Chapter 5: Becoming a Literate Being: Preservice Teachers Using Digital Storytelling to Reflect on Personal Narratives

Digital storytelling has the potential to serve as a tool of reflexivity for education students as they grapple with the highly personal topic of literacy, particularly when studied through a social-cultural lens. This qualitative study explored this potential among six preservice teachers at two different sites. The findings demonstrate the potential in providing opportunities for middle grades teachers to become more aware of their own tensions with literacy and literacy development. Through the creation of digital stories, study participants became more attuned with the diversity of literacies that their future middle grades students will bring to class as well as different forms of agency that allow young adolescents to feel successful as literate beings.