ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a community service-learning experience from a decolonial perspective. The project was carried out by university teacher-researchers, volunteer university student tour-guides and volunteer university student teachers of English during 2017–2018 in a rural multigrade school in Northern Patagonia, Neuquén Province, Argentina. Outdoor learning experiences and translingual and multimodal workshops using intercultural literature in English to 6–14-year olds from the native Mapuche communities were designed and carried out. Multilingual and translingual pedagogies were to allow students to express and communicate their own voices and become agents of their own learning in safe spaces. The aims of the project were two-fold: it intended to foster democratic values and competences in university students by linking their learning at university with the community and it entailed bringing school children in disadvantaged situations into a first relevant contact with English. Throughout the chapter, we aim at reflecting upon our own learning path and looking at the experience as a starting point for decolonial teaching practices. Findings have shown that transformation has been initiated and that decolonial practices should be encouraged in similar contexts of language education.
