K-6 Pre-Service Teachers’ Emerging Professional Identities as Social Studies Educators

It is vital that social studies be an integral part of the elementary (Kindergarten-6) curriculum to prepare all children to participate in increasingly diverse democracies. This study's purpose was to investigate how nine planned and implemented social studies professional development activities, outside traditional classrooms, could impact five volunteer K-6 pre-service teachers’ beliefs about their emergent professional identities as social studies educators. This case study explored research questions primarily through qualitative methods. Research implications contribute to possible solutions for (1) helping pre-service teachers understand how professional educators, outside their local areas, create and learn public scholarship to educate diverse democracies, (2) helping pre-service teachers recognize relationships between high quality professional development, networking, organization membership, and professional identity, and (3) sense of belonging as one treatment for U.S. novice teacher attrition rates.