ABSTRACT
As more teacher education programs commit to developing critically conscious educators, it has become increasingly important to provide teacher candidates with opportunities to explore and enact their advocacy capacity within authentic contexts. In our teacher education program, our candidates are introduced to the idea of social justice as a means in which to consider equity and access historically within educational systems and as a lens in which to view current policies and practices. This chapter illustrates how teacher candidates came to embrace their role as agentive forces that strived to contribute to the empowerment of their learners through macro-level policies and curriculum design to micro-level shifts in positionality of self as teacher as well as practices to support emerging advocacy needs of their students in one community-based English language program.
