Discourses around Bilingualism and Bilingual Education in the local policy context of public education in Quindío, Colombia

Public bilingual education in Quindío is often lauded as exemplary in Colombia (Gobernación del Quindío, 2018; El Espectador, 2023; El Quindiano, 2019). However, a critical examination of the criteria underlying such commendations reveals a linguistic, political, discursive, and ideological landscape in which the terms “bilingual education” and “bilingualism” deserve to be discussed, given social phenomena in the country and the evolution of pedagogy, applied linguistics, and language teaching. This study proposes a Critical Discourse Analysis of different trends in bilingual education in Quindío, paying particular attention to how bilingualism has been understood in the department’s educational policies. Using documentary analysis (Bowen, 2009), the study analyzes and discusses the different conceptions of bilingualism and bilingual education contained in public educational documents such as departmental and municipal bilingualism projects, Institutional Educational Projects, curricula, and area plans of some traditional public schools in the department during the last two decades. The study demonstrates how deeply ingrained language ideologies influence the discourses found in local official educational documents and the foreign language teaching practices in public schools. Nonetheless, the analysis of recent documents also shows a different view of multilingualism, understood from more plural perspectives that include other languages present in the local educational landscape and often neglected by monoglossic ideologies that tend to privilege just English teaching and learning in Quindio’s public schools, such as French, sign languages, among others. This article aims to advance the current understanding of bi/multilingualism and language education in the region.