This document discusses the demands placed on Colombian teachers between national linguistic policy and academic expectations. The national linguistic policy aims to make Colombians proficient in English to participate in the global economy. This creates demands for teachers to develop strong English communicative and linguistic competence, as well as meet academic demands for research, professional development, and keeping up with teaching trends. Bilingual schools and programs further complicate demands by requiring teachers to promote multiculturalism and bilingualism in students. While these competing demands place teachers in a difficult position, the document suggests possibilities like autonomous teaching, reflective practice, and recognition of new Englishes may provide hope.

1. The teacher between a rock
and a hard place: Colombian
Linguistic Policy
Mg. Diana Marcela Jaramillo C.
Academic Sessions
2010

2. Current demands
Teacher
Institutional
Academic
Linguistic
policy

3. Academic demands
Research
Professional
development
Teaching
Linguistic competence

4. Academic demands on teaching
Trends in
methodology
Degree and
certification
ICTcommunities
Constant
update

5. Academic demands on research
Research
spirit
Research
processes
Research
processes
in the
classroom
Sharing
To be an
academic
teacher

6. academic demand on professional
development
Theorizing
Practice

7. Institutional demands
Public
schools
Private
schools
Bilingual
schools
The same
demands in
different
realities
Cultural
transformation
Communicative
competence
Education
processes

8. National linguistic policy
The National Bilingual Programme (2004-2019) a
project which aims at ensuring that, “Colombian
citizens will be able to communicate through
English with internationally comparable
standards. This will contribute to the insertion of
the country in the processes of universal
communication, the global economy and cultural
openness” (M.E.N. presentation, 2006)
B1 and B2
C1

9. Linguistic policy demands
Communicative competence
Linguistic competence
Linguistic competence in students (ICFES,
saber pro—ECAES)

10. Consequences of the linguistic policy
Bilingual societies
Bicultural multicultural
Bilingual schools
New a kind of teacher New requirements
Bilingualism
Teachers Teacher education

11. Bilingual programs promote
multicultural students
Grosjean (1993: 31), we all belong to a series of cultural
networks (sub-groups and sub-cultures) even though
we have had no contact with another majority or
national culture, and we are all therefore necessarily
“multicultural”.
He defines a bicultural individual as someone who,
“participates, at least in part, in the life of two
(majority) cultures . . . in a regular fashion”. In
addition, this individual knows how to adapt his/her
behaviour and attitudes to a particular cultural
environment, and can synthesise cultural
characteristics from both cultures. (Mejía)

12. Teacher in a bilingual school in Cali
“As I advanced in my investigations, I discovered
that even the textbooks for Social Science,
which were imported from the United Kingdom,
presented a terrible vision of our country. They
tended to emphasize through pictures and
commentary, poverty, technological
backwardness and violence. This vision was in
line with (accelerated) developmental
paradigms which undermine the educational
attempts to consolidate the students` self
esteem through the construction of a solid
identity in relation to their own reality.”

13. Is there any hope?
New
Englishes
Autonomous
teachers
Reflective
teaching
theorizing

14. New Englishes
Graddol (2006: 14), for his part, refers to the
increasing “irrelevance of native speakers . . . (and)
native speaker norms” in his review of the
development of English as a global language. The
rise of `New Englishes´ (local varieties of English
arising from the contact with vernacular languages)
in many post colonial contexts in different parts of
the world, added to the fact that increasingly fewer
interactions involve native speakers of English, has
contributed to the recognition of the non-native
speaker who is a “fluent bilingual speaker, who
retains a national identity in terms of accent, and
who also has the special skills required to negotiate
understanding with another non-native speaker”
(Graddol, 2006: 87).