LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 26:7 July 2026
ISSN 1930-2940

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Foregrounding Primary Stakeholders in Classroom Narratives: Toward an Inclusive ELT Pedagogy

Chandreyee Sarkar Mitra

Abstract

Inclusive pedagogy in English Language Teaching (ELT) has, in recent years, moved from the margins of academic debate to something closer to the centre and rightly so. This paper takes up a question that sits at the heart of that shift: what actually happens when we place the primary stakeholders of classroom life that include learners, teachers, and the classroom community as a whole at the centre of how narratives are constructed and shared in ELT settings? The paper argues that most ELT classrooms still lean heavily on prescribed curricula and textbook-driven content, and that this tendency, however unintentionally, tends to flatten or ignore the diverse linguistic, cultural, and personal worlds that learners bring through the door with them.

Drawing on critical pedagogy particularly Freire's foundational critique of 'banking' education alongside Norton's work on identity and investment, and research on dialogic teaching, the paper makes a case for narrative-based classroom practices as a meaningful route toward genuine inclusion. The argument is not that narrative is a magic solution, but rather that when learners are treated as active contributors to classroom knowledge rather than passive receivers of it, something shifts both in terms of what the classroom feels like and what it is able to accomplish. Teachers, too, are repositioned in this model: less as authorities delivering content, more as facilitators of exchange. The paper closes with a set of practical implications for ELT practitioners working in real institutional conditions, where inclusion is not always straightforwardly achievable but is, the paper maintains, always worth pursuing.

Keywords:inclusive pedagogy, ELT, classroom narratives, learner agency, critical pedagogy, dialogic interaction, learner identity, intercultural awareness

Introduction

Language classrooms are not neutral spaces but sites where identities are constructed, this much, at least, has become something of a truism in applied linguistics. But it is worth pausing to ask what that statement actually means in practice. When a learner walks into an ELT classroom, they bring with them a whole world: a linguistic history, a cultural identity, a set of experiences and assumptions about what learning means and what English is for. The question is whether the classroom is structured in a way that acknowledges that world, or one that asks the learner to set it aside at the door.

In English Language Teaching (ELT), the prevailing tendency has long been to view learners as recipients of knowledge wherein containers are to be filled with pre-determined content delivered through standardized curricula and textbooks. This is not necessarily done with bad intentions; standardisation has its own logic, particularly in large-scale educational systems. But the effect, too often, is a classroom that speaks in one voice and expects learners to adapt to it, rather than one that makes space for the multiplicity of voices that are actually in the room.

This paper is concerned with what it might look like to do things differently. Specifically, the central claim advanced here is that when classroom narratives are opened up to include the voices and perspectives of those most directly affected by the educational process, the English language classroom becomes not only a more just and equitable space, but also a more effective one for language acquisition and development.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Chandreyee Sarkar Mitra
Assistant Professor Grade III
JAIN, Deemed-to be University
chandreyeesarkar.m@jainuniversity.ac.in
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