This collection brings together cutting-edge research and theoretical discussions on the linguistic, cultural, and political forces that shape multilingual Colombia, highlighting the country’s unique sociolinguistic landscape and offering new insights into multilingualism in the Global South. The volume outlines the changing dynamics of multilingualism in Colombia, where Spanish, Spanish-based and English-based Creoles, the linguistic and cultural heritages of Indigenous communities and migrant groups, and the prevalence of English in language education policy intersect. The chapters explore the implications of policy making on language policy discourse and especially on language teacher education for those working on the margins in urban and rural areas. They also explore existing understandings of interculturality and the work of academics and local communities in minority language revitalization efforts. Problematizing essentialized views of language and culture and raising awareness around the complex relationship between language, identity, and interculturality in the Global South, this book will be of interest to scholars in multilingualism, sociolinguistics, language education, teacher education, and applied linguistics.

This book presents a vision of bilingual education in six South American nations: three Andean countries, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, and three 'Southern Cone' countries, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It provides an integrated perspective, including work carried out in majority as well as minority language contexts, referring to developments in the fields of indigeneous, Deaf, and international bilingual and multilingual provision.

This edited book presents a critical vision of language and education policies and practices in Colombia, examining neoliberal perspectives which influence the promotion of English at all levels in the Colombian educational system. Some of the chapters emphasize questions of language teacher recognition and empowerment, while others focus on both teachers and students’ visions of national policies, particularly with regard to colonial and Eurocentric discourses and subsequent discriminatory practices. The volume throws light on recent language and education policies and practices in a South American country where much current research in this area is published in Spanish but not in English, and it gives visibility to voices that are often missing from the global conversation around English language teaching (ELT). Making these voices heard is part of a decolonial project that gives legitimacy to "unauthorized outlooks", embodies knowledge, and focuses on presenting alternatives to second language teaching-learning and research practices from the Global North ontoepistemology. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of ELT, Language Policies and Planning, Applied Linguistics, and Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies. It also has international appeal, as its localized gaze can bring about important considerations regarding other local knowledges.

The promotion of language ideologies, policies and pedagogies that treat languages as separate and hierarchical has become a central concern for critical education scholars. In this case study, I explore how school actors at Colegio Colombiano (CC), an international school in Colombia, engaged with critical approaches to bi/multilingual education to leverage the fluid identities and languaging practices of plurilingual teachers and students. In my first data chapter, I place CC within its larger educational context by showing how a logic of coloniality informs both public and private K-12 foreign language education in Colombia. This logic of coloniality reflects a hierarchy of actors within the field of foreign language education in Colombia with external international organizations holding significant power and influence over local priorities. I build on these findings to call international schools into current conversations about decolonizing language education in Colombia. In my second data chapter, I consider how school actors' language ideologies impacted the creation and enactment of language policies at CC. I describe a spectrum to show how faculty demonstrated a significant shift away from hegemonic ideologies and oppressive language policies through an increasing recognition of the importance of Spanish. While explicit messages about English as superior were no longer officially promoted at CC, colonialistic ideologies and policies persisted which valorized English, denigrated Spanish, and completely ignored other societal and home languages. In my final data chapter, I explore how teachers and students engaged with translanguaging pedagogies. While many teachers expressed a desire to leverage their and their students' plurilingual repertoires they felt limited by significant obstacles, including the school's strict model of language separation. Elementary students generally demonstrated a willingness to engage with translanguaging pedagogies, while older students expressed a complex resistance as they negotiated their bilingual identities. In my concluding chapter, I return to the identified logic of coloniality to discuss how international school communities can unveil and interrogate colonialistic understandings of languages, language users and languaging practices. I propose the Decolonizing International Multilingual Education (DIME) framework as a tool to guide schools in the work of decolonizing their language programs.

This book provides a contemporary and critical examination of the theoretical and pedagogical impact of Michael Byram’s pioneering work on intercultural communicative competence and intercultural citizenship within the field of language education and beyond. The chapters address important theoretical and empirical work on the teaching, learning, and assessment of intercultural learning, and highlight how individual language educators and communities of practice enact intercultural learning in locally appropriate ways. The book offers comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible knowledge for researchers, teachers, teacher-trainers and students.

Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is becoming increasingly frequent, thereby promoting a need to acquire successful methods in understanding language. Applied Psycholinguistics and Multilingual Cognition in Human Creativity is an essential reference source that discusses the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language, as well as its applications in human development, the social sciences, communication theories, and infant development. Featuring research on topics such as international business, language processing, and organizational research, this book is ideally designed for linguists, psychologists, humanities and social sciences researchers, managers, and graduate-level students seeking coverage on language acquisition and communication.

This book addresses two critical calls pertaining to language education. Firstly, for attention to be paid to the transdisciplinary nature and complexity of learner identity and interaction in the classroom and secondly, for the need to attend to conceptualizations of and approaches to manifestations of (in)equity in the sociohistorical contexts in which they occur. Collectively, the chapters envision classrooms and educational institutions as sites both shaping and shaped by larger (trans)communal negotiations of being and belonging, in which individuals affirm and/or problematize essentialized and idealized nativeness and community membership. The volume, comprised of chapters contributed by a diverse array of researcher-practitioners living, working and/or studying around the globe, is intended to inform, empower and inspire stakeholders in language education to explore, potentially reimagine, and ultimately critically and practically transform, the communities in which they live, work and/or study.