| This dissertation examines preservice secondary teachers' understandings of literacy and literacy in their content areas as they participated in a required undergraduate course within a teacher preparation program. Through multiple case studies of four preservice teachers, this dissertation documents the interaction of literacy histories, prior experiences in schooling, and prior beliefs about secondary teaching and learning with adolescent literacy coursework.;Two central questions drove this practitioner inquiry: What are preservice secondary teachers' initial conceptualizations of literacy and the nature and function of literacy learning and teaching in their content area? How do preservice secondary teachers' engagements with coursework reveal and shape their conceptualizations of literacy learning and teaching in their content area?;Participants for this study were four prospective secondary teachers enrolled in an adolescent literacy course in a teacher preparation program in a small, rural, liberal arts college in the northeast. Data, collected during one semester and in an interview four months after the completion of the course, included observations and field notes, participants' journals, demonstration lessons, audiotaped transcriptions from class activities, student assignments, and interviews. Using constructivist grounded theory techniques (Charmaz, 2006, 2008) to analyze and interpret data, two central findings emerged. First, the focal participants' experiences as literacy learners, schooling experiences, and their content area expertise (what they brought to the course) shaped, and in some ways, constrained their conceptualizations of literacy. Change, often provisional, occurred in subtle and complex ways; each participant questioned previously held assumptions often in non-linear, messy, productive ways. Second, participants largely maintained their initial views of literacy in their content area. Efforts to develop a broad view of literacy and demonstrate its efficacy for content area pedagogy were minimally successful.;This research explores the complexity of preparing secondary content area teachers to teach through a content literacy lens. Implications for literacy teacher educators are drawn that include shifting from a traditional content area approach toward a disciplinary literacies pedagogy. |
