"My English seems not enough": Moving from language deficit views to Kazakhstani CLIL teachers' funds of knowledge.

Our paper addresses the prevalent native speaker fallacy embedded in policies mandating teachers of other languages to use English as the medium of instruction. We propose an alternative perspective to shift the focus from Kazakhstani teachers' perceived English language deficiencies to their funds of knowledge (FoK) and lived experiences within the CLIL framework. We used a qualitative design, including various data sets such as teacher reflections, observations, narrative descriptions, and focus group interviews to explore biology teachers' practices and lived experiences in CLIL classes. Findings reveal that teachers are navigating shifting epistemic stances and social constructivist pedagogies and adopting flexible linguistic strategies. Our paper calls for a new perspective on local pedagogies and concludes that a FoK lens offers a vantage point to challenge Western or global epistemological dominance while also demonstrating how Western systems can meaningfully integrate within local contexts when we consider contextual differences as relevant variations in interpretation and practice. We conclude that a centre-based FoK framework redirected our gaze from measuring teachers against a Western-oriented standard, allowing us to foreground teachers' professional identities and practice-based EMI pedagogies as locally and contextually relevant.