This research analyzed a university-based ESL teacher education programmaticcurriculum in the state of Michigan, with the intention to highlight the affordances and constraints of curriculum making for preparing teachers with critical awareness of and activist stance toward sociolinguistic inequalities. I synthesized a Knowledge Framework for Preparing Teachers of Multilingual Learners and its core dimension, critical multilingual awareness (CMLA), was the focus of my curriculum analysis. CMLA has four components: 1) Knowledge of Language (User), 2) Knowledge about Language (Analyst), 3) Pedagogical Practices of Language Teaching (Teacher), and 4) Language Activism (Activist). The findings suggested that this ESL education program curriculum drew knowledge produced in multiple disciplines concerning language teaching and learning and addressed all four components of CMLA. Further analysis illuminated a triple-faceted theoretical disjuncture that compromised curricular space for Language Activism at the program level. Moreover, my analysis of a focal group of instructors highlighted their agentive curricular work that to varied degrees temporarily reconciled the theoretical disjuncture and extended space for Language Activism. I argue for a ‘people-centered’ approach to ESL teacher education curriculum making that centers the multilingual and social being of multilingual learners. In addition, the instructors’ curriculum (re)making, negotiating an in-betweenness of a hierarchical sociolinguistic reality and a plurilingual democratic futurity, extended the concept of Language Activism.
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