This chapter contains an analysis of the narratives of a group of 14 in-service teachers who were studying a master’s program in Applied Linguistics for ELT, in Bogotá, Colombia. Such narratives concern how, by becoming critical researchers, they problematize and contest the hegemony of the English language in multilingual contexts. In the chapter, we propose a discussion of the critical dimension of English language teacher education as related to the transformative role of research. We also argue that subjective, political, and dynamic views on multilingualism explicate its invisibility caused by the hegemony of the English language in Colombia. In addition, the decolonial turn in ELT allows us to show how teachers are actively engaged in contesting that hegemony from their research and teaching agendas. Moreover, the chapter reports on the narrative study that gathered self-reflections of the storytellers (i.e., the participants) as data and a source for our insights subsumed in two major themes: A shifting view about the English language from romanticization to social transformation, and ELT curriculum serving neoliberal agendas instead of questioning the hegemony of the English language.
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Redes Sociales DIE-UD