ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the constitutive role of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) as a cultural discourse of action and empowerment through which subordinated people act as agents of social and educational change. It examines the intersection between a top-down discourse of rights related to educational equality, and a bottom-up social struggle constituted within a culture of action that feeds on notions of agency and responsibility. Considering how EFL education is largely constrained by state-controlled institutions with a delineated hierarchy of power, the chapter also examines the power that subordinate groups could mobilize socially, culturally, and educationally. Constructing a critical basis for educational action entails a challenge to prevalent reform discourses that call for a top-down “salvation”. Advancing notions of agency and responsibility could help to constitute a culture of action in which marginalized populations break their silence, and activate their agentive capabilities to act creatively within their schools, classrooms, communities, families, and other socio-cultural arenas.
