Although an international teaching practicum is assumed to broaden teacher candidates' cultural, linguistic, and pedagogical knowledge, the nature of this growth and its relation to teacher education practices have yet to be fully explored. Using a sociocultural perspective and drawing on the concepts of teacher socialization and a growth mindset,…

This paper aims at showing how a bottom-up approach of the study of educational policies can shed some light on how elementary school teachers deal with educational policies to make them work. This is a partial report on a larger focus group study conducted in Bogotá, Colombia, where a group of elementary school teachers shared their opinions…

This article reports the findings of a qualitative interpretive research study that explored the social representations children have about the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in elementary schools in Medellín, Colombia. Sixty children in first, third, and fifth grades of public and private schools participated in the study.…

This paper presents the results of a research study based on a pedagogical experience of two pre-service English teachers with seventh graders. The main goal was to analyze the students' context representations, after using some songs in English as a trigger for reflection. The pedagogical implementation of the songs was designed from a critical…

This article presents the foundations to design a curriculum that integrates music and drama as strategies for the teaching of English as a foreign language. Besides promoting interdisciplinarity, this curriculum seeks to improve the language level of those children attending continuing educational programs at any higher education institution. The…

This article focuses on research carried out in a private school in Bogotá with a group of English as a foreign language fourth-graders. The study aimed to analyze interaction in the English classroom through action research, based on tasks that promoted collaborative work and involvement of the students and their teacher. The instruments to…

This study examined the effects of metacognitive strategies to help beginning young learners with difficulties increasing and retaining vocabulary. This was a qualitative study in which participants first went through metacognitive strategy instruction to provide awareness of learning strategies. Following this instruction, students underwent a…

This study investigates the impact of implementing collaborative learning from a social and dialogical perspective on seventh graders' interaction in an English as a foreign language classroom at a public school in Bogotá, Colombia. Thirty students participated in this action research where field notes, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews,…

The main objective of this study was to identify 6th to 11th grade students' beliefs about their English class in a public institution in Armenia, Colombia. By means of interviews, drawings, and focus groups with 30 students, four beliefs were established. It was found that students' beliefs are attached to the experiences they have lived in their…

This article focuses on Mexican students' perceptions of learning the history of Mexico in English through content-based instruction, which is one of many types of bilingual pedagogical approaches that are now considered established approaches in Mexico and around the globe. A phenomenological approach was chosen in order to understand and examine…

We report on an action research project aimed at developing oral communication in first-graders, using songs as a strategy for young learners to use and enjoy English. It was developed at a Colombian public school over three months. The teacher-researchers attempted to encourage students using simple and amusing songs to help them learn new…

Despite some school efforts to offer students the best second language learning, English language lessons are often taught with an overuse of the mother tongue. Hence, an action research project was conducted in order to discover how to adapt some features of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) component: Lesson delivery, for the…

In this article we aim at showing partial results of a study about the profiles of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in both public and private primary and secondary strata 1-4 schools in Cali, Colombia. Teachers' methodological approaches and practices are described and analyzed from a sample of 220 teachers. Information was gathered…

The daily observation of class sessions has enabled me to recognize that students possess a feeling of self-distrust in oral activities. For this reason, I designed a study carried out with a group of twelve eighth graders. This article illustrates an action research project conducted to enhance students' confidence when speaking on an online…

The communicative approach in EFL education has generated a concern for the development of communication in the foreign language classroom within which the promotion of oral interaction is usually paramount. However, what constitutes authentic oral interaction is sometimes not clearly understood and some of the activities that take place in the…