Policies, Practices, Places, and People: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Learned Literacy Teaching

This article features cases of how elementary education preservice teachers made sense of teaching literacy. Their contexts for teaching varied in policies, curricula, and demands for their literacy teaching, shaped their learning and understanding of literacy instruction and assessment as beginning teachers. The research featured in this article pushes upon conceptualizations of good literacy teaching and how mentor teachers serve a critical role in preparing the next generation of elementary literacy teachers. Recommendations are made on how to best support elementary preservice teachers in literacy instruction and assessment