Alastair Grant

Alastair Grant is an experienced teacher trainer, academic director, ELT author and public speaker. He is a teacher trainer for International House Mexico, where he runs the Cambridge Delta 3 teaching diploma, and a teacher trainer for International House Montevideo, where he runs the Cambridge Delta 1 and Cambridge Delta 3 teaching diplomas. Alastair is part of the evaluation and assessment unit at the Ministry of Education for the City of Buenos Aires and is Head of English at Colegio Nuevo de Las Lomas in Buenos Aires.

Alastair has taught on the profesorado de inglés at the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional in Buenos Aires, where he has lectured on both Discourse Analysis and Methodology. He has also taught at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco. Alastair holds an Honours Degree in English Literature and Philosophy from the University of Warwick in the UK, has completed the International House Certificate of Advanced Methodology, all modules of the Cambridge Delta, and the Cambridge Train the Trainer Certificate. Alastair is founder of the Together for Ukraine teacher development project, a series of free talks and webinars to support teachers from Ukraine, and co-founder of the We’re All in This Together teacher development project, set up to support teachers worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Teaching as a Subversive Act: Reclaiming Critical Thinking in ELT

“The questions we ask determine the answers we get — and the kind of people we become” (Postman & Weingartner, 1969). In an age of standardised testing, algorithmic answers, and AIgenerated essays, critical thinking risks becoming little more than a buzzword. But what if our job as teachers isn’t to provide answers, but to disrupt them? This session takes a bold look at teaching as a subversive act — one that challenges conformity, nurtures doubt, and equips learners to interrogate the world, not just describe it. Drawing on Postman’s radical vision, we’ll explore three powerful shifts: from content delivery to question culture, from passive acceptance to active inquiry, and from surface communication to deep dialogue. Join us as we reframe the ELT classroom not as a place for compliance, but for intellectual resistance. Because in a world flooded with information, the real revolution is learning to think.