The Decolonizing Potential of Creative Autobiographies in Exploring Plurilingual Teacher Identities

ABSTRACT The call for second language teacher education (SLTE) to embrace teacher identity is not new. There is a growing body of research that theorizes teacher identity, focuses on the centrality of teacher identity in teacher learning and professional growth and highlights the impact of teacher identity on their pedagogical practices. However, little is known about how teacher education can integrate identity‐oriented practices into their programs or the impact of these practices on teachers. Building on Yazan's (2018) call to infuse autobiographical work to foreground teacher identity, this paper reports on an autobiographical creation activity aimed to help teachers reflect on their identities using creative means carried out in a graduate‐level Teaching English as an Additional Language (TEAL) program. It brings together the voices of the teacher educator who introduced the autobiographical creation project and two graduate students who created autobiographies. They critically discuss the core elements of the project, provide concrete examples of autobiographical creations, the processes involved in the creation and the challenges encountered as educators and graduate students in implementing and constructing the creativity‐induced autobiography. This critical reflection brings to the foreground the decolonizing potential of creative autobiographies in helping plurilingual teachers explore their identities.