Identity-Focused-Creation as a Catalyst for Language Teacher Preparation in the Post-Multilingual Era

How can teachers working with plurilingual students conceptualize and implement pedagogical practices that reflect a postmultilingual view? How can they be empowered with the skills, knowledges, and sensibilities to rethink language education that prioritizes equity, inclusion, and social justice, ensuring that all students – regardless of their linguistic backgrounds – have the opportunity to succeed and thrive in a linguistically diverse world? This paper responds to these questions by embracing the power of fostering linguistic and cultural collaboration through the design of critical, creative, and collaborative multilingual and multimodal ( Prasad & Lory, 2020 ) teacher autobiographies. It brings together the voices of one scholar and three early years language educators. Based on the premise that transformation in language teacher education starts with critical self-reflexivity ( López-Gopar & Sughrua, 2023 ), we explore the power of art-infused autobiographies to help language teachers challenge and transform traditional, colonial approaches to language teaching by centring their experiences, perspectives, and voices. As we weave our narratives, we articulate the manner in which we embraced art-infused autobiographies, the affordances research-creation provided us, and the challenges we uncovered while carrying out identity-infused research-creation.