Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Education (Ph.D)

Department

Education Specialties

First Advisor

Michael R Sampson

Second Advisor

Olivia G Stewart

Abstract

Despite a recent shift in focus from content area literacy to disciplinary literacy in preservice teacher (PST) preparation programs, historical literacies training for prospective secondary social studies teachers has remained limited in the State of Connecticut. Historical literacies are defined as the discipline-specific reading and writing skills of historians and other social scientists. In this phenomenological study, I describe the lived experiences of several recent PST program graduates who are currently teaching secondary social studies in the State of Connecticut and report on the essence of this phenomenon. Grounded in communities of practice (CoP) theory, I administered open-ended qualitative surveys to seven teachers and conducted interviews with four of those seven teachers. Participants were purposefully sampled based on their positioning as newcomers to an historians’ CoP. The historical literacies of sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, close reading, and other disciplinary literacy practices were used to develop codes and themes from participants’ open-ended responses. To supplement and corroborate participants’ responses, I collected secondary data in the form of graduate plans of study from the four higher educational institutions these teachers attended for their PST preparation programs. Through my analysis of this data, I discovered the essence of participants’ experiences and created a new vantage point for examining the historical literacies preparation of teachers in Connecticut. Results of the research can be used to inform higher educational institutions on the exigencies of burgeoning social studies teachers at the secondary level.

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