Layering, making, becoming: an a/r/tographic feminist new materialist enquiry into student teachers’ pedagogy through collage

This article makes a methodological contribution to the growing field of arts-based educational research by theorising magazine collage as a feminist new materialist research method for investigating pedagogical becoming among student teachers. Positioned as an a/r/tographer, working at the living intersection of artist, researcher and teacher, I argue through this article that conventional research methods, grounded in representational and linguistic logics, cannot fully capture the embodied, affective and material realities of becoming a teacher\ collage, conducted within a feminist new materialist framework, offers a rigorous alternative that honours these dimensions. The article details the design, enactment and analytical approach of a doctoral study involving four undergraduate student teachers, drawing on specific aspects from two participants’ large-format collages to illustrate how collage generates methodologically significant knowledge: through material engagement, visual metaphor, the entanglement of showing and narrating, and the diffractive use of the researcher’s own canvas. A three-phase analytical framework – Initial Visual Immersion, Analysis of Conversations and Diffractive Reading – is presented as a replicable methodological approach for researchers working within post-qualitative and feminist new materialist traditions. The article argues that collage does not merely represent participants’ experiences, but also participates in bringing new meanings into being, making it uniquely suited to research that takes seriously the material, affective and relational dimensions of professional becoming.