching/listening and their perceptions of video difficulty and self-rated comprehension (the product); and (c) how the students felt and viewed the experience (perception). Product and perceptions showed that the pedagogical implementation was positive which leads to a discussion of a number of implications for this context and similar ones.

This paper explores the complex relationship between environmental education and researcher activism from the perspective of transgressive learning. With increasing interest within academia for more radical learning-based transformations for confronting sustainability challenges, come calls for more instrumental warrior stances in methodologies and research fields so as to more aggressively change ingrained unsustainable behaviour at the societal level. At the same time, in an increasingly polarized and unstable world, there is also a desire for more empathic learning approaches so as to build critical thinking and empowerment at the grassroots level through emancipatory learning. Based on case study research of a Colombian network of sustainability initiatives, this paper argues that key capacities of reflection, empathy, and courage are imperative in order for the transgressive researcher to address deep-seated socioecological challenges.

This paper reports a phenomenographic study exploring diverse understandings and experiences of teacher leadership among 12 members of the International Study of Teacher Leadership research team comprised of 20 academics located in 10 countries. Mind mapping and semi-structured, online interviews were used to explore the ways that the participants related with the phenomenon of interest: 'teacher leadership'. Phenomenographic analysis of interview artefacts revealed nine qualitatively different conceptions of teacher leadership in the study's outcome space across three broad domains: A: The school, school community and formal education system; B: The teacher leader's professional self; C: The broader historical, socio-political and global contexts of teacher leadership. In addition to providing a 'touchstone' for the team's ongoing research, these findings serve as an experiential framework for thinking about teacher leadership, potentially encouraging more inclusive, more complete and richer understandings of the phenomenon.

Talking about culture in the field of teaching foreign languages is not a new topic, but talking about interculture and interculturality is a subject that is now gaining a lot of interest in the field of ELT. Especially in the last two decades we have witnessed the growth of publications in this regard. We find all kinds of publications, but we are still having seeing the same fundamental questions that become relevant in these times of change: what we teach, who we teach it to, why we teach it, and how we teach it. These questions have always been relevant for language teachers, but today they have become even more meaningful since we are living in different times, times marked by unexpected political changes, strong economic pressures, and an unreasonable need to homogenize and standardize all the processes of teaching and learning. We must think collectively from new (postmodern) paradigms, empower ourselves, and begin to change our pedagogical practices. The aim of this paper is to share reflections on what foreign language teaching should be and how we should be thinking about culture and interculturality in our classrooms. This is an invitation to think about the need to interculturalize the teaching of the foreign language.

This paper reports the findings of a narrative study with two pre-service English language teachers (PELTs) who have dyslexia. The main objective of the study was to understand how this condition of having dyslexia was present in becoming an English language teacher. The two PELTs participated in a life history interview as part of the data collection. By considering the main objective of the study, the researchers used the information collected to write the narratives and subsequently proceeded to interpret and analyze them. The findings show that dyslexia is as serious as any other disability, and it does generate rejection and lack of understanding on the part of teachers and other PELTs. Furthermore, negative feelings linked to the learning or teaching process are generated in PELTs with dyslexia, which leads them to hide their condition to avoid discrimination most of the time. However, findings also show that once negative feelings were overcome, PELTs turn their problem into an advantage, discovering themselves as more empathetic to those with special needs and making them more resourceful teachers. We conclude that although PELTs can turn their weaknesses into strengths, the role of teacher educators is also fundamental in the processes of identity construction; teacher educators might provide spaces and strategies to minimize the conditions that affect the performance of PELTs, both as language students and as language teachers.

This paper reports a descriptive case study developed in an English language teaching program at a public university in Colombia. The purpose of this study was to disclose what knowledge a group of pre-service teachers had about intercultural communicative competence and how they considered their approach to this competence in the English classes they had planned during their final pedagogical practicum. The instruments used to collect data were documents, interviews, and a survey. The outcomes were meaningful for the participants as well as for the researcher since it was possible to identify that pre-service teachers understand this competence as a visible concept to be approached in the classes, mainly to refer to and learn about other cultures different from the Colombian and Boyacense ones. It was also identified that the intercultural communicative competence was considered, by these pre-service teachers, as the "dressing" to change the taste of the class.

This study collected the perception of medical students about the use of English for teaching through the use of a strategy based in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach at Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira (UTP) Colombia. A descriptive observational quantitative research was conducted in a group of 128 students of medicine who agreed to participate in the strategy called "Strategy for Paper's Bilingual Presentation (SPBP)" in the subjects of Surgical Clinic I and II. Of this group, 98.5% (126) considered learning English important in their training and 86% (110) essential to advance without difficulties in their studies. In addition, there was a 52.3% (67) of students who stated that the University should foster the use of English integrated with contents in specific programs. In reference to the teaching of English at the University, 85.9% (110) of the students considered that it should be integrated into the content of the academic programs. The didactic strategy was positively evaluated by 86.7% (111), and 61% (78) used English exclusively or preferentially. Scenic fear and lack of knowledge of technical language were arguments for the preferential use of Spanish in the session. Among the recommendations made by the students were the extension of the preparation time for the activity, the inclusion of clinical cases, and the selection of the assigned topics with the teacher. The didactic strategy used proved to be very useful and replicable in other semesters and training levels of the Medicine program. It is imperative to design and promote bilingual spaces that allow the use of English as a strategy to integrate contents and language in the teaching of Medicine.