Literacy autobiographies in pre-service teacher education: opportunities for therapeutic writing in widening participation contexts

Literacy autobiographies, where learners write about significant events or experiences that have shaped their literate practices and identities, are commonly employed in composition courses as a means of encouraging author reflexivity. Here, we discuss the implementation of a literacy autobiography assignment in a pre-service teacher education course offered at a regional university in Australia. The assignment proved to be innovative, particularly resonating with the large proportion of pre-service teachers from first-in-family and traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in higher education, who often struggle with the literate practices privileged in the academy. Our observations suggest that these pre-service teachers embraced this novel university writing experience as an opportunity to make deeply personal connections with the course content and their own learning journeys. Our intention is to collectively consider important questions emerging from this innovative practice including: what do the deeply personal responses to this assignment suggest about university writing as a tool for making sense of past and present learning experiences; how can personal writing help to unpack the complex, power-laden relationships between literacy, biography and access; and how can autobiographical writing assist learners to reflect on the shifting identities (both literate and otherwise) associated with transitions into and through higher education?