A Decolonial-Emotional Framework for Language Teacher Education

Abstract

This study investigates how emotion can operate as a decolonial force in pre-service language teacher education and aims to develop a framework theorizing the relationship between emotion, reflection, and decoloniality. Drawing on Maturana's biology of knowing and Walsh's notion of re-existence, we propose a Decolonial-Emotional Framework comprising three recursive movements: discomfort, reflexive awareness, and re-existence. Data was collected through six critical-reflective rounds of conversation and reflective journals with one participant of a study. Thematic analysis focused on emotional narratives drawn out from the data. Results suggest that colonialities’ hierarchies inscribe themselves emotionally in language teacher education, producing shame, fear, and self-doubt. Through collective conversation, participants transformed discomfort from an individual burden into a shared epistemic event. Care and empathy enabled reflexive awareness that emotions are socially produced and can be transformed. Participants reconstructed emotional-ethical positions grounded in love, courage and solidarity, becoming agents of re-existence who created pedagogies affirming students lived realities. This framework contributes to Applied Linguistics by synthesizing the affective and decolonial turns, demonstrating emotion as an epistemic and a political energy essential to language teacher education.