Establishing an Inclusive TESOL Research Community in Chile

The aim of this chapter is to share the experience of creating and sustaining a grassroots, self-governed, non-profit TESOL research community of practice in Chile—Red Chilena de Investigación en English Language Teaching (RICELT). The RICELT network was founded in 2014 with the aim of connecting academics, school teachers, and student teachers researching English language teaching (ELT). In this chapter, I introduce initiatives developed by this network and how these initiatives serve to value the work of teacher-researchers who have been marginalized from contributing to and learning from academic scholarship. The milestones and challenges of sustaining a research community of practice that advocates for social responsibility and inclusion in language teaching research, which can be inaccessible to and removed from teachers’ real-world experiences are also presented. The chapter closes with a discussion of the future directions of RICELT and reflections on the role of research organizations in local communities.