EFL in Argentina’s Schools: Teachers’ Perspectives

on Policy Changes and Instruction

SANDRA ZAPPA-HOLLMAN
University of British Colombia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

䡲 The return of democracy to Argentina in 1983 paved the way for

many structural changes that took place in the country over the suc-
ceeding years, including the transformation of an education system
that was considered to be in crisis. In 1993, a new Federal Law of Edu-
cation (Ley Federal de Educación No 24.195 [LFE]; see Comisión Na-
cional de Evaluación y Acreditación Universitaria [CONEAU], 2005) was
passed, initiating a long-awaited education reform. Although many
hoped that the LFE would lead to a true modernization of the Argentine
school system, the reform met resistance and criticism from the out-

618 TESOL QUARTERLY

set.1 At the turn of the century, the continuity of the already discredited
LFE was challenged by insufficient budgetary resources, growing resis-
tance from teachers’ unions, and a deep economic and political crisis.
Following the financial turmoil and political upheaval of 2001, a newly
elected national government implemented changes in the economic and
educational arenas, which eventually led to the revocation of the LFE in
December, 2006, when a new National Education Law (Ley Nacional de
Educación No 26.206; see Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología
de al Nación Argentina, 2006) was enacted.
In this brief article, I first outline the major changes incurred in the
national curricula with respect to EFL instruction and the teaching of
other foreign languages as a result of the reform initiated in 1993. I then
report the main findings of an exploratory study that gathered teachers’
perspectives about the challenges they faced in their local contexts as
they became the primary agents of the curricular and instructional
changes that resulted from the implementation of the LFE.

LEGISLATIVE CHANGE AND EFL INSTRUCTION

POLICY: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

The LFE was a comprehensive reform of the entire education system.

In addition to implementing a decentralization process that transferred
education responsibilities from the nation to the provinces, the LFE also
called for review of the curriculum and programs of study, including
teacher training programs. The former 7-year elementary school was
reorganized into three 3-year cycles totaling 9 years of Educación General
Básica (basic general education),2 whereas the former 5-year high school
became an optional 3-year high school called Polimodal. The reformed
curriculum, which encouraged multilingualism and multiculturalism,
viewed English as the language for international communication that
would give its speakers access to many cultures and would thereby em-
power future Argentine generations with the necessary symbolic re-

1
The LFE was sanctioned under a national government administration that was associated
with corruption and with a neoliberal economic agenda that favored the private sectors,
thus broadening the divide between the rich and the increasing poor population in the
country. In addition, funding for the reform was provided by international banks (the
World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank), which played a significant role
in outlining the direction of the LFE. Consequently, the reform was also seen as repre-
senting the triumph of oppressive external globalizing forces whose aim was ultimately to
control rather than provide autonomy to the nation’s institutions.
2
Note that not all provinces adhered to LFE No. 24.195, and thus the old and the new
systems coexist in the country.

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES 619

sources needed to fully function in the global market. English was thus
seen as necessary to every Argentine citizen.
Although Spanish is the national official language, English has a long
history in Argentina, where it enjoys a prestigious status as the country’s
most widely spoken foreign language (Tocalli-Beller, 2007). Yet when
EFL instruction became compulsory under the reform, this significant
change affected the status of other foreign languages that were typically
taught in high school (e.g., French). According to the official framework
for the teaching of languages (Consejo Federal de Cultura y Educación,
1998), foreign language instruction should start in Grade 4 with English
Level I. Depending on the option chosen by each school,3 EFL instruc-
tion should continue up to English Level II or III (see Table 1).
One of the rationales for including foreign languages in the school
curriculum was to provide students with the necessary linguistic tools for
communication with the world. Hence, following global trends in for-
eign language pedagogy, the new policy promoted a shift from the gram-
mar-oriented approach traditionally used in Argentine schools to a con-
tent-based approach emphasizing communicative goals (Armendáriz,
2000; Snow, Cortés, & Pron, 1998). However, not enough consideration
seems to have been given to the human and material resources available
to implement the policy, curricular, and instructional modifications,
thus imposing on the teachers the formidable task of operationalizing
these changes while leaving them to grapple with a number of chal-
lenges, some of which revealed deeply rooted structural problems in the
social fabric of the country.

THE STUDY

Method and Participants

An exploratory study was conducted to address the following question:

In light of the recent policy, curricular, and instructional changes, what
are the issues faced by Argentine EFL teachers working in the school
system? Information was gathered using a semistructured questionnaire
and multiple follow-up e-mail communications. Respondents were asked
to provide detailed information about their teacher training, their pre-
ferred classroom teaching strategies, their access to resources and pro-

3
According to the reform, the Contenidos Básicos Communes (common basic contents) are the
national matrix on which the provincial curricula and the institutional educational
projects are to be designed. Hence, each school can choose the foreign language option
that best suits ithe needs of ts student population.

620 TESOL QUARTERLY

 TABLE 1
Foreign Language Instruction in Argentina’s Schools

Options EGB 2 (Grades 4–6) EGB 3 (Grades 7–9) Polimodal (Grades 10–12)
A English Level I English Level II English Level III
B English Level I English Level II Another foreign language
C English Level I Another foreign language Another foreign language

Note. Adapted from Consejo Federal de Cultura y Educación (1998).

fessional development, and the challenges they faced. The participants

were 32 (K–12) teachers representing schools from the autonomous
district of Capital Federal and from six provinces.4 Qualitative thematic
data analysis was performed following the procedures described in Bog-
dan & Biklen (2003). The responses were broken into manageable units
that were coded and synthesized while searching for common and salient
patterns, and triangulation of information was achieved by means of
within-member and cross-member checking. In addition, official docu-
ments, press releases, and related published studies were consulted in
the process of organizing the findings into the interpretive narrative
account that is presented in this report.

Findings
This report focuses on a selection of findings related to issues about
EFL instruction in the public school system. Due to the exploratory
nature of this study, the data gathered come from a relatively small
number of participants (N = 32), thus making it difficult to draw gener-
alizations to the larger population of Argentine EFL school teachers.
Nevertheless, the issues that the participants brought up are consistent
with findings from other related studies.

Lack of Adequately Trained EFL Teachers

Based on their knowledge about their own and other school contexts,
the participants indicated that even though suitable teaching certifica-
tion is required to work in public schools, many EFL positions are taken
up by people who either do not have an EFL teaching degree or who lack
the necessary English language skills and/or pedagogical knowledge.
This information coincides with the results of research that investigated
the implementation of the LFE in, for example, schools in several dis-
tricts of the Argentine province of Buenos Aires. In a study that surveyed

4
Participation was voluntary and the teachers’ anonymity was preserved by the use of
pseudonyms.

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES 621

the implementation of the LFE in more than 500 schools, most of them
located in poor rural areas, Delgado (2002) found that the subject was
often taught by nonspecialized teachers whose foreign language training
came mainly from a 4-hour session that showed them how to use a
language kit (i.e., a manual and an accompanying video) sent to the
schools by the national education authorities.
A national professional development network (Red Federal de For-
mación Docente) was created by the Argentine ministry of education in
1995, giving each province the mandate to provide ongoing (re)training
courses and workshops for their teachers. However, this plan was imple-
mented in an uneven way across the country because budgetary re-
sources were insufficient. As reflected in the works of other scholars who
have examined the impact of recent education reforms in Latin Ameri-
can contexts, the shortage of trained EFL teachers in Argentina is not an
isolated case. (See, e.g., Cadavid, McNulty, & Quinchía, 2004, who re-
ported similar issues in relation to the Colombian EFL teaching land-
scape.) As indicated by Rossetti (1997), this shortage of trained teachers
is of great concern because untrained professionals can have a devastat-
ing impact on the quality of EFL instruction.

Disjunctions Between Theory and Practice

Even though 30 of the participants held an undergraduate EFL teach-

ing degree and 23 had more than 5 years of teaching practice, they were
all critical about their own professional training. They viewed themselves
as fully competent to teach EFL (i.e., they had advanced English profi-
ciency and had undergone rigorous professional training), but most of
them identified a clear mismatch between their preservice preparation
and their subsequent experiences in school. Some of them indicated that
the wealth of knowledge acquired in their training programs “didn’t take
into account Argentina’s reality and context” (Questionnaire, No. 16).
Such comments referred, for instance, to the lack of preparation re-
ceived to attend to the specific needs of students in poor areas of the
country. In 21st-century Argentina, unemployment and poverty are com-
mon in too many households. Among other problems that interfere with
academic achievement, children from impoverished homes are more
likely to get sick and miss class, they generally have shorter attention
spans, and they are usually less motivated to study, especially when the
pressures to leave school and join the workforce are high.
Still, the training EFL teachers receive does not seem to consider the
harsh socioeconomic conditions under which a large proportion of Ar-
gentina’s population live. For instance, one of the participants who
taught in a very poor rural context indicated that her students had many
issues that affected their lives and consequently their motivation and

622 TESOL QUARTERLY

ability to study. Some of these children worked, some of the girls were
mothers already, and in many cases, the students’ parents were illiterate.
“Reading does not have a place in this community,” the participant
commented in her e-mail, adding that there is no wonder why “English
is too far away from their lives” (personal communication, July 24, 2005).
The teachers strove to make their classes more accessible and relevant
for the students by employing strategies that they believed had a positive
instructional impact even when these strategies contradicted the theories
instilled in them in their EFL training programs. For instance, one partici-
pant commented that notwithstanding the popularity of the communicative
approach, she preferred to rely on what she called a “meaningful approach”
in which Spanish played an important scaffolding role as she involved
students in small translation tasks (e-mail communication, July 11, 2005).
Teachers working in less marginal contexts also explained their frus-
tration in trying to foster the development of communication in the
target language. Large class size (35 students per class), limited access to
resources (e.g., textbooks, authentic materials, and audiovisual materials
and equipment), and reduced length and frequency of EFL teaching
periods were among the most often cited problems. To cope with these
limitations, some teachers tended to engage their students more often in
literacy-based activities rather than in spoken ones, usually regretting not
being able to focus on the integration of the four skills.

Confronting Problems of Discipline and Violence

Some participants were extremely concerned with the classroom vio-

lence and discipline problems they faced. They commented in frustra-
tion: “Sometimes I don’t feel qualified to deal with violence and I feel
that no one is” (Questionnaire, No. 10), and “Sometimes I think I need
more resources so as to be able to handle discipline problems deriving
from the social environment, such as problems of poverty, family back-
ground, lack of interest” (Questionnaire, No. 13). Teachers wrestled with
different forms of unruliness. For instance, they sometimes had to cope
with the presence of disruptive students who boycotted classroom activi-
ties by making constant noise, defying classroom norms, and being dis-
obedient or uncooperative. Student apathy and lack of interest in learn-
ing English were also cited as attitudinal problems that interfered with
instruction. The behavioral problems some of the participants cited
seem to echo the kind of challenges sometimes faced not only by EFL
professionals, but also by teachers in other subject areas. In addition, the
issue of violence in schools mentioned by some participants is currently
of great concern in the country as a whole. As shown by other studies,
violence can be manifested in multiple ways and at varying degrees (e.g.,
bullying, discrimination, vandalism, sometimes even physical aggression;

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES 623

Instituto Internacional de Planeamiento de la Educación, 2001). School
violence is not a new phenomenon and still appears to affect a small per
centage of the school population. Nevertheless, it has increased in Ar-
gentina over the past few years and is understood as a complex issue that
results largely from major structural problems faced by societies in crisis.

CONCLUSION
This brief report suggests that the viability of EFL instruction in the
Argentine school system needs to be re-examined to establish more re-
alistic goals. With the LFE, Argentina embarked on a controversial and
overly ambitious plan that drove the country’s education system down a
dead-end road. As the Argentine case shows, it is difficult for policy,
curriculum, and instructional changes to succeed when these changes
take place during a period of deep political and socioeconomic instabil-
ity, and when those involved in the transformation process are against
the changes or unprepared to implement them. Even though EFL be-
came a compulsory school subject, the participating teachers’ voices
suggest that inclusion of EFL in the curriculum does not automatically
translate into a high quality of instruction unless adequate professional
training and resources are provided. The teachers identified important
disjunctions between theory and practice which made their jobs ex-
tremely challenging, leaving them particularly unprepared to confront
different forms and degrees of school indiscipline and violence in their
classrooms. Supportive actions toward Argentine EFL teachers should
therefore include professional development opportunities that focus on
classroom management techniques specifically designed for the chal-
lenging contexts in which many of them work. Unless this is guaranteed,
access to quality public education does not go beyond policy rhetoric.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank the EFL teachers who participated in this study as well as all those who helped
distribute the questionnaire. My appreciation also goes to Marta Delgado for her
supporting role in this project, and Jérémie Séror, Diane Potts, Patricia Duff, and an
anonymous reviewer for their feedback on earlier drafts of this report.

THE AUTHOR
Sandra Zappa-Hollman is a doctoral candidate in TESL. She holds an EFL teaching
degree from Argentina, where she taught EFL for several years prior to moving to
Canada to pursue graduate studies.

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