Decoloniality in higher education pedagogy: English teachers’ dialogic practices in a Thai university

While decoloniality has gained increasing attention in language education scholarship, limited empirical research has examined how it is enacted in everyday classroom practice within Southeast Asian universities, particularly in the Thai higher education context. Drawing on in-depth interviews with four English teachers at a Thai university, this qualitative study explores how decolonial ideas are interpreted, negotiated, and applied within structurally constrained higher education contexts. The findings show that participants conceptualise decoloniality primarily as a challenge to native-speakerism and linguistic hierarchies privileging British and American English. In response, they validate diverse English varieties, affirm Thai-accented English, localise teaching materials, and integrate Thai cultural content. They also use translanguaging strategically as they navigate the ongoing influence of standardised testing and institutional expectations. The study argues that decoloniality in Thai ELT emerges as a dialogic, context-sensitive praxis rather than a rejection of Western knowledge.