EFL policy implementation in public schools - U. Distrital

EFL POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A LOOK AT

IN-SERVICE TEACHERS’CHALLENGES AND

PERCEPTIONSXXI SYMPOSIUM ON RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS &

III INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERACIES AND DISCOURSE STUDIESNOVEMBER 5 & 6, 2015

YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

CONTENTS

Introduction Language policy: Histoy, EFL and national EFL programs

Methodology : paradigm, approach, design, questions, objectives, setting, participants, data collection, data analysis.

Findings: Tensions and challenges. Discussion Conclusion


INTRODUCTION

Language policy (LP) can be understood as a systematic, rational effort at the societal level to modify the linguistic environment with a view to increasing aggregate welfare (Grin, 2003, p. 30).

Traditionally, it has been studied at the macro level as a large-scale, top-down process that encompasses aspects such as status, corpus, acquisition, and prestige planning.

However, over the last decade, the study of LP has emphasized its ecological context, which has led to an increasing awareness that it is carried out not simply by governments but mainly by groups and individuals at different levels (Baldauf, 2006).

As a result of this new emphasis, different authors have maintained that language policy at the local or micro level is a fundamental part of the overall language policy process and it merits attention in its own right.


1. LANGUAGE POLICYLanguage policy (statements of intent) and planning (implementation) is defined as a set of actions and processes, often large scale and national, usually undertaken by governments with the purpose of influencing, if not changing, ways of speaking or literacy practices within a society (Baldauf, 2004).

Baldauf proposed a framework that adopts a goal-orientation to the four activity types (i.e., status planning, corpus planning, language-in-education planning, and prestige planning) typically used to define the discipline and examines these across policy and cultivation planning. He suggests that awareness of such goals may be overt (explicit, planned) or covert (implicit, unplanned), and may occur at several different levels (macro, meso, and micro).


1. LANGUAGE POLICY (Cassels & Ricento, 2013)

• Desires for unification of a region or a nation and for modernization of norms and grammatical systems.

• Languages were abstracted from their sociohistorical and ecological contexts.Early language planning scholarship

(60´s)

• Language policy as activities that move upwards as well as downwards (macro and micro levels)

•Focus on the sociopolitical impact and/or ideological orientations of language policies.Expanding frameworks and

conceptualizations (70’s and 80’s)

• Language policies are mechanisms of power.• They sustain various forms of social inequality, by promoting the interests of dominant social groups.

Critical language policy (90’s)

The emergence of theethnography of language policy (21st

century)


• Examining the agents, contexts, and processes across multiple layers of what Ricento and Hornberger (1996) metaphorically referred to as the language policy onion.

• A balance between policy power and interpretative agency.

1.1. LANGUAGE POLICY AND EFL

When talking about language policy and EFL teachers, Ricento and Hornberger (1996) pointed out that this kind of policy may appear quite theoretical and far removed from the lives of many English language teaching practitioners.

External politics has traditionally influenced which language or which variety of that language learners will acquire, and what its function will be in their future life. Such traditional approach to language policy regards this process as one already decided before the EFL professional enters the classroom.

To them, this is unfortunate since EFL professionals are involved in the processes of language planning and making. They claim that educational and social change in general and language policy in particular need to begin with the grass roots (educators, parents, students, and communities), as they are the ones in charge of mobilizing innovation in schools and in classes.


1.3. LANGUAGE POLICY AND NATIONAL EFL PROGRAMS IN COLOMBIA

The adequacy of the country's conditions for bilingualism: Few classroom hours dedicated to the teaching of English, a shortage of materials and qualified teachers and few opportunities to use authentic English communication (Cardenas, 2006). The difficulties experienced by this project: Not simply a lack of interest or language level of Colombian teachers, but a need to improve the conditions in which teaching and learning occur in Colombia (Sánchez & Obando, 2008).Little inclusion and large exclusion: Opportunities for some groups and individuals, but inequality and social stratification based on standardization and instrumentalization (Usma, 2009).Tension between language policy, curriculum guidelines and actual conditions in the schools: A lack of macro and micro articulation to assume bilingual learning processes as a meaningful interplay between L1 and L2 (Fandiño, 2014).YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE

UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

2. METHODOLOGY: PARADIGM, APPROACH, AND DESIGN


BASIC QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN In conducting a basic qualitative study, you seek to discover and understand a

phenomenon, a process, the perspectives and worldviews of the people involved, or a combination of these (Merriam, 2002, p. 6).

QUALITATIVE APPROACHAn approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to

a social or human problem (Creswell, 2014, p. 4).

INTERPRETIVIST/CONSTRUCTIVIST PARADIGM Interpretivist/constructivist approaches to research have the intention of understanding

"the world of human experience" (Cohen & Manion, 1994, p.36), suggesting that "reality is socially constructed" (Mertens, 2005, p.12).

2.1. METHODOLOGY: QUESTIONS, OBJECTIVES, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

• How do EFL in-service teachers perceive national EFL programs in public schools in Bogotá?

Research question

• Analyze the perceptions EFL in-service teachers have about national EFL programs.

Research objectives • Two public schools

south of Bogotá.• Colegio Cafam Santa Lucía and Colegio Mercedes Nariño.

• 2nd or 3rd social strata.

• 20 EFL in-service teachers.

• 3 -5 years experience in public sector.

• Most with specializations in EFL methodology and a few with master’s degrees in education.

Research setting and participants


2.1. METHODOLOGY: DATA ANALYSIS (Chambliss & Schutt, 2012)

YAMITH JOSÉ FANDIÑO PARRA – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

Documentation

Conceptualization, coding and

categorizingExamining

relationshipts and displaying data Corraboratin

g and legitimazing

Reporting

3. FINDINGS


Instruments

Themes Tensions Challenges

Documents

SurveysFocus

groups

Language planning and

policy

Top-down vs. Bottom-up

From policy implementers to

policy makers

Transmissionist vs. Transformative

From curriculum recipients to

curriculum decision makers

Curriculum

School realityAuthoritarian vs.

DemocraticFrom officials / employees to

partners / agents

3. FINDINGS


4. DISCUSSION

EFL in-service teachers as decision makers (Villareal, 2005)Decision making is about making informed choices for solutions to classroom problems and issues. It is about feeling capable to make these decisions. It is about teachers given a decision-making opportunity and getting the organizational support to successfully implement these choices.Teachers’ engagement in decision making can be defined at two levels: classroom level for individual judgments and school level for collective judgments. Their involvement requires the development of both collective and individual decision-making skills. Teachers can demonstrate appropriate application of decision making when they are given space and time to:- follow the steps of making a good decision, - support decisions with research-based knowledge or experience, and - demonstrate assessment of alternative actions and a decision’s possible impact.


4. DISCUSSION

Understanding EFL in-service teachers as decision makers requires Colombia’s government to recognize policy as a sociocultural process that transcends official or legally authorized designations. Instead, policy should be understood as a process of human interaction, negotiation, and resistance, what Levinson, Sutton and Winstead (2009) call appropriation.

Appropriation refers to “the ways that creative agents interpret and take in elements of policy, thereby incorporating these discursive resources into their own schemes of interest, motivation, and action” (Levinson et al., 2009, p. 779).

Finally, the appropriation of language policy by EFL in-service teachers encourages one to interpret ambiguities and gaps as opportunities for transformative pedagogical interventions. Such interventions give rise to teacher agency. This agency is typically viewed as a quality within educators, a matter of personal capacity to act usually in response to stimuli within their pedagogical environment (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2012, p. 3). YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE

UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

4. DISCUSSION

Although in-service EFL teachers try to reproduce or replicate official discourses through particular classroom language practices, such reproduction is never total and in some cases is eclipsed by strong adaptations and contestations.In this regard, Hornberger and Johnson (2011) proposed ethnography of language policy as a method that can be used to approach the multiple levels of policy activity in order to better understand both the power of language policies to marginalize and the power of educators to adapt and resist.


5. CONCLUSION

Overall, this study offers evidence that suggests that EFL in-service teachers need to be incorporated into language policy and decision making. By doing so, programs such as Bogota Bilingüe can effectively take into account their meanings, experiences, and perspectives of EFL practitioners, which can lead to the reconfiguration and reinterpretation of the discourses and practices official bilingualism and mainstream EFL instruction seem to be based on. Ultimately, having EFL in-service teachers act as main participants can help official actions and decisions

“superar políticas instrumentalistas y proyectos programáticos caracterizados por el desconocimiento de la voz de los actores del proceso” (Bermúdez, Fandiño & Ramírez, 2015, p.

166).


REFERENCESAmir, L. (2013). Self-policing in the English as a foreign language classroom. Novitas: Research on Youth and Language, 7(2), 84-105.

Baldauf, R. (2006). Rearticulating the case for micro language planning in a language ecology context. Current Issues in Language Planning, 7(2), 147-170. doi: 10.2167/cilp092.0

Baldauf, R. (2004). Language planning and policy: Recent trends, future directions. American Association of Applied Linguistics, Portland, Oregon, (1-8). Retrieved from http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:24518/LPPCoPap1AAAL04.pdf

Bermúdez, J., Fandiño, Y., & Ramírez, A. (2015). Percepciones de directivos y docentes de instituciones educativas distritales sobre la implementación del Programa Bogotá Bilingüe. Voces Y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana De Educación, 5(2), 135-171.

Cárdenas, M. (2006). Bilingual Colombia: Are we ready for it? What is needed? Paper presented at the 19th EA Annual Education Conference, Perth, Australia. Retrieved from http://www.docstoc.com/docs/32866051/Bilingual-Colombia-Are-we-ready-for-it-What-is-needed.

Cassels, D., & Ricento, T. (2013). Conceptual and theoretical perspectives in language planning and policy: situating the ethnography of language policy. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 0(219), 7–21.

Chambliss, D., & Schutt, R. (2012). Making Sense of the Social World: Methods of Investigation 4th (fourth) Edition. USA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Cooper, R. (1989). Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Correa, D., y Usma, J. (2013). From a burocratic to a critical-sociocultural model of policymaking in Colombia. HOW A Colombian journal of teachers of English, 20, 226-242.

Creswell, J. (2014). Research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches (4th edition). USA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Creswell, J.W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. (2nd ed.) Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Fandiño Y. (2014). Bogotá bilingüe: tensión entre política, currículo y realidad escolar. Revista Educación y Educadores, 17(2), 215-236.

Freeman, R. D. (1996). Dual-language planning at Oyster Bilingual School: “It’s much more than language”. TESOL Quarterly, 30 (3), 557-582.

Giroux, H. (1988). Schooling and the struggle for public life: Critical pedagogy in the modern age. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press.


http://www.docstoc.com/docs/32866051/Bilingual-Colombia-Are-we-ready-for-it-What-is-needed

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