Constructing meaning about literacy difficulties: preservice teachers beginning to think about pedagogy

The purpose of this study was to explore the meanings preservice teachers constructed about students with reading difficulties. Qualitative techniques were employed to develop six case studies to understand better how preservice teachers framed their meanings. Cross-case analysis revealed that each preservice teacher's stance on meaning, while idiosyncratically based on experience, was tied to pedagogy in two distinct ways: (a) most of the participants placed an increasingly important role on the supervising teacher when considering reading difficulties and (b) they situated themselves as a teacher within that context. The findings suggest the importance of designing preservice education course work that is inquiry-oriented and offers opportunities for students to explore systematically their developing stances and self-constructed meanings about reading. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.