Developing pre-service teachers’ writer identity with digital reflective practice through identity journey mapping

The development of a strong writer identity is crucial for pre-service teachers in the digital age because writing supports instruction, professional communication, reflective learning, and personal expression. This qualitative case study examines how a set of digital reflective practices—structured guided reflections, writing portfolio development, and writer identity journey mapping—supports writer identity development among pre-service teachers in a teacher education program at a northeastern private university. Across the semester, participants’ evolving writer identities were traced through their reflective narratives and multimodal artifacts, attending to shifts in agency and authorship, voice and stance, and senses of belonging as writers. Findings suggest that intentionally scaffolded digital reflection can function as an identity-building infrastructure, enabling pre-service teachers to narrate, curate, and re-author their trajectories as writers while clarifying their emerging commitments as future