Education Commons^™

On Parallel Paths: Learning Through Case Studies In The Writing Pedagogy Course, Alyssa Devey, Christina Saidy, Mohammed S. Iddrisu, Seher Shah, Marlene A. Tovar

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article reports on a case study project assigned in a writing pedagogy course. The authors, four graduate teaching assistants and their professor, share their case study questions, experiences, and challenges. Via the case study assignment, the TAs identified parallel experiences they shared with their students. Recognizing parallel paths helps first-year TAs reflect on their experiences as teachers and learners, build connections with students, and develop sustainable teaching practices beyond the first year. The authors share strategies for identifying parallel paths and encourage TA educators to incorporate them into the writing pedagogy course.

Unpacking Writer Identity: How Beliefs And Practices Inform Writing Instruction, David Premont

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Although identity research is common in educational studies, little research explores the connections between identity and pedagogy, and far fewer specifically examine how writer identity influences writing pedagogy. Additional research exploring the connection between writer identity and writing pedagogy is necessary to offer nuanced teaching strategies to strengthen writing pedagogy. The present study explores the connections between writer identity and writing pedagogy for three preservice English teachers with strong writer identities during their respective student teaching experiences. Interview data were utilized to explore writer identity and analyse connections to writing pedagogy through In Vivo coding in this narrative inquiry. Findings …

Writing Without Audiences: A Comprehensive Survey Of State-Mandated Standards And Assessments, James E. Warren

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Writing studies professionals agree that students must learn to write for specific audiences. Despite this professional consensus, there is reason to believe that this skill is not widely tested in state-mandated writing assessments. In this study, we survey the state content standards for English Language Arts and the state-mandated writing tests for high school students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. While all states have adopted standards that require students to write for specific audiences, only a small percentage test this skill on state-mandated assessments. We argue that the consequences of this misalignment between standards and assessment …

A Pen, A Pencil, Or A Keyboard: Writing Center Tutors’ Perceptions, Mirta Ramirez-Espinola

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

A Pen, A Pencil, or a Keyboard: Online Writing Center Tutors’ Perceptions

Author, Adjunct Faculty, Grand Canyon University

Abstract

Writing can be challenging for some students, even those who have graduated high school and are moving forward to higher learning. Thus, an idea about students and writing support led to a study about writing centers and the individuals responsible for supporting struggling writers. This qualitative case study explored the tutors’ perceptions of online writing tutoring and investigated how tutors perceive their work using both asynchronous and synchronous online tutoring modes at a 4-year university. Though the writing center participating in …

A Reflection On Writing Methods: Where Am I Going? Where Have I Been?, Kia Jane Richmond

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

The author, an eminent scholar and practitioner of writing teaching methods, reflects on the growth and development of the community and scholarship of writing teacher education and highlights several key trends as discussed in this issue.

Teaching Priorities As Both Durable And Flexible: Writing Pedagogy Classes Across International Contexts, Charlotte L. Land, Jessica Cira Rubin

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article developed from a year-long inquiry into our practices as writing teacher educators. As new university faculty in two different countries, we drew on a previous literature review project to identify enduring priorities for teaching writing pedagogy. We then analyzed our developing practices in these unfamiliar places, specifically noting what also felt flexible enough to work across contexts, leaving space for local adaptation. For each of our classes, we explore how we expressed those priorities: discussing teaching practices as connected with theories and discourses of teaching writing, supporting teacher-student experiences through a cycle of writing, and facilitating appreciative views …

Writing Methods Key In Preparing Hope-Focused Teacher-Writers And Teachers Of Writing, Nicole Sieben

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This manuscript emphasizes the need for positioning students (preservice and inservice teachers) in methods courses as both teacher-writers and teachers of writing. It demonstrates the importance of teaching writing methods with a hope-focused, process-driven approach grounded in social justice reasoning and includes ways of positioning students in methods courses as teacher-writers with valued professional presence in the field of English education. By way of example, the piece includes a description of a specific “Professional Writings” assignment from a methods course for pre- and inservice teachers and models the value of choice and voice for writers at all levels. It then …

The Evolution From Mentor Texts To Critical Mentor Text Sets, Margaret O. Opatz, Elizabeth T. Nelson

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article chronicles how two teacher educators changed the mentor text set assignment--one component of a larger writing unit plan--from a simple list of texts to a critical mentor text set that includes intentionally selected, culturally and linguistically diverse texts. The goal of the critical mentor text set was to support preservice teachers’ understanding of how to implement culturally sustaining writing pedagogy through developing students’ identities, skills, and intellect as writers, and students’ abilities to read texts through a critical stance that evaluates the privilege and power within the texts while working towards anti-oppression.

(Re)Engaging The Body In Being & Becoming Teachers Of Writers, Sarah J. Donovan

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article offers a framework by which writing teacher educators can offer secondary preservice teachers a way to engage lived writing histories with pedagogical content knowledge of writing (PCKW) through embodied practices. Building on antiracist creative writing scholarship and genre theory, two practices from a semester-long course (Teaching Writers) are offered that acknowledge the still-evolving implications of writing education during the pandemic on preservice teachers’ writing development and the writing development of high school students, some of whom spent the past three years only writing physically isolated. The author offers initial observations about the ways she sees embodied PCKW as …

Imagining The Possible: Reflections On Teaching A Writing Methods Course For Pre-Service Undergraduate Secondary English/Language Arts Teachers, Emily S. Meixner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

What's possible in a teaching writing methods class? In this essay, the author provides a descriptive portrait of the undergraduate secondary writing methods course she teaches, focusing on five specific learning outcomes: teacher writing identities, knowledge of writer's craft, grammatical awareness and an understanding of linguistic justice/injustice, writing workshop methodology, and genre-based unit and lesson planning. Course readings, assignments, and work samples are included.

Humanizing The Teaching Of Writing By Centering The Writer, Naitnaphit Limlamai

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In this work, the author explains how she prepared preservice secondary teachers to consider themselves as writers and to teach writing in more humanizing ways. She first describes how preservice teachers were guided to cultivate identities as writers and broaden ideas of “writing.” With new knowledge about themselves as they developed writerly identities, they surfaced and unpacked existing ideas about learning how to write and built knowledge about teaching writing, creating teaching artifacts like unit and lesson plans, interacting with local adolescent writers in pen pal letters, and participating in simulated feedback sessions with adolescent writers. Asking preservice teachers to …

Teaching Writing As A Metacognitive Process, Heather Fox

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In a writing methods course for future K-12 educators, preservice teachers examine the intersections of their experiences as writers, students, and future teachers through three interdependent projects. Completed between Fall 2019 and Spring 2022, this empirical study (n=138) includes Elementary Education, Middle Education, and (Secondary) English Teaching majors and focuses on the first project, Writing Memory, to examine how teaching writing as a metacognitive process facilitates preservice teachers’ understanding of how they and their future students developed, and are continuing to develop, as writers. The project analyzes students’ reflections on how they select and arrange previously written text to …

The Collaborative Evolution Of The Writing Teacher Educator And The Methods Course, Christina Saidy, Nicole Nava, Ginette Rossi

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In this article, we describe a collaborative approach to preparing graduate students for teaching the methods class at our university. We document the approach to preparation, our connections to the methods course itself, the tensions in the methods course that we identified in working together, and the important choices about and modifications we made to the course based on the tensions we identified. Our collaborative approach to preparing and planning for the methods class gave us a deep understanding of our context and unique challenges as we evolved the course.

Variations On A Writing Methods Course: Two English Educators Across Four Decades, Amber Jensen, Deborah Dean

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article draws on the intersecting autoethnographies of two writing methods instructors over the course of nearly 40 years as undergraduate students, secondary English teachers, and English educators to map the evolution of the undergraduate writing methods course at Brigham Young University (BYU). It identifies five foundational principles that have shaped the course curriculum, learning activities, and assessment, integrating artifacts and student examples to demonstrate the way they enact these principles with the preservice teachers in their classes. The authors conclude by identifying revisions and future directions for the course in its coming years.

On Writing Teacher Education, The Writing ‘Methods’ Course, And The Evolution Of A Community, Jonathan E. Bush, Erinn Bentley

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Building Community In An Asynchronous Write-To-Learn Course, Mary K. Tedrow

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study examines one online asynchronous course, Writing in Literature, devised by the researcher to determine the potential for building a student-centered course functioning as a learning community in spite of the limitations of the lack of shared space or time. The course was examined via student surveys that qualified experiences within the course as well as a review and coding of end-of-course student reflections. The survey and reflective commentary indicate that it is possible for an asynchronous course to effectively build a vibrant learning community. The learner to learner, learner to instructor, and learner to content framework recommended …

“I Kind Of Pushed Back”: Efficiency And Urgency In A No-Excuses Writing Curriculum, Katie Nagrotsky

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Drawing on the concept of structuring contexts (Berchini, 2016) this article explores a white teacher’s understanding of teaching writing in a no-excuses charter management organization network. Through a deductive analysis, the author traces how the teacher’s beliefs about language were shaped by the CMO’s emphasis on efficiency, influencing how he acted on and adapted centralized curriculum and assessment practices. Documenting the ways that whiteness works within the writing curriculum and assessment practices despite stated broader organizational commitments to culturally relevant teaching, the author shows how the curriculum appropriated texts written by People of Color while the assessment practices prioritized correctness …

Criticism, Praise, And The Red Pen: The Role Of Elementary School Teachers On The Enduring Efficacy Of Writing Instructors, Julie Kimble

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

A teacher’s own early experiences with writing, whether positive or negative, have a significant effect on the students that they teach, especially those who go on to become teachers. In a graduate education and reading program at a public university in the southern United States, we ask our teachers through a writing biography assignment to explore these memories of their earliest writing experiences and determine how those experiences fit into their current teaching careers. For this qualitative project, the researcher analyzed essays that were submitted for a “Writing Autobiography” assignment for this graduate level writing class for educators. This study …

Writing To Transgress: Autobiographies And Family Trees As Multimodal And Culturally Sustaining Writing Pedagogy, John Wesley White, Cynthia Lynn Sumner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Engaging today's students in writing often requires more than formulas and prompts; it requires the use of culturally sustaining genres and modalities that speak to students' lived experiences and what they know best. This paper chronicles an urban teacher's attempt to create and use a writing prompt and a genre that would speak to and engage students who had previously experienced discouragement surrounding their academic writing. More specifically, we examine how the teacher used family trees, student-led interviews with family members, and family artifacts to engage his students in telling their own stories and, subsequently, how changes in this teacher's …

“Can I Write About What Happened To Me?”: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Audience And Purpose Of Students’ And Their Teachers’ Writing In An Age Of Accountability And Unrest, Kate Sjostrom

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Many teachers and administrators, feeling the pressure to produce high standardized test scores and meet state standards, have narrowed the variety of genres taught and resorted to prescriptive writing formulas, effectively stunting the writing and thinking development of students and future teachers, and foreclosing the opportunity for writing to do important personal and interpersonal work in a time of racial reckoning, alienation, and violence. In this context, the study’s author and a pre-service teacher participating in the author’s research study on writing teacher identity development grapple with just what the audience and purpose of students’—and teachers’—writing should and could be. …

Connecting Our Pedagogical Questions And Goals: An Exercise For Writing Teacher Development, Jessica Rivera-Mueller

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In this article, the author argues writing teachers can more fully inquire into their questions about teaching writing by paying closer attention to the ways their goals for teacher development shape their engagement in pedagogical inquiry. To explain these connections and illustrate these possibilities, the author shares findings from a narrative-inquiry study that examined the development of pedagogical inquiry in the lives of four teachers of writing. Using the participating teachers’ shared goals for teacher development, the author demonstrates how writing teachers can reflect upon the development of pedagogical inquiry, stretch themselves to practice other aspects of pedagogical inquiry, and …

Preservice English Teachers’ Evolving Conceptions Of 21st-Century Writing, Amber Jensen

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study used stimulated-recall interviews throughout four secondary English preservice teachers’ (PSTs) semester-long student teaching internships to examine how critical teaching moments shaped their evolving conceptions of 21st-century writing. The article first describes the participants’ collective definitions of features and experiences of 21st-century writing in the ELA classroom, focusing specifically on how they understood digital and multimodal composition. It then examines two case studies that demonstrate how PSTs’ teaching experiences destabilized, challenged, and contradicted their emerging definitions. Findings suggest that English educators may engage PSTs in conceptualizing nuanced and flexible 21st-century writing pedagogies as they construct field experiences as reflective …

What Covid-19 Is Teaching Me About Writing, Rebekah J. Buchanan

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This is a narrative piece for the special edition, Writing Teacher Education in Extraordinary Times. It addresses my work with English Education candidates, student teachers, and first-year writing students.

Failure, Flexibility, And (Self-)Forgiveness: Authentic Modeling Through Distance Instruction, Brandie L. Bohney

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

After adjusting her writing methods course for distance learning due to coronavirus restrictions, an experienced teacher but early-career teacher educator gets a difficult and important reminder about what failure in the classroom feels like. Using this failure as an opportunity, she chooses an honest and vulnerable approach to readjusting the course and finds that the strategy serves both her and her students well.

Tell Your Story… Share Hope, Nicole Sieben

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This manuscript emphasizes the practice of storytelling in writing teacher education, particularly how it applies to encouraging graduate methods students and undergraduate college students to tell their stories amidst a pandemic that upended their semesters and for many, their lives. In this piece, a writing instructor examines the effectiveness of inviting students to provide feedback on their level of comfort with the change of instructional mode from face-to-face to remote instruction and with their level of concern/comfort in the current life circumstances. By way of example, the piece shares a specific poetry writing assignment that engaged students in storying their …

Voice And New Literacies: Student Perceptions Of Writing Instruction In A Secondary English Classroom, Jenny M. Martin

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Voice is an integral part of writing instruction, and over half of state writing assessments include voice on scoring rubrics; yet, there is a dearth of research on voice and writing instruction with adolescents. Increasingly new literacies and digital tools are being used in the high school English classroom but with relatively little known about how these tools can teach voice during writing instruction. This qualitative single-case study examined how a public school, ninth-grade English teacher used new literacies to develop voice in students’ writing and participants’ perception of these instructional choices. The sample included the teacher and 14 students, …

Marginal Commentary: Are Students And Instructors On The Same Page?, Maria Ornella Treglia

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article reports the findings of 141 student questionnaires and interviews with six teachers to investigate whether first-year students’ preferences align with their teachers’ written commentary in composition classes in an urban community college. Results show that students appreciate and rely on teacher commentary and prefer it to be clear, detailed, and supportive. They indicated that commentary that combines the message with a positive phrase works best. Teachers, on the other hand, were not aware of their students’ needs and preferences, and expressed self-doubt and frustration about their students’ reception of written commentary.

The Threshold Concepts Of Writing Studies In The Writing Methods Course, Kristine Johnson

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

I argue that the threshold concepts of writing studies enable preservice writing teachers to meet several goals for the writing methods course: comprehending composition theory, understanding themselves as writers, and developing effective pedagogical practices. After introducing these concepts, I first outline how they—because they define writing as a subject of study and as an activity—bridge theoretical knowledge, pedagogical application, and personal writing practices. Second, I quote from my own students to illustrate the ways in which threshold concepts help preservice teachers reflect on their own writing practices and become thoughtful, theoretically informed teachers.

Four College-Level Writing Assignments: Text Complexity, Close Reading, And The Five-Paragraph Essay, Elizabeth Brockman, Marcy Taylor

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Poetry Is Powerful: High School Students And Pre-Service Teachers Develop Literacy Relationships Through Poetry, Susanne L. Nobles, Amy Price Azano

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Teaching poetry can serve as a roadblock for many English teachers who lack confidence with the genre. Likewise, high school students struggle reading poetry and creating their own poetic works. In an effort to provide an authentic learning experience for our students, we created a semester-long, collaborative poetry project between our high school and college students. This manuscript provides details about the goals, processes, and takeaways for both groups of participants. The high school students were two classes of freshman-level English students who practiced developing critical literacy skills while reading, reciting, and writing poetry. The college students were pre-service English …