Collaborative ELT materials design

This chapter stems from a research guide experience I held within the context of a master’s program in language teaching from a public university located in the central-eastern region of Colombia, which introduces the notion of collaborative ELT materials design. Explicitly, collaborative materials design in ELT is a notion that Rolando Cantero Cabrera, my advisee and I built on the principles of ELT materials design, social justice, and participatory research approaches as a way to actively involve all stakeholders potentially involved in and exposed to English teaching and learning educational processes in the design and application of materials intended to maximize the aforementioned teaching act in some public and private schools of the Paraguayan context. By reflecting on empirical and conceptual data derived from the research study we undertook, this chapter advocates for the need to move from top-down ELT materials where decisions are made by agents who do not directly engage with the educational needs and interests of the communities involved, and invites instead for a more collaborative, locally grounded, and democratized process of knowledge construction where all those potentially affected can have a voice in the decisions being made. To conclude, this chapter also presents some practice-oriented strategies that educators interested in promoting a collaborative approach toward ELT materials design can implement in their respective educational contexts. These only constitute a guide, as potential readers of the chapter are called to take this experience as a departure point to experiment in their contextualities.