In this paper we make an argument for paying close attention to the materiality of practice in understanding the work of teacher educators; specifically, the meanings of artefacts used by teacher educators in the course of their daily work. We locate this analysis within a dialectical materialist understanding of the development of human activity, providing examples of artefacts-in-use in initial teacher education and the meanings accorded to these artefacts by the teacher educators we observed and interviewed. Our aim is to make a case for what is afforded epistemologically when researchers pay attention to artefacts from a dialectical materialist viewpoint. In the final part of the paper, we argue that paying attention to how teacher educators engage with artefacts can help us understand the unity of psychological and social processes within dominant approaches to teacher education, as well as providing clues about how adaptation of artefacts can drive cultural change.