This study explores the relationship between preservice teachers’ perceptions of their professional identities and their progressive primary school writing practices as part of a University-school partnership project. We analyse preservice teachers’ identities using discourse analysis and find a tension between self-perceptions as progressive teachers and the difficulties they experience enacting progressive pedagogies. For the majority, these difficulties are overcome through reflective theorising, but in utilising process drama, their otherwise expansive identity-agency is restricted by their wider apprehension of neoliberalism. We conclude by underlining the importance of specialised and concurrent models of teacher preparation which align preservice teachers’ identities and practices.