Pedagogy is a critical category in education. One can find the following notions: place-based pedagogy (Calderon, 2014); queer pedagogies (Sumara & Davis, 1999); inquiry-based pedagogies (Huber, 2006); multiliteracies pedagogies (Reyes-Torres & Portalés-Raga, 2020); and community-based pedagogies (Sharkey et al., 2016), among many more. One can also find scholars who write about andragogy and pedagogy, the former being “the methods and approaches used in adult education and [that] is directed towards self-actualization, gaining experience, and problem-solving” and the latter, “an education method in which the learner is dependent on the teacher for guidance, evaluation, and acquisition of knowledge” (Murray, 2018, p. 32).

Although pedagogy is an essential category in English language teaching (ELT), its understanding in this field is closer to Murray’s (2018) conceptualization. For instance, English language pedagogy (ELP) has functioned as an umbrella term to plan how teachers should utilize knowledge in teaching. There have been linguistic and social aspects of the English language that have been incorporated to the notion of pedagogy through theories, methods, approaches, techniques, and strategies (see Richards, 2015). Moreover, the English language’s global importance as a communication tool for the knowledge economy and knowledge-skills (Robertson, 2005) has maintained what Flores and Rosa (2015) refer to as imperial projects and economies evidencing how English is planned to be taught. As a result:

Similarly, identity is a central category in ELT. For instance, several studies have been conducted to document English language teachers’ identities (ELTIs) and how they are constructed (see Salinas & Ayala, 2018; Costa, 2019). However, identity continues to be seen and researched within what Mignolo (2009) labels as the colonial difference. For Mignolo:

In this respect, the ELT field has witnessed how colonial constructions of ELTIs have been combined with factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, class, language, and others (Pennycook, 1998). However, these dynamics have also been a piece of the puzzle in the globalizing agenda as a neoliberal resource planned and executed by those who have maintained instruction on teaching methodologies (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) as a unique mechanism to exist and know in the field.

Therefore, this manuscript seeks to locate the multiple intersections between ELP and ELTIs through personal experience and, as well, examine dominant discourses that can construct them. Additionally, I aspire to reclaim and relocate ELP and its “ethical goal that goes into the construction of intersubjective meanings” (Granados-Beltrán, 2018, p. 175).

The rationale underpinning this theoretical section draws on Zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies for education: counter storytelling, healing, and reclaiming. I choose to resort to the decolonial strategies Zabala constructs as “a particular kind of border thinking, a reenvisioning from the margins” (p. 2) to rethink what we understand as ELP and identity. With this framework, I aim to name hegemonic notions of ELP to position my own “geo-political and body-political location” (Grosfoguel, 2011, p. 5) as a teacher-researcher. Moreover, I attempt to explain how ELP intersects with ELTIs in the ELT field. Figure 1 illustrates how each element in it interlocks in a dynamic rather than linear relationship; “each is a dimension of the other” (Zabala, 2016, p. 2).

Figure 1 /

This study adopts a narrative research methodology, that is, narrative inquiry. Regarding this methodology, it is “an umbrella term for a mosaic of research efforts, with diverse theoretical musings, methods, empirical groundings, and/or significance all revolving around an interest in narrative” (Smith, 2007, p. 392). This means that narrative inquiry helps intersectional narratives to be seen from Andrey’s² conversations to dismantle colonialist remnants in ELP and break with the colonial genealogy in research (Patel, 2016). Consequently, as “the narrative is not exclusive to any scientific tradition, nor to its paradigmatic foundation” (Yedaide et al., 2015, p. 30), a narrative approach to research commits only to the particular location within the global structures (Anzaldúa, 2009) of those who employ it. In that line of argument, I aim to merge intersectional narratives with narrative research as intersectionality commits to “social justice goals, [by] granting epistemic and authoritative privilege to the stories, definitions and perspectives of marginalized persons” (Chadwick, 2017, p. 9) who, like Andrey, have not only suffered “the construction and imposition of terminology [that] reinforce[s] and instill[s] inferiority complex in the minds of the subaltern” (Kumaravadivelu, 2016, p. 78), but who have also been tied to a single type of existence (Castañeda-Peña, 2018); an ontological form of colonization and subalternization that is still reproduced through discourses of professional identity (Block, 2006).

Therefore, four conversations, mostly held in English, were transcribed and converted into hermeneutic units within a twelve-month period to be further analyzed using Atlas.Ti, a specialized qualitative data analysis software that helped me locate analytical categories and their relationships within the conversations I sustained with Andrey. Although using Atlas.Ti may not fit into the lens of the decolonial attempt this study adopts, I think of this as an opportunity to find a methodological and epistemological rupture in which it “becomes an ethical and political bet of those [like me] who want to rethink the forms [of] traditional research” (Arroyo-Ortega & Alvarado-Salgado, 2016, p. 138), not by denying the use of analytical tools but to imbue them with a different epistemological interest to enunciate otherwise. This is why the analysis of each conversation included Zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies as a path to understanding how ELP and ELTIs intersect. This process as a whole, far from looking for methodological accountability, intended to work as an angle of analysis to the meanings attributed to the experiences here co-constructed and, in so doing, locate intersectionality in ELP.

I invited Andrey, an English language teacher and teacher educator who works for a public university in Bogotá, Colombia, to talk about his beliefs and practices about ELP and ELTIs as with him I found a shared interest in conversing about “practices, knowledge, and feelings” (Ortiz-Ocaña & Arias-López, 2019, p. 15) within the ELT field. Although his teaching experience in varied educational contexts was pivotal in locating the multiple intersections between ELP and ELTIs, his participation in this study was also influenced by his pedagogical experience with different teacher education programs, in which not only has he aimed to educate future English language teachers, but has also tried to challenge imported discourses and models of teaching that, for many years, have influenced Colombian teachers themselves (Muñoz-Giraldo et al., 2002). Therefore, it is a must saying that his voice and experience intersect with my own locus of enunciation as an ELT researcher concerned about teacher education. This concern situates this study within a personal attempt to break the hegemonic/colonial chains that still tie ELTIs and ELP in teacher education programs. The aforesaid is fundamental as Andrey and I try “to change the terms and not just the content of the conversation” (Mignolo, 2010, p. 313) when it comes to the construction of these terms in the field.

Findings begin from the intersectional narratives framework presented in Figure 1. Based on Zabala’s (2016) decolonial strategies for education, I permanently made connections with the literature that I had consulted and that I continued consulting during the analysis stage.

First, I took into consideration that for Zabala (2016), counter storytelling is about engaging in dialogue and reflection, a process whereby people name their social worlds as “a deliberate attempt to develop a language of critique that enables colonized peoples to understand their present situation as encircled by colonialism and its structural arrangements and cultural logics” (p. 3). In this respect, the conversations here reported aimed to trigger remembering within/against coloniality.

Second, I also considered that for Zabala (2016), to trigger a decolonial methodology in education, it is also relevant, while naming and remembering, to promote healing. This is precisely my attempt in this study: to “challenge dominant, Western notions of education as a cognitive activity” (p. 4) in order to recover from any damage English language teachers have been subjected to, either ontologically or epistemologically, as colonized people. As a matter of fact, such an attempt assumes that conversations between Andrey and I were a bridge to (re)connect to ELP and its ethical purpose. Third, I bore in mind Zabala’s notion of reclaiming, as this strategy involves “recovering who people are, their practices, and their relation to place (land, cosmos)” (p. 5). Consequently, as this study intends to locate the multiple intersections between ELP and ELTIs, I thought of intersectionality among and within the strategies above to delve into the diverse realities behind individual stories (Chadwick, 2017).

As the above grounded my understanding of Andrey’s conversation, I generated different categories and subcategories that I aim to discuss in this section. Nonetheless, these categories did not follow the qualitative logic applied to preconceived categories or codes to the data (Charmaz, 2006); instead, they emerged from the inspection of conversations as intersectional narrative accounts in which there was co-construction of data between those conversing. In doing so, I acknowledged that my positioning was not intended to elicit information from Andrey, but instead, I was trying to configure his and my subjectivity by engaging in an alterative conversation (Ortiz-Ocaña & Arias-López, 2019) in which other knowledges are created. As such, starting from Figure 2, I argue that this intersectional approach proposes conversations from the interaction pertaining to the life experience here reported.

Figure 2

I will now elaborate on some of the categories (see Figure 2) that emerged in the study. These categories will serve to understand ELP and identities, both Otherwise, from an intersectional perspective. Therefore, I begin from the assumption that these categories, although differentially experienced, portray experiences that are fluid and mutually constituted.

In this paper, I have stated that ELP is the result of a colonial narrative over teaching. Consequently, although intersectionality has been mainly used to foster theorization of the intersection of multiple inequalities in gender theory (Walby et al., 2012), I believe it can not only assist me in representing other positions, including those who do not exclusively experience an evident marginalization (Bauer, 2014), but it can also become “a tool for capturing actors’ socially-constituted everyday subjective meanings in the context of unequal structural positioning of social categories” (Atewologun & Mahalingam, 2018, p. 150) that, both epistemologically and ontologically, have been present in the ELT field.

As intersectionality modifies how a research problem is conceptualized, investigated, and even how findings are used to advance social justice (Hankivsky, 2012), I believe it is then necessary to say that I first engaged in reflexivity as a means to examine how research processes and knowledge production in this study could reflect my locus of enunciation (Grosfoguel, 2011). With this, I refer to my preconceptions, values, social positions, and interests (Jootun et al., 2009) as a teacher-researcher. Then, I would like to begin by situating Andrey and myself within multiple and shifting dynamics of oppression that are inherent in intersectionality (see Figure 1). This attempt is twofold. First, I mean to “contend already existing discourses within the educational field which operate inhibiting the emergence of other identities through the colonial mechanisms rooted in global capitalism” (Ubaque-Casallas & Castañeda-Peña, 2020, p. 26); but I also attempt to provide a different glance towards ELP and its existing paradigm in ELT.

In the Colombian ELT, there are still colonial roots that repress other ways of being and doing. Although “the methods used to teach the language were derived from Western culture and systems of knowledge” (Rodrigues et al., 2019, p. 5), English language teachers are transgressing this hegemonic heritage through ELP. Therefore, the conclusions I am drawing from my conversation with Andrey intend to open space to continue reflecting upon the importance of reclaiming ELP in ELT as it may contribute to the “restoring of agency to professionals in the periphery communities” (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 540).

First, ELP is about transformation. Pedagogy is never static, nor is it tied to colonial notions about teaching. As such, ELP is embodied, and not only is an extension of ELTIs, but it is also a mechanism to reclaim agency. In this respect, this echoes Walsh (2013), who claimed that it should be understood as “an essential methodology within and for social, political, ontological, and epistemic struggles for liberation” (p. 29). Therefore, what emerged from my conversation with Andrey is that ELP co-exists with colonial views of pedagogy. However, in such co-existence, teachers’ agency challenges decolonial approaches to teaching as ELP reclaims its purpose in liberating practices and individuals by handing over to them different ways of being and doing in the ELT field.

Second, ELP is the result of English language teachers’ theory of language teaching. English language teachers are invited to think about their conceptions of language and critique what its purpose might be in teaching as it has been a source of marginalization in ELT. Then, this study invites English language teachers to “critique issues of coloniality and inequality affecting not only their educational contexts, but also their lives as subjects” (Granados-Beltrán, 2016, p. 184) since language has been limited to its instrumental application and, as a result, has been stripped of its personal, emotional, and even social dimension. Therefore, although English language teachers have been classified in three domains: as workers, as instructors, and as learners (González et al., 2002), they also possess an agentic dimension that builds them as human beings that engage in teaching and learning through their understanding of language in their teaching practices.

Third, ELP is context related and not dependent. If ELT has kept dominance over methods and methodologies, ELP is a decolonial act as it transgresses hegemonic epistemological, ontological, and methodological legacies. As my conversation with Andrey revealed, teachers’ agency is determinant in co-existing with the top-down approaches and discourses in education. Although those reading this paper may consider a decolonial option is not about co-existing but resisting, I hold the view that in ELT, we cannot ignore that English language teachers must work within institutional discourses about teaching and, as such, any bottom-up approach to dismantle the hegemonic chain must begin from within.

Lastly, discourses about ELP and ELTIs have maintained the colonial architecture in ELT. Although these discourses construct pedagogy as a colonial political praxis (Madge et al., 2009) and identity as a monolithic disciplinary-based category, a final conclusion drawn in this study suggests that Andrey’s critical stance echoes other teachers in the field (see, Castañeda-Londoño, 2019; Granados-Beltrán, 2016; Ubaque-Casallas & Castañeda-Peña, 2020). They all seem to agree on ELP as a path for teachers to configure “horizons of theorizing, thinking, doing, being, feeling, looking and listening-individually and collectively-towards the decolonial” (Walsh, 2013, p. 67); a path only possible if English language teachers choose to transgress the colonial legacy.