Decolonization as pedagogy: a praxis of ‘becoming’ in ELT

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Decolonizing ELT’ defines pedagogy as expanding beyond the classroom and knowledge concerns to accommodate embodied affective, social, and cultural learning that draws from and transforms environmental and geopolitical spaces. It defines pedagogy as a ‘praxis’, involving the reflexivity of action, reflection, and relearning, thus challenging the condescending view of ‘practice’ as secondary to research, policy, and scholarship. This perspective enhances the political stakes in pedagogy by contesting the micro/macro binary that relegates pedagogic resistance to ineffectual local changes. Reviewing constructs from Southern epistemologies, such as non-duality, relationality, becoming, coexistence, ethical values, and non-representational dispositions, this introduction outlines a decolonial ELT. A decolonial pedagogy focuses on developing the ethical, relational, and critical dispositions that will help students negotiate very diverse and unpredictable communicative contexts for meaningful and inclusive communication, drawing from all the semiotic resources in the environment. Rather than ‘transferable’ norms and rules, it focuses on ‘adaptive’ dispositions that help negotiate unpredictable communicative interactions.