This ethnographic study interrogates the process of becoming a teacher at a large state university teacher education program, comparing its soaring rhetoric of social justice with the perceptions, experiences, actions and ideas of student teachers themselves as they proceed toward certification and professionalization. Focusing on one specific group of candidates who trained to become secondary social studies teachers, this inquiry critically examines the professionalism that social studies educators are expected to take on, in all of its moves, strategies and sensibilities. At the same time, the study contemplates the nascent resistance and skepticism toward conventional practices that the participants harbored -- and in some cases, dared to enact -- as they came to recognize these professional expectations. Analysis of participant interviews, observations, focus groups and questionnaires revealed fundamental contradictions, avoidances, and a lack of cohesion in the teachers' preparatory program, especially in its relationships to local populations and school workplace norms. Findings are presented through full descriptions of the participants' experiences and reactions during their turbulent year; the study's conclusion offers ideas for ways in which teacher education programs might become better organized toward facilitating structural change and local agency. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]