ABSTRACT
Firmly established as a core theory-practice construct to teacher education and learning development, language teacher identity (LTI) today exerts great influence upon familiar learner characteristics, sociocultural contexts, and identity-agency negotiations in communities of practice. Such emphasis compels teachers and students to (re)define and (re)assert their respective roles and agentive actions during discoursal interactions. And while the use of digital storytelling (DS) has already been widely employed in the professional literature focusing on the identities of pre- or in-service teachers in different disciplines, a select few educators to date have applied DS in LTI-related research specifically, or, as I call it herein, digitals stories with a twist (or DS+). Addressing this gap, this chapter showcases how DS+ storytelling can help doctoral students reflect on their current and desired roles as language professionals. Enrolled in a summer course on the use of educational technology in language education, these students were capable in exploring their identities within distinct learning-oriented practices. Their dialogic explorations, reported here collectively as dynamic, ever-evolving insights, offer much fodder for further critical study and reflection certain to validate the claims this chapter proposes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications DS+ has for future research and practice.
