Making Their Own Path: Preservice Teachers’ Development of Purpose in Social Studies Teacher Education

Abstract

Despite a solid body of research on rationale development in social studies teacher education, little research exists exploring how social studies preservice teachers’ purposes develop over time. This article presents four examples of social studies preservice teachers as they grappled with developing a purpose for teaching social studies. In-depth interviews and artifacts from across the program were analyzed to focus on the nuanced ways in which their purposes developed. Their stories provide concrete examples that illustrate rationale development in social studies teacher education. Each shows a different view on developing or not developing a unified purpose for their work as a social studies teacher. We found that explicit attention to purpose throughout coursework was an important aspect in their development. Without a deeper exploration and understanding of how individual purposes develop, we miss in social studies teacher education the opportunity to reimagine and reconsider how programs enable and constrain certain purposes. As a field we need to move beyond recognizing the value of rationales and deepen the research on what types of purposes certain teacher education programs make possible.