Chilean EFL student teachers and social justice: ambiguity and uncertainties in understanding their professional pedagogical responsibility

ABSTRACT

Professional pedagogical responsibility (PPR) for teachers does not only mean to meet deadlines or attend meetings, but also to be conscious of how their actions can contribute to challenging inequities in society. Thus, it is imperative that teachers of English embrace the responsibility of teaching English as a tool to promote social justice. This article reports on a qualitative study to understand how seven pre-service teachers developed a sense of PPR and to what extent participants’ discourse revealed a sense of social justice. Data were collected through a number of semi-structured interviews that required participants to reflect on different practicum experiences and expectations for their future work as teachers of English. The results demonstrated different degrees of PPR ranging from resistance to high levels of agency. These different degrees were shaped by personal drives such as preservice teachers’ motives for teaching English, but also by social and contextual factors such as expectations and requirements of the practicum. The outcomes also suggested that most preservice teachers were unaware of their role as change agents. The paper concludes with implications on how the integration of a social justice perspective in initial English language teacher education programmes can strengthen their professional responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional responsibility
• teacher agency
• foreign language teachers
• EFL
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Project was approved by the ethics committee Comité de Bioética y Bioseguridad Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in November 2017 (BIOEPUCV-H161-2017) and audited in June 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico [FONDECYT Nº 11170340,FONDECYT Nº 1210867].

Notes on contributors

Malba Barahona

Malba Barahona is an Associate Professor in the Facultad de Educación at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Malba’s primary research relates to issues of identity and agency that mediate foreign language teacher education.

Ximena Ibaceta-Quijanes

Ximena Ibaceta-Quijanes is a teacher of English as a foreign language with experience in primary and secondary education. She is also a teacher educator at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile. Her research interests are connected with teaching EFL inclusively in the regular classroom and the development of teacher agency.