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The purpose of this qualitative collective case study was to explore preservice teachers’ developing professional identities and visions of teaching literacy across the curriculum within the context of a middle childhood education literacy methods course. The pedagogical structuring of the course provided the preservice teachers with opportunities to explore their tensions and beliefs as current university students and future middle school content area teachers. The learning experiences afforded the preservice teachers opportunities for reflection, dialogic engagement, and visioning throughout the semester. Participants in the study were three middle childhood education preservice teachers enrolled in a literacy methods course at a private liberal arts university. Multiple sources of data were collected which included field notes, questionnaires, course assignments, and interviews. The data was analyzed using the constant comparative method. Results indicated that the course positively contributed to the preservice teachers’ professional development. The preservice teachers gained an increased awareness of their educational beliefs and the influence of their beliefs on future pedagogical decision-making. Additionally, the preservice teachers gained insight as they repositioned themselves throughout the semester and identified essential traits of effective middle school teachers they hoped to espouse and enact in their future classrooms. By using the conceptual tool of visioning, the preservice teachers gained clearsightedness, or increased clarity of the importance of their beliefs on the teaching of literacy across the curriculum. Moreover, visioning contributed to the preservice teachers’ farsightedness as they became forward-thinkers and were able to more concretely envision multiple aspects of teaching at the middle school level. |
