“Being a Writer Is Not Something I Wear Right Now”: The Writing Identities of Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers

Abstract

Writing is an integral part of social studies; however, teaching writing in both disciplinary and culturally sustaining ways to build students’ repertoires is complex work for new teachers. This multiple case study investigates the writing-related identities of six secondary social studies teacher candidates (TCs) in a yearlong, university-based teacher education program. It operationalizes the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) to illustrate relationships within and across TCs’ past, present, and emerging writing-related role identities (e.g., elementary school student, emerging social studies teacher). Our analysis identified four patterns and three tensions within and across TCs’ writing-related role identities; these may serve as both resources and obstacles for developing TCs’ social studies teacher role identities around cultivating students’ disciplinary and culturally sustaining repertoires of writing. An important implication for this work lies in designing social studies methods instruction that supports TCs to explore their writing-related identity systems and negotiate tensions between their role identities and the kinds of disciplinary and culturally sustaining writing instruction they hope to enact with their future students.