The public education system in the U.S. has been under assault with the latest neoliberal education reforms. Those reforms are characterized by their antidemocratic and homogenizing assessment system, which reinforces a banking model of education. Such model goes against teachers and teaching, linguistic and cultural diversity and bilingual education. In order to countervail this reality, this research urged pre-service teachers in a Foundations of Bilingual Education/ ESL college coursework to engage in a problem-posing and emancipatory pedagogy. The main purpose was for them to nurture and enhance political clarity and political agency in issues of bilingual and ESL education. Students not only engaged in dismantling hegemonic discourses in bilingual and ESL education in the U.S., but also went through an epistemological break when the teacher-researcher invited students to become co-researchers in order to co-construct the curriculum and pedagogical realities. Readings, journals, personal narratives, dialogue and theater of the oppressed became the vehicles for engagement. The transformative process of the teacher-researcher and co-researchers occurred when they deliberately transitioned from a pedagogy that promotes passive citizens to a pedagogy that promotes collective emancipation. The research paradigm that aligned with those experiences was Participatory Action Research (PAR). Central to PAR is radical participatory democracy. Through self-collective development and reliance, participants transform themselves and find alternatives to defeat injustices. Pre-service and in-service teachers and teacher education can benefit from the following results: (1) the transformative effect of a dialogic research (2) the lessons the teacher-researcher learned (3) how theater of the oppressed could have been central to the vivencia, instead it was supplementary and still the door for infinite possibilities (4) the viability of PAR as a vivencia embedded in undergraduate education major and (5) the extraordinary case of Sofia's (co-researcher) ongoing advocacy. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]