I Would Teach It If I Knew How: Inquiry, Modeling, Shared Writing, Collaborative Writing, and Independent Writing (IMSCI), a Model for Increasing Secondary Teacher Self-Efficacy in Integrating Writing Instruction in the Content Areas

Framed in theories of pragmatism, self-efficacy, and ecology, this design-based research study attempted to make explicit connections between theory and field-based research. The pedagogical goal of this study was to expose in-service teachers to a scaffolded model of professional development for writing (IMSCI) that could be implemented in their own teaching. This model of professional development also served to place research participants in a professional learning community. Teachers worked in focus groups made of another teacher in their own discipline, and a collective focus group, and worked through the steps of the scaffolded model in consideration of their own writing instruction in an effort to increase their self-efficacy, while also experiencing a participatory approach to instruction that in turn improved their ability to enact this instruction in their own classrooms. The data, which included focus group interviews, blog posts by the teachers, and member checking, were analyzed using constant comparative methods. The analyses indicated that the majority of these content teachers had not experienced effective writing instruction models as students and did not learn how to teach writing in their preservice teaching programs. Additionally, their professional learning experiences as inservice teachers had not given them the tools they needed to overcome ecological factors that stopped them from teaching writing. Teachers\u27 responses about their experience with the IMSCI model indicate that it has the potential to help teachers understand what effective writing instruction looks like, how to implement it in their own classrooms, and to increase their perceived self-efficacy as teachers of writing

The Knowing/Doing Gap: Challenges of Effective Writing Instruction in High School

This study explores the challenges of effective writing instruction in high school, specifically examining the perceptions of five new high school English teachers regarding their own experiences learning to write as students, their preparation to become teachers of writing, and how they teach and assess writing in their classrooms. In order to more fully understand their view of writing instruction, we interviewed and observed them. The findings are organized into two strands: teacher beliefs about their own formative opportunities with writing, both as students and in preparation to become teachers, and teacher reflections on best practices in writing instruction and assessment and how they often contradict the reality of writing instruction in a high school classroom. These teachers indicated knowledge of effective writing instruction, and, rather than replicate the instruction and assessment they had received themselves, they sincerely wished to implement research-based practices in their own classrooms; we found that they feel that the writing instruction they received as students in their own K-12 education did not prepare them to be effective writers, nor did they perceive their preservice preparation as helpful. In spite of this perception, they seem to have absorbed principles of effective writing instruction, most likely ones they encountered in their preservice methods courses. In any case, they face significant difficulties as they try to enact better writing instruction and assessment in a teaching environment that overloads their time such that they can teach writing only minimally and with very little actual feedback and assessment on student writing