In the last decade, unprecedented events have taken place in the larger social, political and economic contexts in Europe, especially with the wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Brexit, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic. These dramatic changes have challenged language teacher education policies, practices, and discourses preordained by neoliberal ideologies (Conchran-Smith, 2010; Kaur, 2012; Zeichner, 2010). The past 15 years have witnessed an increased attention towards social justice in teacher education, significantly increasing the number of teacher education programs with a social justice orientation, especially in the US (Zeichner, 2006). The countries in Europe (e.g., Finland)  have also begun to engage with social justice issues as part of their language education curriculum (Ennser-Kananen, 2021; Saarinen & Ennser-Kananen, 2020). The Council of Europe’s 2018 Companion to CEFR, for instance, was considered a milestone for underlining the role of languages in human rights and social justice (Council of Europe, 2018). As a reflection of these developments, several small-scale conferences have been held across the world, such as University of Jyväskylä’s Language Education for Social Justice in 2021, Finland and Sinop University’s Symposium on Social Justice in ELT that was held in 2019 and 2022, Turkey.

Teacher education for social justice not only develops teachers’ critical consciousness but also engages them in social transformative action (Hastings & Jacob, 2016; Hawkins, 2011; Nieto, 2010). The research on social justice teacher education mostly focused on teacher candidates and outlined the knowledge, skills, abilities as well as the attitudes and dispositions social justice educators need in order to provide equitable, anti-oppressive, and inclusive pedagogies to their learners (Ayers et al., 2009; Cochran Smith, 2004; Hawkins, 2011; McLaren & Fischman, 1998). 

Within the fields of applied linguistics and language education, social justice language teacher education has also emerged as a field that enables language teachers to build bridges between course content, their own lived experiences, and the needs of their local communities (Avineri et al., 2019; Ortactepe Hart & Martel, 2020). While emphasis has been given to the learning and unlearning processes of language teachers (i.e., unlearning unearned privileges, stereotypes and biases) and developing them as advocates and allies (Braden, Lund, Hatch, 2020; Linville & Whiting, 2019), exactly how social justice language teacher education leads to social change, and the role language teachers play as teachers/activists remain unexplored. Therefore, this study examines the extent to which social responsibility projects language teachers carry out in their schools and local communities help them develop their critical consciousness and (re)construct their identities as teachers/activists. Our overarching research question was: 

• In what ways do social responsibility projects help language teachers (re)construct their identities as teachers/activists? 

This study draws on a large-scale project, funded by the US Embassy Ankara in Turkey. This project aimed to illustrate how policies and practices related to pre-service English language teacher training can be deconstructed and then reconstructed through the framework of social justice. First, we, as the project coordinators and researchers, visited different universities in Turkey, introduced our project to fourth-year pre-service English language teachers, and recruited our participants. Second, the participants received training designed as four different webinars, each with focus on different social justice issues including environmental justice and sustainability, gender equality, LGBTQ+ inclusive pedagogies, and immigration and peacebuilding. After each webinar, they carried out critical blog activities and designed lesson plans. Following the webinars, each pre-service teacher, as an agent of social and educational change, carried out a social responsibility project (SRP) in their local context. Participants of the present study are the five pre-service English language teachers who participated in the larger project mentioned above.

Participants of the present study are five pre-service English language teachers who studied at different public universities in Turkey. This study employed multiple case study design and used several instruments for data collection, including post-project critical reflections, post-project interviews, blog posts, lesson plans, webinar recordings, and multimodal project products (e.g., animated videos, testimonies, and instructional materials). The data were analyzed using thematic analysis (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Glesne, 2015; Seidman, 2019). The process included a within-case and cross-case analysis. First, for within case analysis, we individually read the hard copies of all data coming from one participant so as to understand one particular case from a longitudinal perspective. Second, for cross-case analysis, we applied axial coding in order to compare and combine the codes and categories in a way to holistically capture all participants’ identity (re)construction as teachers/activists. Only after a thorough within case analysis, we started conducting a cross-case analysis to compare the emergent themes from each participant and to make cross-comparisons between them. The target social responsibility projects in this study focused on the following issues: ableism, genderism, racism, and social justice in the broader sense. The first project, We-slexia, aimed to promote pre-service language teachers’ awareness of dyslexia and dyslexic students in the language classroom. To this end, seminars were held in the English language teaching (ELT) departments of different universities and an open virtual resource center was created for teachers and students to access various materials. The second project “Words on the Street” aimed to draw people’s attention to social justice issues by projecting the shadows of different social justice related words stitched to a veil which was displayed on university campus. The third project, Using Theatre to Raise Awareness on Social Justice Issues: Bullying, focused on developing students’ social justice awareness on bullying through theatrical performance held in different schools in the pre-service teacher’s local context. The fourth project “A Movie without Roles” aimed to attract attention to gender inequalities by shooting a short movie in which the pre-service teacher, along with some of her friends, acted out characters that reversed gender roles and rebelled against the inequalities they were exposed to. The fifth and final project, Drama and Children’s Literature: Raising Awareness towards Social Justice Issues, integrated drama and picture storybooks from children’s literature to promote young learners’ awareness on social justice issues like gender inequality and racism.

The preliminary results revealed the role of social responsibility projects in terms of developing language teachers’ critical consciousness as well as dispositions as teachers/activists who have the knowledge and skills to confront social injustices. The early results also indicated the potential risks involved in carrying out such projects as our participants stated that they often feared being accused of indoctrination and ideological imposition. These results confirm Jeyaraj and Harland’s (2016) study that the disruption of “taken-for-granted assumptions and … the political and social status quo” ( p. 593) is often criticized in the public discourses. In his drama-based project, Nazim, for instance, faced similar accusations and criticisms, but handled them through strong determination and effective communication, underlying the importance of teacher agency in pursuing a social justice approach in schools and communities. The participants of our study also started to question their previously held beliefs and see the world “not as a static reality, but as reality in process, in transformation” (Freire, 1971, p. 83), which, we believe, contributed to transformation to some extent in order to build a just and equitable world. Based on the results, suggestions and implications are offered to implement similar extra-curricular endeavors to raise English language teachers’ awareness of social justice issues and participation in activities that bring about social transformation. The findings and implications of this study are relevant not only for Turkey which receives funds from the European Union to host the largest number of refugees in the world, but also for all European countries that deal with similar issues around diversity, inclusion and social justice.

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