“Teaching the essay like a hamburger”: Social Studies Teacher Candidates and Writing Instruction

• In Event: Preparing for Equity and Justice: A Multi-Perspectival Exploration of One Urban Teacher Preparation Program

Abstract

Objectives
When writing happens in social studies classrooms it is often written summaries or in preparation for standardized exams (Nokes & De La Paz, 2018; Kiuhara et. al., 2009). Yet, it has the potential to support meaningful disciplinary inquiry (Author, 2023), challenge hegemonic power relationships (de los Ríos, 2020), and encourage critical civic engagement (Franquíz & Salinas, 2011). Supporting pre-service social studies teachers (PSTs) in enacting culturally responsive (Paris, 2012) writing instruction may be one way to shift towards more liberatory ends. However, this requires modeling by university teacher-educators and examples of practice in field placements (Clarke et al., 2014; Clift & Brady, 2005). Though literature exists about PSTs’ learning to teach writing (e.g., Salinas et. al., 2016), little is known about the role of field placements in this process. Hence, we ask the following research question: What writing related experiences do pre-service social studies teachers report in their student teaching placements?

Theoretical Framework
Scholars and policymakers have pushed to make teacher education more practice-based, through increased fieldwork and refocusing university coursework on opportunities to see, learn about, rehearse, and enact teaching (Jenset et al., 2018). However, when the "two-worlds pitfall" (Braaten, 2019; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985) disconnects university-based teacher education classrooms and field placements, questions persist about how pre-service teachers negotiate these differences (Hebard, 2016).

Methods
This multi-case analysis (Yin, 2017) sits within a multi-year practitioner research project (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) studying how social studies PSTs learn to teach writing. We draw on 1) semi- structured interviews (n=12) conducted at the beginning and end of the year; and 2) pre-, mid-year, and post-surveys (n=18) from the 2022-23 school year with PSTs (n=6) in one methods course (See Table 1 for demographics and field placement context). Through several rounds of flexible coding (Deterding & Waters, 2021), we triangulated across interviews and surveys to identify writing-related experiences in field placements.

Findings
Five of the six PSTs reported seeing writing instruction once per week (or less) on average across the year, and when they elaborated on what they saw, they described structured writing (e.g. "TEXAS" or "hamburger" paragraphs), five-paragraph essays, summaries, or short answer writing. Two PSTs reported students writing one essay, and one reported a writing focused project.

However, PSTs describe trying to bring writing into their student teaching with more frequency and variety. Sydney, who described her classroom mentor rarely asking students to write, engaged her students in op-ed writing on current events related to capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Five PSTs asked students to write in ways beyond the five-paragraph essay and offered students scaffolds, such as writing conferences or models, even when those were not strategies that their classroom mentors typically used.

Significance
We are encouraged by PSTs reframing of writing as a collaborative, iterative, and sociopolitical act. We hope this analysis sparks further research around the paucity of disciplinary, authentic, and culturally sustaining writing in field placement classrooms, and the implications this has for social studies PSTs learning to teach writing.

Authors

• Andrew del Calvo, University of Pennsylvania

• Amy Guillotte, University of Pennsylvania