English language teaching in public primary schools in Mexico: the practices and challenges of implementing a national language education program

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, many state governments in Mexico have initiated local programs to introduce English at the primary school level. In 2009, the Mexican Ministry of Education formalized the Programa Nacional de Inglés en Educación Básica (PNIEB) as part of the national curriculum, based on the argument that increasing the number of English speakers in Mexico is necessary for the country to be globally competitive and to follow the trend in other developing economies of augmenting English instruction in public education. This paper focuses on the implementation of PNIEB and the state programs that preceded it. The authors document the practices and challenges associated with the program based on data collected from interviews with the main stakeholders involved (students and parents, teachers, school principals, and program coordinators) and from classroom observations. The total data-set consisted of over 200 interviews and classroom observations spread over several years from 2008 to 2012. Several challenges are described, including the development of materials, the role of English in relation to other subject areas, and the training of teachers who often speak English but have uneven formal preparation. The status of the teachers, both as second-class citizens within the schools and the instability and irregularities with their contracts, was identified as the most significant challenge to the successful implementation of the programs.

Keywords:

• PNIEB
• English as an additional language
• primary schools
• public schools
• Mexico
• multisite qualitative policy research
• educational theory of change

Notes

1. The PNIEB is organized as an “additional language” program, where English is taught as a (foreign language) subject. This is distinguished from bilingual (e.g. many private schools in Mexico) or immersion approaches (e.g. in Puerto Rico or India), where English is used as the medium of instruction to teach other subjects.

2. Jorge Aguilar, Margarita Camacho Soto, Roxana Cano Vara, Ismael Ignacio Chuc Piña, Sofía Cota, Lewis Crawford Troy, Rosalina Domínguez Ángel, Katherine Durán, Marisela Dzul, Rosa Maria Funderbunk, Mizael Garduño Buenfil, José Manuel González, Saúl González Medina, Verónica González Quintos, Dení Granados Méndez, Patricia María Guillén Cuamatzi, Maria Magdalena Hernandez Alarcón, Hilda Hidalgo Avilés, Elizabeth Juarez, Martina Elizabeth Leal Apáez, Martha Lengeling, Carmen Marquez, Erika Martínez Lugo, Cecilia Araceli Medrano, Nadia Mejía, Irasema Mora, Luz Maria Muñoz de Cote, Nora Pamplón, Bertha Paredes, Yenny Peralta Robles, Bárbara Ramos, Iraís Ramírez Balderas, José Luis Ramírez, Edgar Ramírez, Areli Reyes Durán, Raúl Samaniego, David Guadalupe Toledo, Laura Vallejo Hernández, Liliana Villalobos, Cecilia Villarreal, Claudia Wall Medrano, Luis Ángel Carro Pérez, María Natividad Fernández Morfín, Elizabeth Flores, Teresa Gutiérrez Zarate, María de los Ángeles Juárez Acosta, Andrea Martín, Juvenal Martínez Mendoza, Jaime Torres, Susana Vanegas, Nancy Violeta Yllescas Bastida.

3. Baja California, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Tlaxcala.

4. Aguascalientes, Chiapas, Coahuila, DF, EdoMex, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Tlaxcala.

5. For the sake of space only the English translations are included here. The data collection and analysis were completed in Spanish, and the excerpts were translated into English and then double checked by the co-authors (who are all bilingual, and native Spanish and English speakers, respectively).

6. Currencies are conceptualized by Srivastava (2006) as “a way to mediate researcher positionality and achieve temporary shared positionalities with research participants” (p. 210).

7. In this section we will focus exclusively on the PNIEB, because most state programs that existed before the national program did not have a formal curriculum. Commercial textbooks were used to guide teaching.

8. These ámbitos or environments are defined for all content areas. “Ludic” refers to play, which for English includes the use of songs, rhymes, tongue twisters, and the like.

9. It is worth noting that in southern states such as Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chiapas, and the Yucatan peninsula, a high percentage of students in public schools are indigenous and many are speakers of one or more of Mexico’s 62 indigenous languages. Historically, the educational infrastructure in these areas has been neglected, and they have been subject to a policy of “castellinazation”: the eradication of indigenous languages and the imposition of Spanish. Hence, the PNIEB’s inclusion of English in the national curriculum is also an important step in terms of educational equity in indigenous areas.