I See You, We Become: Velfies and the Embodied Becoming of Justice-Oriented Teachers

This study examines how pre-service teachers conceptualize the power of education to challenge and delegitimize social inequalities, and how they articulate these understandings through video-selfies (velfies)—short, self-recorded multimodal performances combining voice, gesture, image, and affect. Conducted within an undergraduate teacher education program in Romania, the research engaged candidates in embodied, narrative, and performative reflection on issues of inequality, recognition, empowerment, and professional identity. Using interpretative video analysis (IVA) informed by multimodal social semiotics, we identified and examined moments of narrative and affective density (“instances”) across 17 velfies. These were assembled into three recurring pathways of justice-oriented becoming: Maria and the stories of inequality , I see you , and I am a future creator . The pathways reveal how participants moved from recognizing structural inequities, to enacting pedagogical presence and care, to imagining themselves as agents of educational transformation. Beyond generating research data, velfies functioned as embodied pedagogies, making visible the emotional, ethical, and relational dimensions of teaching for justice. The findings demonstrate that multimodal, performative reflection can deepen critical awareness, disrupt deficit narratives, and support the formation of justice-oriented teacher identities.