Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs about Struggling Readers and Themselves

This descriptive case study examines preservice teachers’ beliefs about themselves as teachers of reading as they develop identities for teaching through experiences in a Foundations of Literacy course and their tutoring relationships with elementary students during an accompanying practicum. As the preservice teachers learned about foundational literacy development and assessment, they came to understand some students as “struggling readers,” although their beliefs were not always grounded in assessment results. Practicum experiences both challenged and reinforced their existing beliefs about struggling readers, as well as their own sense of self-efficacy in responding to struggling readers’ needs. Findings suggest that the types of student information preservice teachers attend to shape both productive and inaccurate beliefs about teaching students who struggle