The journey of a critical-oriented ELT curriculum and the identities of teacher educators: a collaborative and analytic autoethnography

ABSTRACT

The field of second language teacher education has recently focused on issues of social justice through different interventions in language teaching preparation programmes and the analysis of the identity formation of pre-service and in-service language teachers. However, little is known about the identities of teacher educators in second language teacher education programmes. This article, adopting a social justice and critical perspective, retrospectively focuses on the 28-year journey of an English language teaching preparation BA Programme and the identity of three teacher educators (the co-authors of this article) who have been part of the programme. Zooming in on the views and identity negotiation of these three teacher educators through autoethnographic vignettes, this study analyzes the original design and the two consecutive renewals/reforms of the aforementioned BA programme at a public university located in Oaxaca, the most culturally and linguistically diverse state in Mexico (Author 1). Pursuant to the article’s autoethnographic methodology, by which the researcher or author explores her/his own personal experience as having relevance to the community at large, the purpose of this article is to explore the impact of ELT curricular reforms on the identity of the three teacher educators and the connection between identity and issues of social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Autoethnography
• social justice
• identity
• teacher educators
• language teaching preparation programmes
• Oaxaca

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Code: AV = autoethnographic vignette; 1 = as related to Version 1 of the BA programme; i = first author. All the other codes can be similarly deciphered. For instance, AV-2-iii (below) refers to the autoethnographic vignette related to V2 of the programme and written by the third author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mario E. López-Gopar

Mario López-Gopar (Ph. D., OISE/University of Toronto) is professor in the Faculty of Languages of Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO), Mexico. Mario’s main research interest is intercultural and multilingual education of Indigenous peoples in Mexico. He has received over 15 academic awards. His latest books are Decolonizing Primary English Language Teaching (Multilingual Matters, 2016) and International Perspectives on Critical Pedagogies in ELT (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).

William M. Sughrua

William M. Sughrua holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Kent. He is professor in the Faculty of Languages of Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO), Mexico. His research interests involve critical pedagogy, qualitative research, epistemology, and autoethnography. His numerous publications include the book Heightened Performative Autoethnography: Resisting Oppressive Spaces within Paradigms (Peter Lang, 2016).

Vilma Huerta Cordova

Vilma Huerta Cordova is a professor in the Faculty of Languages of Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO), México. She has a Ph. D. in Critical Language Studies, UABJO. Her research focuses on collaborative learning, peer tutoring, and interpersonal relationships in the classroom to promote equity in education. She has published in national and international journals on collaborative learning and peer tutoring.