What Do They Notice?: How Preservice Teachers Respond to Student Writing Across Time

Teacher educators encounter significant challenges in preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach writing, largely due to the limited availability of specialized writing methods courses in university curricula. Research indicates that dedicated coursework can enhance PSTs’ future teaching practices. This qualitative study investigates the development of noticing and naming as a social practice among early childhood (K-5) PSTs (n = 39) in response to a student’s writing sample over time within a writing methods course. Grounded in sociocultural theory and the concept of communities of practice, the purpose of this study was to examine how and in what ways PSTs developed their abilities to assess and provide guidance based on a student’s writing sample. We analyzed what PSTs noticed and named within a student’s opinion writing sample to explore their observations and the influence of these insights on their instructional decisions. Findings reveal that PSTs improved their ability to identify effective writing techniques, shifting their focus from editing mechanics to content-related elements as the semester progressed. These findings contribute to writing teacher education by underscoring the role of methods courses in fostering PSTs’ pedagogical skills in responding to student writing.