Conspiring to decolonise language teaching and learning: reflections and reactions from a reading group

Abstract

Within the spirit of conspiration, this article brings together contributions from participants of the PhD-led UCL Reading and React Group ‘Colonialism(s), Neoliberalism(s) and Language Teaching and Learning’, which ran in 2019/20. Weaving together various perspectives, the article centres on the dialogic nature of the decolonial enterprise and challenges the colonial concept of monologic authorial voice. Across the reflections on participants’ own engagements with questions of decolonising language teaching and learning, we pull together three threads: the inherent coloniality of the concepts that shape the very disciplines we seek to decolonise; the need to place decolonial efforts within broader contexts and to be sceptical of projects claiming to have completed the work of decolonising language teaching and learning; and the affordances and limitations offered to us by our positionalities, which the reflexivity of the conspirational encounter has allowed us to explore in some depth. The article closes with a reflection on the process of writing this article, and with the assertion that decolonising the curriculum is a multifaceted and open-ended process of dialogue and conspiration between practitioners and researchers alike.

Decolonising the school curriculum: a special feature

“…Browning et al's (2022) article weaves together various contributions from a UK-based PhD-led 'Reading and React Group' (2019/20). A 'dialogical, polyphonic, pluriversal' (Browning et al, 2022: 2) approach undergirds their self-reflective paper, which centres on decolonising language teaching and learning. The authors' reflections are focused on three main strands of enquiry: the coloniality of knowledge; the extensiveness of decolonial work and scepticism about finished projects in this regard; and the possibilities, given their own positionalities.…”