The purpose of this present chapter is to empirically ground decolonizing primary English language teaching (PELT). In other words, based on the findings of the CEAR Project as developed in the previous chapters, I summarize different principles of decolonizing PELT that have emerged in the CEAR Project. I must emphasize, however, that these principles should be revisited in other contexts, as teachers and children may experience coloniality differently according to their particular context. To conclude this chapter, I call upon the voices of the student teachers who had wondered what would happen after their involvement in the project.

Empirically Grounded Principles of Decolonizing PELT

In this section, I outline 10 principles of decolonizing PELT, by no means as ‘generalizable’ or prescriptive statements, but as descriptors of the findings we encountered in the CEAR Project and the conclusions we reached to make sense of our world and that of the children. The findings summarized in this section have not simply emerged from empirical data, but from the constant dialogue with theory in which the student teachers and I engaged, as we followed Davies’ (2008: 297) argument regarding the second use of theory:

Throughout the CEAR Project, theory and practice engaged in a dialogical encounter whereby our praxicum informed the theories behind decolonizing PELT and these theories informed our praxicum in an ongoing process (Cummins, 2000b; Johnson, 2006). Concluding this book with principles based on findings responds to Apple's (2000) criticism of critical pedagogies, one of the theoretical underpinnings behind decolonizing PELT. Apple argues that: