Decolonizing ELT methods through critical thematic units

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to resist the ‘colonial’ status of ELT by discussing our attempts to decolonize ELT methods through critical thematic units (CTUs), co-developed and applied by Mexican student-teachers working with children in Oaxaca, Mexico. Understanding that epistemologies (knowledge) and in consequence language methods are provincial, historically situated, and embodied in children’s ontologies and material lives, our CTUs start by questioning ‘why’ English should be brought into children’s lives and then continue by analysing ‘what’ social purposes ELT could accomplish with children, with a focus on important themes in their lives (e.g. water shortage, nutrition, and health). With these CTUs, which adopt a heteroglossic and multimodal view of language, teachers and children coauthor multimodal and multilingual identity texts serving as pedagogic and assessment spaces where language is both learned and used to negotiate affirming identities for both teachers and children. To exemplify these decolonizing attempts, the present article walks the readers through the components and implementation of one CTU focused on ‘eating habits in connection to health issues’, carried out by two student-teachers. The article will thus articulate how our CTUs are different from what are considered ‘methods’ in ELT, as they are epistemologically and socially situated.