Critical ELT Agendas from the Territories: Recalling the Past, Exploring the Present, and Envisioning the Future

Colombian English Language Teacher/Teaching (ELT) Education is a steadily advancing field toward establishing a socioculturally and sociocritically oriented area of knowledge. Whereas in previous years, national ELT was primarily concerned with the development and promotion of communicative skills among English as a foreign language students derived from cognitively oriented and traditionally connected stances, since the insertion of critical pedagogies and theories into the field, its approach has changed to better cope with what is happening in immediate contexts. In other words, ELT has assumed a more context-sensitive view through which the territories and the practices inherent to them have been placed at the core of the field. Considering the current landscape, in the frame of this article, we present an analysis of how ELT has been changing over the last few years while also contemplating current practices and future venues to come. By delving into the historical development of ELT in Colombia and emphasizing what we have labeled “critical ELT agendas from the territories” through which we merge principles of social justice, critical literacy, and English as a Lingua Franca, the current article critically examines factors that shaped Colombian ELT in the past, while considering potential venues for the future. The critical reflection proposed in this paper aims to provide insights that inform more responsive and practical approaches to ELT in Colombia and abroad.