Teachers promoting advocacy through social justice English language education: A collaborative action research study

Abstract This article reports on a 2‐year collaborative action research project carried out in 2022–2023, which investigated the intersection of social justice and advocacy in English language teaching. The aim was to describe how English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers working at state secondary schools in two Argentinian cities harnessed their agency to mobilise advocacy among their secondary school students. Theoretically grounded in social justice language education, advocacy in language education, and teacher agency, participants were seven in‐service EFL teachers, five pre‐service teachers, and 220 secondary school students, of whom 30 were adult learners. Research instruments comprised open‐ended questionnaires, teaching artefacts, lesson plans, classroom observations and interviews. Reflective thematic analysis was used. Findings indicate that the teachers enacted a set of principles as their identity as advocates for social justice through situated pedagogical practices: (a) teachers’ reflexivity, (b) shift from a focus‐on‐form teaching approach to critical approaches to language teaching, (c) localisation, (d) social responsibility and action cultivation and (e) synergy between teachers’ and students’ agency. Teacher agency, mobilised through reflection and action, became a driving force and an organising device. Implications for language teacher education for social justice and advocacy are considered.