English Language Pedagogization: A Territory-Based Approach to Student-Teachers’ Epistemologies

This study offers a perspective from the notion of territory to re-configure English language pedagogy by considering acts of pedagogization as an alternative construction path for teacher epistemology. Framed within the concept of community-based pedagogies, this article shares the experiences of one pre-service teacher who participated in a teaching experience in Vista Hermosa, Meta, in Colombia. Luisa explored her teaching practices regarding English language instruction and re-configured her epistemologies by working with the community. In so doing, she examines her beliefs about teaching and learning with the support of her teaching mentors. By adopting a narrative approach of a collaborative nature, experiences were collected over a year and analyzed using Dialogical Narrative Analysis (DNA) as an embodied approach to engage with the lives of those inhabiting the community where the experience occurred. The findings obtained are two-fold. Luisa built an understanding of her practice to challenge mainstream theoretical assumptions about teaching and learning by resorting to territory and pedagogical experiences as a primary source for reframing her teaching praxis and knowledge. Second, the conceptions about pedagogy Luisa re-configured were informed by dwelling on the histories of those whose lives are inherent in her pedagogical knowledge. As a result, Luisa engaged in pedagogization practices that disrupted the linear model of teaching/epistemology in teaching.