Understanding Early Writing: Pre-school and Primary Teachers’ Beliefs about Writing Development and the Relationship between Espoused Beliefs, Classroom Practice and Young Writers

Abstract

This thesis presents an understanding of early writing development in pre-school and first year classrooms through teachers’ beliefs, classroom practices and children’s reflections. The study was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, the participants were 12 children from three different pre-school classrooms, which were situated in primary schools, and their teachers. The participants were observed over the course of one month at the end of the academic year in their natural classroom settings, and the teachers were interviewed at the end of the observations. These interviews elicited the teachers’ beliefs about early writing development in pre-school and primary classrooms in general, and about the focus children’s development in particular. The data derived from these interviews has been inductively analysed in order to understand the participants’ beliefs. The lesson plans of these teachers were also collected in order to understand their aims and how they reflect these aims into their classroom practices. In the second phase of the study, these 12 children were followed into the beginning of their first year in primary school, for about one month. These primary classrooms were each observed once a week during writing activities supervised by the teachers. These primary teachers were also interviewed at the end of the observations, in order to understand their beliefs about writing development in both pre-school and primary school, along with their views on children; also, the lesson plans were collected. In the last phase, I conducted a focus group interview with different teachers from the same schools who were working in pre-school and primary classrooms, in order to discover what they believe about each other’s contexts, the problems they face in supporting children’s writing skills, and what recommendations they might have. The findings are presented in three chapters, which explore pedagogical practice, children’s learning profiles, and teachers’ awareness of early writing development. This study is significant in offering a picture of both pre-school and primary teachers’ beliefs and practices with regards to early writing, how children respond to these two different educational settings, as well as the transition process in terms of writing development. Furthermore, the continuities, and indeed discontinuities, between these two settings, and the tensions between teachers’ beliefs, practices and policy documents, have been investigated