Storylines: a narrative study of young adolescents making meaning of their writing experiences

This study used a narrative inquiry model to explore the writing experiences of a diverse group of eight middle-school aged participants by responding to three research questions: 1) How do young adolescents experience learning to write?, 2) How do they narrate their writing experiences?, and 3) What meaning do they make of writing and learning to write? Data comprised transcripts of 24 60-90 minute semi-structured one-on-one interviews, or three interviews with each of the eight participants. Interviews were conducted at roughly six-week intervals following these young adolescents’ participation in a two-week Young Writers’ Camp held at a medium-sized university in the Southeast. The study design and data analysis procedures built upon Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional model of narrative inquiry, which interprets participants’ narratives on three planes: across time, with consideration of the individual within his or her social context, and with attention to place. Analysis and interpretation, conducted within a sociocultural paradigm, yielded three storylines – collections of narratives drawn across participant interviews that resonate with one another and combine to tell a larger story. These storylines elicited the meanings young adolescent writers made of the intersections of family and school narratives around writing; the role of language exposure, appropriation, and use; and the use of writing as a tool for identity negotiation

The writing lives of students with learning disabilities: a multiple case study

Adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) often struggle to write well at school, and this can affect their academic, social, and vocational lives (Graham & Harris, 2013). Recently, an abundance of technologies have emerged, changing the process of writing from the manipulation of alphabetic text to include sound, audio, video, and still images (Kinzer, 2010). As the meaning of what constitutes writing has evolved to include skills needed to use these new tools and technologies, the act of writing has become more prevalent in every aspect of life (Brandt, 2001). Adolescents with LD, however, are often taught to write using direct methods that do not encompass the evolution of writing nor take into account student status as adolescents. Consequently, research generally has not considered how these students adapt to and learn the new skills needed to be considered literate. This study used a multiple case study methodology to explore the writing perceptions and experiences of three students with LD. Data collected included artifacts, interview transcripts and observations. Findings showed that students expressed meaningful ideas through writing in their classroom environment with limited success. They wrote more when writing about themselves, when given a choice of topic, and when using digital technology. Peer interactions, the need for autonomy while writing, and time to write were important. Students both consumed and produced writing using social media and exhibited skills learned through social media at school. Implications for teachers and researchers are included

The effects of professional practice of a systematic approach to the professional development of ESL teachers in the area of writing

The exponential increase of English Language Learners (ELL) in the United States has resulted in the implementation of effective instructional programs addressing language acquisition and academic content in local school systems. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of professional development on five ESL teachers' lesson design and delivery as they converted the knowledge and skills gained in their professional development specific to the area of Writing. A phenomenological case study was used to gain insight into teachers' perspectives of their experiences as participants in ESL professional development and how the knowledge and skills acquired during the professional development translated to the lesson design and delivery impacting student outcomes. Data were gathered during individual interviews and group professional development sessions and aggregated student data. Analysis of the data resulted in the multiple conclusions. When teachers used appropriate and a wide variety of instructional strategies that were based in the research-proven framework, Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP), students typically experienced positive growth in Writing. Writing cannot be taught in isolation because it is a component of Literacy. Therefore, through systemic approaches to Writing and writing in each content area, students gain the skills and knowledge to write as a way to communicate their content understanding. Teachers' instruction improved based on the professional development in which teachers participated addressing their individual areas of development. This systematic approach to differentiated professional development influenced the ESL teachers' lesson delivery and ultimately student outcomes

Teachers as Writers research report

Teachers as Writers is a two-year research project offering teachers sustained opportunities to write and build co-mentoring relationships with professional writers in order to improve student outcomes. The project set out to determine the impact of professional writers’ engagement with teachers, both in changing teachers’ classroom practices in the teaching of writing, and in improving student outcomes in writing. The report summarises the insights gained

Collaborative authoring and the virtual problem of context in writing courses

Since the 1980s, the field of rhetoric and composition has embraced the idea of collaborative writing as a means of generating new knowledge, troubling traditional conceptions of the author, and repositioning power within the student-teacher hierarchy. Authors such as David Bleich, Kenneth Bruffee, and Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede have written about, and advocated for, teachers' engagement with collaboration in the composition classroom. Yet in discussions of collaborative writing, scholars have tended to ignore an important element: the limitations placed upon student agency by the institutional context in which students write. We can ask students to work together in the classroom, but limitations on their choice of collaborators, their time together, and their ability to determine the outcome of their work result in an unproductive simulacrum of collaboration in which students write together but do not engage deeply with each other in the ways scholars describe. Ignoring the fact that classroom collaborative writing is embedded in different fields of power than writing done by scholars working outside institutional limitations results in a conception of collaborative writing as little more than an element of pedagogy, one that can be added to a syllabus without significantly changing the structure, goals, or ideology of the course. Rather than approaching collaborative writing as a means of pushing against the limits of institutional writing, the context in which collaboration takes place is naturalized. As a result, the assessment and disciplinary structures of the academy, the physical division of the student body into class sections, and the tools available to support (or undercut) collaborative work vanish in the scholarship. To counter this trend, I explore how the denial of context and the resulting disconnection between theory (the claims for collaborative writing) and practice (the twenty-first-century composition classroom) promote not collaboration, but a simulacrum of collaboration: academic work that mimics the appearance of true collaboration while failing to enact the liberatory possibility of working with other writers. This project explores collaborative theory on three levels: the personal, in which collaborative writing is illustrated via specific business, public, and academic contexts; the pedagogical, in which current collaborative theory and practice is deployed and analyzed to understand its limitations; and the disciplinary, in which current collaborative theory and practice is questioned, critiqued, and remediated to propose an alternative collaborative classroom praxis. The structure of the dissertation, which uses interchapters to draw connections between larger theoretical issues and my ethnographic research, interviews, and analysis, reflects these three strands as a means of illustrating the interdependence of the personal, pedagogical, and disciplinary conceptions of and engagements with collaborative writing

The Politics of Identity

The issue of Indigenous identity has gained more attention in recent years from social science scholars, yet much of the discussions still centre on the politics of belonging or not belonging. While these recent discussions in part speak to the complicated and contested nature of Indigeneity, both those who claim Indigenous identity and those who write about it seem to fall into a paradox of acknowledging its complexity on the one hand, while on the other hand reifying notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘authentic cultural expression’ as core features of an Indigenous identity. Since identity theorists generally agree that who we understand ourselves to be is as much a function of the time and place in which we live as it is about who we and others say we are, this scholarship does not progress our knowledge on the contemporary characteristics of Indigenous identity formations. The range of international scholars in this volume have begun an approach to the contemporary identity issues from very different perspectives, although collectively they all push the boundaries of the scholarship that relate to identities of Indigenous people in various contexts from around the world. Their essays provide at times provocative insights as the authors write about their own experiences and as they seek to answer the hard questions: Are emergent identities newly constructed identities that emerge as a function of historical moments, places, and social forces? If so, what is it that helps to forge these identities and what helps them to retain markers of Indigeneity? And what are some of the challenges (both from outside and within groups) that Indigenous individuals face as they negotiate the line between ‘authentic’ cultural expression and emergent identities? Is there anything to be learned from the ways in which these identities are performed throughout the world among Indigenous groups? Indeed why do we assume claims to multiple racial or ethnic identities limits one’s Indigenous identity? The question at the heart of our enquiry about the emerging Indigenous identities is when is it the right time to say me, us, we… them

White teachers navigating race in elementary classrooms: portraits of possibility

Studies that document white teachers struggling to see whiteness and minimizing the impact of race on the quality of education are plentiful in the research literature. Much is known about white educators who activate and rely on defenses such as resistance, fragility, colorblindness, or innocent ignorance to avoid or silence conversations about race at school. Less is understood about mindful white educators, critical pedagogues, who work to disrupt whiteness and thoughtfully engage young children in explicit race talk. This study was designed to examine and better understand mindful white teachers’ ability to comprehend the significance of race and its impact on learning, as well as investigate factors that contribute to their sustained efforts to engage in equitable practices within one of the most inhibited and silent spaces for race talk, the elementary school classroom. To explore white elementary teachers navigating race, I collected data for this qualitative study through semi-structured interviews and reflective member-check interviews with three white elementary school teachers who work in a district committed to anti-racism and culturally responsive pedagogy. I drew on whiteness studies, critical race theory, and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy as theoretical lenses to guide interpretation and analysis of interview data and to fully examine 1) how lived experiences shape teachers’ racial consciousness, 2) ways that race issues emerge and play out in an elementary school setting, and 3) strategies mindful white teachers employ to disrupt whiteness and negotiate tensions. I used the method of portraiture to capture the experiences of these three teachers. Even though mindful white educators navigate race in a variety of ways, this study revealed some common methods. First, mindful white teachers are willing to engage in critical self-reflection and write new racial scripts. Second, they respond to these new scripts by challenging the traditional canon and incorporating instructional practices that allow all students to see themselves in the curriculum, the school, and the world. Race is not a taboo topic in their classroom. These findings indicate a need to continue research on mindful white teachers like the ones in this study. We can learn much more about how to improve education by examining their motivations and successes, as well as their blindspots and struggles, than if we continue to remain overly focused on resistant white teachers and their failures. Lastly, all three teachers indicate that supportive school context plays a major role in their confidence and motivation to tackle the messiness of race talk. Contexts shape how we think, what we say, and what we do, which points to a need to further investigate school environments that actively support equity efforts

The effects of an SRSD-based writing intervention on the self-efficacy, writing apprehension, and writing performance of high school students: a mixed methods study

Writing is an essential skill for optimal success in school and in the workforce. While academic ability and skill are critical for successful writing outcomes, alone such factors are insufficient for optimal outcomes. How students view themselves and their abilities is critical to academic success and to persisting in the face of frustration and failure. Students with low levels of writing self-efficacy, high levels of writing apprehension, and who fail to use self-regulatory strategies are less likely to be skilled writers or pursue opportunities perceived to demand larger amounts of writing. Conversely, students with higher levels of writing self-efficacy, lower levels of writing apprehension, and who use self-regulatory strategies are more likely to be successful writers in high school and beyond. This embedded mixed methods research study investigated and analyzed the effects of a Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) based writing intervention on levels of writing self-efficacy, writing apprehension, strategy-use, and writing performance of high school students in two science classes. Grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory, the study enhances quantitative data by incorporating qualitative data, notably a microanalysis component, the results showed that the intervention improved students’ feelings about their abilities to write, ameliorated writing apprehension, increased their use of self-regulatory strategies, and boosted writing performance. Future research suggestions are presented and implications for educational practice are discussed

Making the road by walking: The evolution of the South African Constitution

This engaging, readable law book is timely for many reasons. In this period of political turmoil, amidst allegations of bare-faced large-scale grabbing by greedy politicians and their confederates, the principles and mechanisms of our Constitution become more acutely important than ever. Over the last quarter-century or so, through our courts' judgments, delivered without fear or favour, the Constitution has begun to breathe life. Much challenge and much peril and much work still lie ahead. But some of the vibrancy and influence the Constitution has already attained may be traced to the voices and personalities of those behind the judgments: the judges who write them. This book looks at the character and thinking of some of the judges who have helped to start the process of making our Constitution real. The text reminds us that behind the structures of state and the mechanisms of power stand human beings, in all their frailty, but also in all their courage and determination to make our country better for the poorest in it. In other words, judges who take seriously the promise of constitutional governance and of social justice under law. Justice Edwin Cameron, Constitutional Court of South AfricaPublishe

Concept Maps as Sites of Rhetorical Invention: Teaching the Creative Act of Synthesis as a Cognitive Process

Synthesis is one of the most cognitively demanding practices novice writers must undertake, and research demonstrates that first-year students’ synthesis writing practices result in more knowledge telling rather than knowledge creation and transforming. Pedagogies used to teach synthesis often focus on developing text-building strategies but lack explicit instruction on the more cognitively demanding conceptualizing behavior. To explore alternative pedagogies and heuristics, this study looks beyond composition scholarship to incorporate studies in neuroeducation and rhetoric to define synthesis as an ongoing, generative act of cognitive invention, effectively shifting pedagogical focus from text-centered product to student-centered cognitive processes that inform development of synthesized texts (a product). The methods were designed to explore any effects a visual intervention might have on developing student conceptual awareness and reflective practice over time, and whether that transferred into a final researched essay as knowledge transforming. This small-scale exploratory study applies a mixed-methods, design-based methodology to a semester-long intervention in first-year writing classrooms using digital concept maps (DCMAPs) as an ongoing, student-designed space of visualized concept construction. A Control group applied traditional reading-to-write text-based synthesis instruction and practice, while the Intervention group used DCMAPs to enact a prolonged, visualized and reflective practice of active construction of associations, relationships, and structural knowledge building. The DCMAP platform affordances positioned students as knowledge designers enacting creative / constructive processes, an approach based on neuroscience research on patterning and visualization. Intervention data includes reflective journals, narrated mapping process reflections, digital concept map images and construction processes, and a final researched essay that required synthesis of source ideas. Because of the exploratory nature of the study, results are not framed as cause-effect but as correlational possibilities that suggest inventional acts of visually creating connections and labeling them using rhetorically-based associational concepts lead to generative learning behaviors. Results suggest a number of possibilities for future iterations and research, as well as implications for our field’s approach to the teaching of synthesis