Social justice and intercultural education have become central concerns in international English Language teacher education research. However, dominant approaches often remain grounded in Eurocentric epistemologies that privilege standardized accounts of practice and overlook the lived, relational, and culturally situated dimensions of educators’ work. As a result, teacher educators’ forms of knowledge, particularly those emerging from the Global South, are frequently marginalized within conventional research designs. Against this backdrop, this study seeks to answer: How decolonial and arts-based methodologies foster more situated, relational, and humanizing understandings of how teacher educators conceptualize and enact social justice within initial English language teacher education programs?

This paper presents preliminary findings from an ongoing doctoral research project conducted in initial English language teacher education in Chile, a field shaped by persistent inequalities related to language, access, and cultural representation. The study is theoreticall grounded on decolonial perspectives that challenge the coloniality of knowledge and call for pluriversal, intercultural, and relational forms of inquiry. Responding to current debates about the societal role and accountability of education research, the project conceptualizes knowledge production as collaborative, creative, and ethically grounded, recognizing participants as co-theorists rather than objects of study. Drawing on Latin American traditions of testimonios and arts-based inquiry, the research foregrounds educators’ lived experiences as legitimate epistemic resources.

Methodologically, the study follows a qualitative multi-case research design with two teacher educators. Each case integrates three complementary approaches: in-depth testimonios, classroom observations, and collaborative collage-making workshops. Rather than using these methods to triangulate toward a single truth, they work as multimodal entry points into discursive, embodied, and affective dimensions of experience, enabling forms of knowing that are often excluded from conventional interview, or survey-based studies.

Preliminary findings indicate that these participatory and creative methodologies make visible how social justice is enacted through situated, everyday pedagogical decisions rather than abstract policy commitments alone. Participants describe their work as relational and intercultural, shaped by tensions between institutional constraints, personal histories, and commitments to students and communities. The collage workshops, in particular, surface contradictions and tacit understandings that remain difficult to articulate verbally, while also fostering more horizontal and reflexive research relationships. In this way, the research process itself becomes a site of learning and collective theorizing.

The study contributes methodologically by advancing testimonios and arts-based practices as rigorous approaches for conducting socially accountable and humanizing research in teacher education. Conceptually, it broadens international debates on social justice by centering perspectives from Latin America and the Global South, offering insights that resonate beyond Chile and speak to diverse educational contexts, including European settings. By foregrounding collaborative and creative forms of knowledge production, the paper invites dialogue on how education research can better respond to contemporary social inequalities and interconnected global challenges.

This study follows a qualitative, decolonial, and arts-based research design that understands knowledge production as relational, situated, and co-constructed rather than extractive. In line with participatory and humanizing research traditions, teacher educators are positioned as collaborators and co-theorists whose experiences constitute legitimate sources of knowledge. The study forms part of an ongoing doctoral project and follows a multi-case design within Chilean initial English language teacher education programs. As part of a broader multi-case doctoral project conducted in Chilean initial English language teacher education programs, this paper focuses on two teacher educators responsible for preparing future English language teachers in a private university in Santiago, Chile, selected as in-depth cases to explore diverse professional trajectories and institutional contexts. Rooted in Latin American oral and decolonial traditions, testimonios function in this study as both methodological and pedagogical practices that disrupt colonial hierarchies of knowledge. Rather than treating participants’ narratives as descriptive accounts, testimonios are approached as performative and collective acts of meaning-making through which teacher educators critically reflect on their identities, positionalities, and experiences of privilege, marginalization, and social justice. By centering participants’ voices, testimonios create dialogic and reflexive spaces that foreground situated and relational ways of knowing and position educators as co-interpreters of their own practice. Each case integrates three complementary sources of knowledge that attend to discursive, embodied, and material dimensions of practice. First, in-depth testimonios were conducted as life-history-oriented conversations. Second, classroom observations documented how participants’ understandings of social justice were enacted in everyday pedagogical interactions, focusing on relational practices, curricular decisions, and responses to students. Third, a collaborative collage-making workshop invited participants to visually and materially represent their beliefs, tensions, and aspirations, enabling forms of expression that extend beyond verbal accounts. Rather than using these methods for triangulation or validation, they function as multimodal entry points into different ways of knowing. Data generation and analysis were iterative and recursive, combining narrative analysis of testimonios, fieldnotes from observations, and visual analysis of collages alongside dialogic conversations with participants to support collective interpretation and reflexivity.

The present research study contributes to international conversations on social justice and intercultural education by proposing decolonial and arts-based methodologies not only as analytical tools but also as ethical and practical commitments for teacher education research and practice. Drawing on preliminary findings from an ongoing doctoral project, the paper demonstrates how testimonios, classroom observations, and collaborative arts-based practices can function as complementary and humanizing approaches that center educators’ voices and reposition participants as co-theorists rather than objects of inquiry. These multimodal strategies make visible relational, affective, and embodied dimensions of practice that are often overlooked in conventional research designs. Conceptually, the study expands understandings of social justice in teacher education by foregrounding situated perspectives from Chile and the Global South, challenging Eurocentric assumptions about how professional knowledge is produced and validated. By aligning research design with principles of participation, dialogue, and reflexivity, the project models forms of knowledge production that are themselves socially accountable. Preliminary findings suggest that testimonios and arts-based activities can be incorporated into teacher education programs as structured opportunities for collective reflection, critical dialogue, and professional learning. This may be particularly relevant in contexts such as English language teacher education, where issues of language, linguistic hierarchies, and unequal access to English often intensify existing social and educational inequalities. Such practices may support teacher educators in examining how their positionalities, institutional constraints, and community commitments shape their pedagogical decisions, fostering more context-responsive and intercultural approaches to teaching. Beyond the Chilean context, these insights offer transferable possibilities for European and other international settings seeking more equitable, collaborative, and culturally responsive ways to research and support teacher education.

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