“Times Are Changing and You’ve Got to Keep Up”: Preservice Teachers Negotiating Contemporary Literacy Pedagogy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Digital Literacies in Preservice Teacher Education

Abstract

Increasingly, there have been persistent calls to integrate a multiple literacies approach in pre-service teacher education; however limited research exists on pre-service teachers’ experiences with multiple literacies during their program of study. This qualitative study examines how 10 pre-service teachers construct conceptions of literacy and enact literacy pedagogy over a two-year teacher education program. Findings suggest that over the course of their teacher education studies the majority of pre-service teachers’ conceptions of literacy broadened. They exhibited a growing awareness of how their previous schooled literacy experiences have informed their assumptions of what counts as literacy. They also developed a more nuanced understanding of pupils’ literacy needs and the influence of contemporary communication practices on literacy teaching.

Authors

• Lydia Menna, OISE/University of Toronto

• Clare Kosnik, University of Toronto