English for what? Rural Nicaraguan teachers’ local responses to national educational policy

This article describes and analyzes how rural Nicaraguan teachers and NGO leaders are working with a US university-based team to develop a locally responsive, critical, and inquiry-based approach to the Ministry of Education requirement for English in secondary school. This requirement has placed a new and challenging expectation upon rural teachers, many of whom do not have basic English proficiency. Through macro level comparative analysis of language situations in different countries, coupled with meso and micro level analysis of authentic uses of English in their communities, the teachers and their US partners are shifting assumptions in multiple ways: from assuming that rural teachers need to be foreign language experts to re-envisioning teachers as co-explorers of languages together with their students; from assuming that Nicaragua has uniform needs for English to recognizing regional variation in the need for English; from assuming the availability of urban language learning tools and technologies to valuing and using rural resources that are locally available; and from reliance on so-called “foreign experts” to supporting community-based Nicaraguan teachers as leaders. Taken together, these shifts inform an emerging approach that supports teachers to move away from passive acceptance of language education policy and toward a more engaged, critical, and practical stance toward the introduction of English into the curriculum.