This dissertation describes three connected studies that reveal pathways by which teacher preparation programs (TPPs) can better prepare literacy preservice teachers (PSTs) for the needs of culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse classrooms. The first study (Chapter II) describes the process and results from an integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005) revealing the ways culturally multidimensional (Carter Andrews, 2021) practices are approached, described, and implemented in literacy PST TPPs. This study discusses the scope and context of these studies, the theoretical grounding of such studies, and particularizes specific culturally multidimensional PST literacy practices. Findings from this study point to writing practices as a burgeoning space within culturally multidimensional literacy teacher preparation. This study underscored the need to dismantle academic silos of multiculturalism and literacy and more clearly fuse and interweave multicultural pedagogies within literacy practices. The second study (Chapter III) explores PST beliefs about families and the role of families in literacy. This second study's latent content analysis of PST artifactual letters home to families (Rosengren, 1981) revealed PSTs' positioning of families as within four categories: parents as peers, parents as partners, parents as participants, or parents as the problem. Findings revealed a need for a greater focus on the role of family in literacy within TPPs as well as an asset framing of families within the PST curriculum. The third study (Chapter IV) unearths three case studies (Stake, 2006) of Latinx PSTs engaging in culturally multidimensional literacy teaching towards transformational resistance during the final year of their TPP. The three cases within this study individually engaged in transformational resistance in disparate ways; however, taken collectively, all cases asserted a need to dispel the deficit framing of students and re-envision literacy pedagogy to be more culturally and socioemotionally situated. These findings underscore the need for PST support and resources during extended field experiences as they grapple with tensions between their philosophies, beliefs, and teaching experiences.
