This paper reports the findings of a narrative study on language student teachers’ epistemological re-configurations through lesson planning in a private university in Bogota, Colombia. The study aimed at exploring the possible forms of professional yet personal–local knowledge two language student teachers encounter and produce when they plan language lessons. We employed the life story interviewing to gather information on the subjective essence of the participant’s experiences in their teacher practicum. Findings suggest that through lesson planning, language student teachers manage to re-signify certain methodological yet hegemonic constructions of teaching and learning. Furthermore, their knowledge of themselves as teachers in relation to their practicum is shaped by circumstances they face in the process of planning and teaching lessons.

This paper describes a case study research project carried out in a public school in Bogotá, Colombia, with four unlicensed teachers of English as a foreign language. Although the institutional guidelines in the school suggest that teachers should collectively propose changes to shape pedagogical realities, there is evidence of little communication among them. This study emphasizes collaborative, reflective inquiry as a means to educative transformation. Findings suggest that collaborative inquiry prompts the language teachers to conjointly design teaching strategies and materials that articulate with students' contexts. Furthermore, along the way, the teachers were empowered to propose curricular changes to adjust contents and goals of the area with the students' contextual reality.Key words: Collaborative inquiry, reflective teaching, teachers' professional development, unlicensed teachers of English as a foreign language.Este artículo describe un estudio de caso realizado en un colegio público de Bogotá, Colombia con cuatro profesores de inglés no licenciados en lenguas. Aunque los lineamientos institucionales del colegio sugieren que los docentes deberían proponer cambios a nivel colectivo para transformar realidades pedagógicas, no hay evidencia de que existan escenarios de comunicación entre ellos. Este estudio se enfoca en la investigación colaborativa y reflexiva de prácticas de enseñanza como medio para la transformación educativa. Los resultados sugieren que la investigación colaborativa impulsa a los profesores a diseñar conjuntamente estrategias y materiales para la enseñanza del inglés que se articulan con los contextos de los estudiantes. Adicionalmente, durante el proceso, los profesores se empoderaron para proponer cambios curriculares con el fin de ajustar los objetivos y contenidos del área a las realidades contextuales de los estudiantes.Palabras clave: desarrollo profesional de docentes, enseñanza reflexiva, investigación colaborativa, profesores de inglés no licenciados.

Research has accumulated important knowledge over recent decades on how licensed language teachers develop and learn from cognitive and socio-cultural stances. Yet, relatively little evidence exists on how non-licensed-in-English language teachers (NLELTs) grow professionally in their communities. Similarly, few studies have yet investigated the concept of "imagined communities" in the language teaching field with these particular types of population. This study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the possible forms of professional knowledge that NLELTs build through participation in the activities of a learning community. Four non-licensed language teachers participated in a nine-month collaborative-reflective process focused on language teaching practices, in a public school in Bogotá (Colombia). In analyzing their interactions and consequent products, we discuss three dimensions of knowledge construction propelled by the individual visions they brought into the community. Furthermore, we analyze how learning in that present community granted the teachers access to envisioned practices in imagined communities for a desirable future. Based on the findings we argue that success or failure in participation in present, real communities determines imagined affiliation to future communities, their practices and even the NLELTs' preferred future positionings as professionals.

This narrative study analyzes two mentors’ experiences in their mentoring practices with language student-teachers in a private university in Bogotá (Colombia). Employing life-story interviews and drawing on ways of thinking and theorizing from praxis as a standpoint to enact decoloniality, we approach mentors’ narratives from the notion of crack. Findings reveal that, for mentors, mentoring practices represent a space for knowledge reconfiguration, a locus of collective knowledge construction, and territories where student-teachers can mobilize and exercise their agency. Overall, when making meaning of clashing experiences in mentoring, mentors have constructed ways to fracture traditional and hegemonic logics of seeing knowledge and the self in teacher education.

Este artículo analiza y documenta los saberes pedagógicos sobre conflictos y reconciliaciones que emergen en la práctica pedagógica de dos docentes en formación, que enseñan inglés como lengua extranjera (ile) en colegios de Bogotá, Colombia. El estudio empleó eventos narrativos de las experiencias de las docentes-practicantes en contextos pedagógicos conflictivos. Estas experiencias se analizaron a través de un enfoque narrativo, desde un lente de pensamiento decolonial, para abordar formas localizadas de saberes que son alternos a estructuras de producción de conocimiento hegemónico. Los resultados muestran que a partir de prácticas fundadas en el reconocimiento del otro, el entendimiento del conflicto como connatural a los sujetos y el diálogo entre pedagogías de lengua tradicional occidental y pedagogías otras en el aula, las docentes en formación empezaronn a fracturar lógicas tradicionales en la enseñanza de ile. Esto les permitió reconfigurar la construcción de sus estudiantes como sujetos sociales y la enseñanza del inglés como una práctica social humanizadora. Dichos resultados sugieren la necesidad de que las instituciones que forman docentes visibilicen más las experiencias generadoras de saber de los docentes en formación en su práctica pedagógica.