Ethics in Language Education:

Abstract

This paper reports on a doctoral research project, carried out by the first author under thesupervision of the second one, whose original focus was on elaborating a first draft of awritten code of ethics for Brazilian language teachers. Even though this project was initiallyconceived to elaborate such a draft in light of some European ethics perspectives, as theproponents were generating data with the research participants, it became evident to themthat the European-centered worldview would not properly address the struggles and needsof Brazilian language teachers. Two instances of colonial seeds becoming decolonial flowers arethen introduced. The first one relates to the conception of the research project and thedata collection; and the second, to the analysis itself. It does not take a village to fail, butit certainly takes one to face it in the way described in this paper. In a highly competitivecontext as the academia is, time to fail and to reflect upon it would seem to be nonsense to avast number of scholars. The paper ends with reflective questions to be locally and creativelyanswered by scholars and teachers from the language education arena.