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Selected Works

Curriculum and Instruction

2016

Sara Winstead Fry

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Education

Grit, Biography, And Dedicated Teachers Who Struggled Academically As Students, Sara Winstead Fry Oct 2016

Grit, Biography, And Dedicated Teachers Who Struggled Academically As Students, Sara Winstead Fry

Sara Winstead Fry

Dedicated teachers who had and overcame academic challenges in their youth offer valuable insights into how to support students who struggle. This article presents a qualitative study of 46 teachers from across the United Stated [sic] who faced academic challenges as elementary, middle, and/or secondary students. Their memories of academic struggles lead them to use teaching practices that are grounded in the professional disposition that all children can learn. The findings suggest a positive interrelationship between a biography (Knowles, 1992) that includes academic struggles, the theoretical constructs of grit (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007) and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), and …


Writing To Learn: Benefits And Limitations, Sara Winstead Fry, Amanda Villagomez Oct 2016

Writing To Learn: Benefits And Limitations, Sara Winstead Fry, Amanda Villagomez

Sara Winstead Fry

Writing to learn (WTL) is the act of making a subject or topic clear to oneself by reasoning through it in writing; it is a pedagogical approach that uses writing to facilitate learning (Zinsser 1988). Some researchers have reported favorable results associated with the approach (Balgopal and Wallace 2009; Bullock 2006; Hand, Hand, Gunel, and Ulu 2009). However, others have indicated that studies supporting WTL pedagogy tend to lack comparison groups, pre/posttest data, or the rich description that contributes to a rigorous qualitative study (Hübner, Nückles, and Renkl 2010; Kieft, Rijlaarsdam, and van den Bergh 2006; Klein 1999). Thus, existing …