Challenging Monolingual Discourses for Agentic Spaces: Constraints and Opportunities for Language Educators in the Chilean Education System

Chile’s long-standing aspiration to become a bilingual country, and the privileging of English language education, stems from the 1980s, when the adoption of neoliberal policies was strongly embraced by the Chilean government as a key driver for economic prosperity during rule by the military government. While English holds prominence and popularity as an “equalizing measure to combat socioeconomic inequality that has plagued this country since Spanish colonization” (Miranda-Plaza, 2018, p. 1), Western-centric ideologies in English language teaching have arguably perpetuated and exacerbated systemic inequalities and biases within the education system (e.g., Chisholm et al., 2019; Hoang & Truong, 2016; Veliz, 2021). Monolingual ideologies, or a monolingual mindset which tends to diminish the place of minority languages, have also contributed to the marginalization of multilingualism and diversity and reinforced linguistic hierarchies. As a result, language teachers often find themselves constrained by these dominant ideologies, facing limited autonomy and agency in their professional practice (Barahona et al., 2021; Slaughter & Cross, 2021; Veliz & Chen, 2024).