Decolonising teaching of english in ukrainian secondary schools: understanding teachers’ perceptions of english and promoting teacher professional development and wellbeing

Abstract

In this brief talk I will present the British Council supported Project that we are carrying out at the moment with secondary schools in the region of Poltava. We are a group of five linguists interested in teaching English in a more democratic and egalitarian way. In the project, we focus on developing pedagogical skills and professional wellbeing of female English language teachers in Ukraine via raising their awareness of the decolonised conceptualisation of English and decolonised pedagogy. We have chosen the context of Ukraine for two reasons: 1. In Ukraine, the teaching profession is extremely gendered, and especially so for language education.