A short presentation about a research study focused on EFL policy implementation in public schools - Symposium at U Distrital, Bogotá, Colombia.

1. EFL POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN
PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A LOOK AT
IN-SERVICE TEACHERS’
CHALLENGES AND PERCEPTIONS
XXI SYMPOSIUM ON RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS &
III INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERACIES AND DISCOURSE STUDIES
NOVEMBER 5 & 6, 2015
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY,
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

2. CONTENTS
 Introduction
 Language policy: Histoy, EFL and national EFL programs
 Methodology : paradigm, approach, design, questions, objectives, setting,
participants, data collection, data analysis.
 Findings: Tensions and challenges.
 Discussion
 Conclusion
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

3. INTRODUCTION
Language policy (LP) can be understood as a systematic, rational effort at the societal level to modify the
linguistic environment with a view to increasing aggregate welfare (Grin, 2003, p. 30).
Traditionally, it has been studied at the macro level as a large-scale, top-down process that encompasses
aspects such as status, corpus, acquisition, and prestige planning.
However, over the last decade, the study of LP has emphasized its ecological context, which has led to an
increasing awareness that it is carried out not simply by governments but mainly by groups and individuals at
different levels (Baldauf, 2006).
As a result of this new emphasis, different authors have maintained that language policy at the local or micro
level is a fundamental part of the overall language policy process and it merits attention in its own right.
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

4. 1. LANGUAGE POLICY
Language policy (statements of intent) and planning (implementation) is defined as a set of
actions and processes, often large scale and national, usually undertaken by governments with the
purpose of influencing, if not changing, ways of speaking or literacy practices within a society
(Baldauf, 2004).
Baldauf proposed a framework that adopts a goal-orientation to the four activity types (i.e., status
planning, corpus planning, language-in-education planning, and prestige planning) typically used
to define the discipline and examines these across policy and cultivation planning. He suggests
that awareness of such goals may be overt (explicit, planned) or covert (implicit, unplanned), and
may occur at several different levels (macro, meso, and micro).
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

5. 1. LANGUAGE POLICY (Cassels & Ricento, 2013)
• Desires for unification of a region or a nation and for modernization of norms and grammatical
systems.
• Languages were abstracted from their sociohistorical and ecological contexts.
Early language planning scholarship
(60´s)
• Language policy as activities that move upwards as well as downwards (macro and micro levels)
•Focus on the sociopolitical impact and/or ideological orientations of language policies.
Expanding frameworks and
conceptualizations (70’s and 80’s)
• Language policies are mechanisms of power.
• They sustain various forms of social inequality, by promoting the interests of dominant social groups.Critical language policy (90’s)
The emergence of the
ethnography of language policy (21st
century)
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
• Examining the agents, contexts, and processes across multiple layers of what Ricento and
Hornberger (1996) metaphorically referred to as the language policy onion.
• A balance between policy power and interpretative agency.

6. 1.1. LANGUAGE POLICY AND EFL
When talking about language policy and EFL teachers, Ricento and Hornberger (1996) pointed out
that this kind of policy may appear quite theoretical and far removed from the lives of many English
language teaching practitioners.
External politics has traditionally influenced which language or which variety of that language
learners will acquire, and what its function will be in their future life. Such traditional approach to
language policy regards this process as one already decided before the EFL professional enters the
classroom.
To them, this is unfortunate since EFL professionals are involved in the processes of language
planning and making. They claim that educational and social change in general and language
policy in particular need to begin with the grass roots (educators, parents, students, and
communities), as they are the ones in charge of mobilizing innovation in schools and in classes.
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

7. 1.3. LANGUAGE POLICY AND NATIONAL EFL
PROGRAMS IN COLOMBIA
The adequacy of the country's conditions for bilingualism: Few classroom hours dedicated to
the teaching of English, a shortage of materials and qualified teachers and few opportunities
to use authentic English communication (Cardenas, 2006).
The difficulties experienced by this project: Not simply a lack of interest or language level of
Colombian teachers, but a need to improve the conditions in which teaching and learning
occur in Colombia (Sánchez & Obando, 2008).
Little inclusion and large exclusion: Opportunities for some groups and individuals, but
inequality and social stratification based on standardization and instrumentalization (Usma,
2009).
Tension between language policy, curriculum guidelines and actual conditions in the schools:
A lack of macro and micro articulation to assume bilingual learning processes as a meaningful
interplay between L1 and L2 (Fandiño, 2014).
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

8. 2. METHODOLOGY: PARADIGM, APPROACH,
AND DESIGN
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
BASIC QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN
In conducting a basic qualitative study, you seek to discover and understand a phenomenon, a process,
the perspectives and worldviews of the people involved, or a combination of these (Merriam, 2002, p. 6).
QUALITATIVE APPROACH
An approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or
human problem (Creswell, 2014, p. 4).
INTERPRETIVIST/CONSTRUCTIVIST PARADIGM
Interpretivist/constructivist approaches to research have the intention of understanding "the world of
human experience" (Cohen & Manion, 1994, p.36), suggesting that "reality is socially constructed"
(Mertens, 2005, p.12).

9. 2.1. METHODOLOGY: QUESTIONS, OBJECTIVES, SETTING AND
PARTICIPANTS
•How do EFL in-
service teachers
perceive national
EFL programs in
public schools in
Bogotá?
Research
question
• Analyze the
perceptions EFL in-
service teachers
have about
national EFL
programs.
Research
objectives •Two public schools south of
Bogotá.
• Colegio Cafam Santa
Lucía and Colegio
Mercedes Nariño.
• 2nd or 3rd social strata.
•20 EFL in-service teachers.
• 3 -5 years experience in
public sector.
• Most with specializations in
EFL methodology and a
few with master’s degrees
in education.
Research setting
and participants
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

10. 2.1. METHODOLOGY: DATA ANALYSIS
(Chambliss & Schutt, 2012)
YAMITH JOSÉ FANDIÑO PARRA – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY,
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
Documentation
Conceptualization, coding
and categorizing
Examining
relationshipts and
displaying data Corraborating
and
legitimazing
Reporting

11. 3. FINDINGS
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
Instruments Themes Tensions Challenges
Documents
Surveys
Focus
groups
Language
planning and
policy
Top-down vs.
Bottom-up
From policy
implementers to
policy makers
Transmissionist vs.
Transformative
From curriculum
recipients to
curriculum decision
makers
Curriculum
School reality
Authoritarian vs.
Democratic
From officials /
employees to partners
/ agents

12. 3. FINDINGS
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

13. 4. DISCUSSION
EFL in-service teachers as decision makers (Villareal, 2005)
Decision making is about making informed choices for solutions to classroom problems and issues. It is about
feeling capable to make these decisions. It is about teachers given a decision-making opportunity and
getting the organizational support to successfully implement these choices.
Teachers’ engagement in decision making can be defined at two levels: classroom level for individual
judgments and school level for collective judgments. Their involvement requires the development of both
collective and individual decision-making skills.
Teachers can demonstrate appropriate application of decision making when they are given space and
time to:
- follow the steps of making a good decision,
- support decisions with research-based knowledge or experience, and
- demonstrate assessment of alternative actions and a decision’s possible impact.
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY,
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

14. 4. DISCUSSION
Understanding EFL in-service teachers as decision makers requires Colombia’s government to
recognize policy as a sociocultural process that transcends official or legally authorized designations.
Instead, policy should be understood as a process of human interaction, negotiation, and resistance,
what Levinson, Sutton and Winstead (2009) call appropriation.
Appropriation refers to “the ways that creative agents interpret and take in elements of policy,
thereby incorporating these discursive resources into their own schemes of interest, motivation, and
action” (Levinson et al., 2009, p. 779).
Finally, the appropriation of language policy by EFL in-service teachers encourages one to interpret
ambiguities and gaps as opportunities for transformative pedagogical interventions. Such interventions
give rise to teacher agency. This agency is typically viewed as a quality within educators, a matter of
personal capacity to act usually in response to stimuli within their pedagogical environment (Priestley,
Biesta & Robinson, 2012, p. 3).
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

15. 4. DISCUSSION
Although in-service EFL teachers try to reproduce or replicate official discourses through particular
classroom language practices, such reproduction is never total and in some cases is eclipsed by
strong adaptations and contestations.
In this regard, Hornberger and Johnson (2011) proposed ethnography of language policy as a
method that can be used to approach the multiple levels of policy activity in order to better
understand both the power of language policies to marginalize and the power of educators to
adapt and resist.
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

16. 5. CONCLUSION
Overall, this study offers evidence that suggests that EFL in-service teachers need to be
incorporated into language policy and decision making. By doing so, programs such as Bogota
Bilingüe can effectively take into account their meanings, experiences, and perspectives of EFL
practitioners, which can lead to the reconfiguration and reinterpretation of the discourses and
practices official bilingualism and mainstream EFL instruction seem to be based on. Ultimately,
having EFL in-service teachers act as main participants can help official actions and decisions
“superar políticas instrumentalistas y proyectos programáticos caracterizados por el
desconocimiento de la voz de los actores del proceso” (Bermúdez, Fandiño & Ramírez, 2015, p.
166).
YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE
UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

17. REFERENCES
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YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

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YAMITH FANDIÑO & JENNY BERMÚDEZ – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA