LOCAL TEXTBOOK PRODUCTION AS DECOLONIAL PRAXIS: COLLABORATIVE DESIGN, WORKFLOW, AND EPISTEMIC INTERVENTION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ZEITGEIST

This article examines Zeitgeist, a collaboratively authored German language textbook produced in Brazilian public universities, as a decolonial pedagogical intervention and model of locally grounded materials design. Based on critical document analysis and a reconstruction of the collaborative workflow, the study shows how decolonial principles shaped planning, writing, piloting, revision, and multimodal production. It highlights thematic organization, pluricentric phonetics, authentic texts, participatory authorship, and diverse voices and accents as resistance to Eurocentric textbook models. By presenting this workflow as adaptable, the article offers guidance for Global South contexts working with limited funding and uneven infrastructure. Zeitgeist thus emerges as an epistemic praxis that redefines whose knowledge shapes language education.

Keywords
decoloniality; textbook development; collaborative authorship; German as an Additional Language; Global South