Materialities in Researching Language Teacher Multilingual Identity

Dominant Language Constellations (DLC) provide an innovative methodological tool for researching multilingualism and identity in language teacher education contexts. Based on the study of materialities and their affordances, this chapter explores the creation of DLC artefacts in a pre-service teacher education program in Norway and an in-service course in Portugal from a methodological perspective. These material tools (the DLC artefact) provide the teacher participants with agentic tools to create individual biographical trajectories, which aim to uncover ideologies, beliefs and attitudes about living and working multilingually. In conjunction with reflective narratives, the DLC artefact, a produced object of multilinguistic significance, can be conceptualized as a potential change agent. This chapter addresses the challenges of analyzing objects imbued with personal meanings, by questioning the surface-level, albeit creative, affordances of the material narrative of the DLC artefact. In order to go deeper, I explore the DLC artefacts and reflective narratives through a manifest, readily observable, and a latent, hidden and interpretative, lens. I will demonstrate the potential of this dual-lens approach to contributing to a deeper engagement with subjective multilingualism in teacher education and compare the shifting perspectives of pre- and in-service teachers through their material, reflective voices.