Identity and positionality in composing graphic narratives: reflective lessons on lingering with rhetorical choices

Purpose By studying how English Language Arts preservice teachers (PSTs) talk about composing graphic narratives featuring identities they do/don’t share, this paper aims to investigate how their identities and positionalities came to bear on writing choices. Design/methodology/approach Authors engage theories of identity and positionality to analyze how eight PSTs negotiated topics of their graphic narratives and rationalized rhetorical approaches to storytelling. Qualitative data includes in-process, reflective planning videos, video transcriptions and fieldnotes. Findings PSTs who wrote about identities they share critiqued an underrepresentation of their identities in literature, leveraging mentor texts and graphic composition to write themselves into existence. PSTs who wrote about identities they do not share considered the ethics of telling another’s story, leaning on research and critical reflection to uplift underrepresented narratives. Practical implications Teacher educators’ approaches to teaching narrative writing may be supported by asking PSTs to linger with in-process, critical reflection, by building into instructional design opportunities for lingering, particularly around complex topics like identity and equity and by leveraging multimodal composition to support PSTs’ learning about identities. Originality/value The study extends scholarly work on in-process reflection while composing about voice and identity. Authors suggest generative outcomes for encouraging PSTs to consider their identities and positionalities, specifically when composing graphic narratives.