摘要：This article aims to explore personal and professional aspects such as the construction of identity, the frequent challenges in classrooms in the public sector, and the roles that non-native speaker teachers of English assume (and are granted by others), on a daily basis, in a context that is highly influenced by native-speakerism and colonizing views toward English across the global south. Methodology. This research is qualitative and exploratory. For the data collection process, teachers’ personal narratives, semi-structured interviews as well as a focal group session were conducted. The participants of this research were five teachers of English as a foreign language from different regions of Colombia, who do not know each other and who are ascribed to the public sector of education. Findings. Results reveal that non-native speaker teachers of English in Colombia usually feel compared to native speakers of English and overlooked in their job settings. Likewise, other problematic issues such as the socio-cultural context of students, as well as the lack of resources in public school come to light in this study. Conclusions: Non-native Speaker English teachers in Colombia are not perceived as a valid linguistic model to follow and this situation leads to the development of a professional identity crisis among teachers since they are not clear about their relevance as trained professionals in the field of Language Education.
关键词：EFL teachers;native-speakerism;identity;teacher’s roles in the classroom;linguistic colonialism
