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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.

The current internationalization trends in higher education and educational language policies impel universities to plan their provision of foreign languages. Often, universities are developing language policies, redesigning their foreign language programs and seeking to foster bilingual or multilingual strategies within graduate and undergraduate programs in order to respond to these trends and to students' new needs for a solid education in an increasingly interconnected world. Drawing on Johnson's heuristics of language policy analysis [Johnson, D. C. (2009). Ethnography of language policy. "Language Policy," 8, 139-159], this paper will share how explicit as well as implicit policy is being created by different agents at the largest state-funded higher education institution in the southwestern region of Colombia. The paper will then locate the initiatives for the teaching and learning of English and other foreign languages within the discourses that circulate around English as "lingua franca," "academica" and "economica." It will contend that although the goals for foreign language learning as a requisite for the internationalization of the University are shared by different policy agents, the ways to approach these goals represent different and often conflicting views on micro policy and planning.

This paper examines children's perspectives on rural territories in two Colombian areas affected by armed conflict, exploring intersections of knowledge production, territory, and memory. Using Decolonial Perspectives and Escobar's territory concept, an educational collaborative ethnography was conducted. Territory is conceptualised as a biophysical and epistemic space shaped by community worldview. This paper reflects on how collaboration with children contributes to decolonising representations of conflict-affected rural territories, allowing the recognition of its values and the reconstruction of negative dominant representations. Data collection involved five months of participant observation, engaging children, teachers, parents, grandparents, community leaders, and researchers. Activities included walks, reading circles, workshops, map-making, and family garden visits to construct narratives about the past and present. Analysis revealed situated knowledge production, with territory acquiring semantic and experiential meaning. Peasant children's perspectives challenge homogenising discourses about childhood, war, peace, and rurality, emphasising agency and exploring multiple forms of knowledge.

Purpose: This paper aims to identify how the faculties of a Colombian University have understood the concept of sustainability and the way they have embedded it into their training. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative research was done using documentary and content analysis which allowed researchers to recognize features correlated to sustainability which are needed to promote and act for social equity, ecological care and economic development. Findings: It was found that most faculties at the university do not conceptualize it; ergo, courses are designed neither for promoting sustainability nor sustainable education. Besides this, almost no level of integration was identified among faculties on this topic. Research limitations/implications: Many people agree education for sustainability is a key action to overcome the complex challenges the planet is facing; nevertheless, the prejudice that training to solve sustainability problems is an exclusive task of certain disciplines is common. This misunderstanding reduces the possibilities of pursuing a sustainable future, considering that these issues affect all humankind and that they can only be solved through interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Practical implications: The paper also outlines some actions that Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) can take to consider sustainability issues, and they are as follows--identification of competencies to include in the curricula; recognition of the potential of integrating education for sustainable development (ESD) into the curricula by strengthening the competencies and capacities; strengthening the competencies and capacities of the academic staff through ESD training processes; articulation of research with the curricula in such a way that the results of research processes permeate the curricula. Social implications: This study has some limitations. For instance, regarding the survey, the size of the sample may seem too small, a bigger sample will allow better information for the results. Regarding the case studies, a greater diversity of programs could have provided a wider range of results. Despite these limitations, for UPB, the study shows a snapshot of the literature review and the articulation of sustainable development and climate change education (CCE) in all programs the university has. The implications of this paper and research are the following. First, it reiterates the importance of having within the same institution a common language to talk about sustainability. Second, it recognizes the competencies and skills that should considered when implementing ESD and CCE in curricula. Originality/value: This idea corresponds to a lack of debate about what the term signifies and means. It is believed that, as sustainability has been highly researched in the past two decades, it is a cross-cutting element in any faculty proposal; however, due to the complexity of the term, it is understood differently by each member of the same academic community, affecting their ability to design a systemic and systematic curriculum that enables to educate for sustainable goals.

Purpose: This paper aims to find the incidence of university sustainability, as sustainability practices, in university performance at private universities. Design/methodology/approach: Quantitative research using structural equation modelling. Data collection and analysis followed sustainability and performance scales from previous research. The scales were validated by surveying students, teachers and administrative staff of five private universities in Medellin, Colombia. The responses (i.e. 5,344 useful answers) were collected between April 2019 and December 2020 and analysed using the Smart partial least square (PLS) software and the PLS calculation methodology. Findings: The results confirmed the reliability and validity of the sustainability and performance university measurement models and validated the dimensions proposed to determine sustainability and performance holistically in private universities. The results confirmed that universities implementing sustainability holistically in their system positively impact their performance as higher education institutions. The university sustainability is forecasting the University Performance in about 60% of the universities analysed, with a considerable contribution from sustainability in outreach and strategic management. Research limitations/implications: This study was cross-sectional and empirically validated the model of sustainability and performance at five private universities in a single period and territory. A broader validation from longitudinal studies considering other universities in Colombia and Latin America is suggested to understand local and regional trends better. Practical implications: Results provided a model for better understanding the incidence of sustainability in performance holistically at private universities in developing countries such as Colombia. In addition, the proposed dimensions and model could help regional decision-making on higher education. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts relating a structural equation model and inter-university research on the incidence of sustainability in private university performance. This work contributes to a local consensus on sustainability and performance models at private universities. Furthermore, from this research emerged a joint policy framework for incorporating sustainability holistically and regionally as an effective strategy for universities and their commitment to sustainable development.

Higher education dropout rates in Colombia are the second highest in Latin-America. Almost 50% of students who start an undergraduate program in Colombia drop out. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review that surveys publications related to university dropout in Colombia between 2000 and 2021. This review followed the Kitchenham guidelines. Databases such as Publindex, Scielo, Wos, Scopus were reviewed. To create cause and solution taxonomies, we identified causes and/or solutions reported by researchers in each revised article. Each cause/solution was then grouped using the university dropout taxonomy proposed by Castaño. 107 papers, 66 different causes, and 62 proposed solutions related to university dropout were reported in the papers analyzed. The results suggest there is an increasing interest in understanding: (1) the undergraduate dropout phenomenon, and (2) the use of data science to solve the problem. These studies also evince a lack of integration between stakeholders for developing crosscutting solutions. The information related to some of the reported solutions is not sufficiently developed to enable a better classification, or they lacked information on implementation, results, or impact. This makes it difficult to make progress with designing new strategies based on previous studies.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the analysis performed on the way in which grammar is presented in an English coursebook created by the Ministry of Education of Colombia (MEN) to provide contextualized material to learners in public school settings. The evaluation criteria to evaluate the grammar were developed considering elements from different frameworks. The focus of the evaluation was selected based on the role that grammar plays in the teaching and learning process in the given context. The results show that the coursebook has a noticing approach to grammar and forms-focused discovery activities are assigned to the students, in terms of the linguistic forms that are presented, it was found that the students have a lower level considering the learning outcomes that learners are intended to achieve as part of national language policies.

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.

Researchers and theorists in the management and educational leadership fields have debated the importance of mission statements. This study investigated this issue within the context of American schools that are members of the Tri-Association (Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and the Caribbean). The results showed that about the same percentage of principals felt that mission statements differed and did not differ significantly from one school to the next. However, a considerable number of principals reported using their mission statements in many of the managerial and leadership tasks of their daily jobs.

This article focuses on civic education and the constitution of subjects within a complex landscape of peace and war making in Colombia. Using a genealogical approach to study the manufacturing of citizens, and drawing on a document analysis of policies, curricular guidelines, and teaching resources, this paper evidences an increasing attention to students' skills, conducts, and interpersonal relations, rather than structural inequality and injustice. Through the examination of the "integral citizen," I argue that the development of students as skillful civic subjects has become central to the aspiration of building and sustaining peace and democracy. Such citizens are described as individually embodying the virtues and skills of problem-solving, conflict-management, autonomy, and self-regulation of emotions. This research adds to our understanding of the construction of the ideal citizen in conflict-affected settings, and how education policy intersects with larger efforts for meaningful and sustained change.

This article draws on existing research, including publicly available data, to identify changes in Colombian HE which have led to its progressive massification and neoliberalisation. These include the introduction of standardised testing; endogenous and exogenous privatisation (Ball and Youdell, 2007); the expansion of the country's non-income contingent loan scheme; cost-cutting and cost-sharing; and the Government of Colombia's prioritisation of technical and technological (T&T) education. The article then explores some implications of this neoliberal massification of Colombian HE for the achievement of the UN's sustainable development goals in general and more specifically Sustainable Development Target 4.3, which is the only target to explicitly reference inclusion in HE. The analysis suggests that although some neoliberal policies may have broadened access to HE for some Colombians from low-income and rural backgrounds, they are not consistent with a sustainable development agenda. Reasons for this include the large number of student loans recipients who are in arrears; the use of public money to finance students' courses in private higher education institutions (HEIs); the prioritisation of T&T education which leaves limited room in Colombian HE for the 'full development of the human personality' (OHCHR, 2022: article 13.1); and the country's overreliance on non-renewable resources for its economic prosperity. The paper ends with some proposals for disrupting the ongoing neoliberalisation of higher learning in Colombia such as the replacement of the country's non-contingent loan scheme with an income-contingent model; improving the efficiency and accountability of state-run T&T programmes; the granting of student loans only for courses at accredited HEIs; the provision of loans to accredited private HEIs only in cases where no public alternative exists; the abolition of tuition fees in public HEIs for the poorest students; the introduction of stipend-supported internships; and the promotion of Civic Education.

Low-income students' preferences for higher education might depend on the uncertainty of financial aid. Using a time discontinuity design, this paper exploits the unanticipated cancellation of a nationwide Colombian merit and need-based scholarship, called "Ser Pilo Paga," to study its consequences on students' preferences for higher education. Preferences are measured using a discrete choice experiment administrated to 949 low-income high school students in 2018. The findings reveal that the scholarship's cancellation reduced higher education ambitions among low-income students due to the decreased interest in both financial aid and high-quality universities. The effects were particularly concentrated on income-eligible individuals who were more likely to obtain the scholarship, as their choices for financial aid and high-quality institutions declined by 15 to 50% of the baseline preference.

This study assesses the technical efficiency of higher education institutions in terms of labor market outcomes for recent graduates, employing a comparative analysis of three distinct methodological approaches. Using a sample of recent graduates of Colombian universities who earned their degrees between 2007 and 2011, we estimated the institutions' efficiency scores through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) model, and Cazals et al. (Journal of Econometrics 106:1-25, 2002) order-m estimator. Our results reveal that the estimation technique affects the results when super-efficient decision-making units are present, with the order-m technique demonstrating superiority over DEA and FDH. However, in the absence of super-efficient institutions, the efficiency rankings obtained from all three methodologies exhibit consistency. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of methodological selection in evaluating the labor market performance efficiency of higher education institutions when recent graduates' perspective is adopted.

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.

This paper explores the complex relationship between academic researchers working in the area of 'International Development and Education' and foreign intervention in the Global South. I make the case for stronger definitional links between 'colonialism' and 'development'. In this, I pay attention to how 'soft' and 'hard' sides of colonial strategy operated symbiotically and evidence parallel occurrences in Post 9/11 Western-led military/development activities. Drawing on 'education' examples, I reflect on our fields entanglements in the messy politics, partnerships and funding regimes of our unequal global order and the ways that we, as both researchers and practitioners, become 'implicated'. I also explore sites of counter-hegemony that span similar timeframes, including my engagements with popular education in social movements in Colombia, and make the case for a radical educational internationalism.

With the purpose of ending wars, international organizations and governments promote reintegration projects that seek to transform combatants affiliated with illegal armed groups into citizens through education. The assumption behind these efforts is that through education, ex-combatants will become economically independent, overcome marginalization, experience personal transformations, and integrate into communities. This paper questions this optimistic narrative of education by highlighting the differentiated meanings of education for ex-combatants reintegrating in urban Colombia. Listening to the voices of ex-combatants who have engaged in technical and vocational education programs, this paper compares policy narratives with ex-combatants' narratives regarding the role of education in the reintegration process. The analysis reveals how for ex-combatants, education is a complex social practice that redistributes resources and contributes to positive psychosocial and empowerment transformations. At the same time, it is a process of insertion into an individualistic system and adaptation to unequal participation within the country's socio-economic hierarchy.

Previous research on bilingual mathematics education has proposed that as children "language mathematics" they use multiple sources of meaning. In this paper, we focus on lexical inventions--bilingual children's made up words that are not formally defined or used but follow the phonology and morphology of a language--as a source of meaning. Consistent with tenets from translanguaging, we recognize lexical inventions as a creative language practice defying idealized language norms. A raciolinguistic theoretical perspective informs our interpretation of children, teachers, and researchers as listening subjects. The purpose of this paper is to explore how mathematical lexical inventions can prompt a translanguaging space where children, teachers, and researchers resist listening subject positions that predispose them to listen for predetermined language practices. Drawing on two lesson transcripts, one from a fourth-grade English-immersion classroom in Colombia and one from a third-grade Spanish-immersion classroom in the United States, we used moment analysis in translanguaging spaces to identify spontaneous and critical moments where lexical inventions prompted mathematical explorations. We argue for adopting listening subject positions as learners of transgressive language practices that are part of interactions between children and mathematics.

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.

This paper explores the external developmental assets and how they manifest in specific youth programs from Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. An evaluation process was created through a qualitative phenomenological with the youth programs' leadership. To triangulate the data, a survey was developed and piloted with a small sample from three youth programs, one from Honduras, one from Guatemala and one from Colombia, exploring how the staff evaluate items related with the external developmental assets. This survey was created in a way that the results display in the form of a Spiderweb and in a circular way that evokes and relates with the Circle of Courage. The Spiderweb served to illustrate and discuss with the program staff. Eight interviews were developed with the youth program's staff from the three programs and analyzed through a phenomenological approach. External assets showed their theoretical validity in these three specific contexts, according to the evaluation survey and the semi structured interviews. Symbols, meanings and historical elements were identified as significant within these programs to understanding the youth's development, context and communities. The Circle of Courage and the External Developmental Assets, as theoretical constructs, offer possibilities of improving evaluation processes in community work with youth, as long as the frameworks continue to be integrated into a synergistic intentional approach with a cross-cultural perspective.

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.