Secondary Education Commons^™

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 …

Growing Together: Utilizing Writing Communities In The Writing Methods Course, Katie Alford

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article shares insights on utilizing small writing communities with a writing methods course. It highlights how preservice teachers try on what it means to be a writing teacher and build their confidence as ELA writing teachers through participation in writing communities. It also demonstrates how ELA preservice teachers consider the needs of future students and contemplate how to provide constructive feedback on writing while honoring student voices in writing from writing community participation. It concludes that small writing communities foster the growth of writing teachers in positive ways.

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.

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 …

The Dimensions Of Teachers Who Write And The Essence Of A Writing Life, Shari L. Daniels, Pamela Beck

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

The purpose of this grounded theory case study was to explore the perceptions among ten K-12 teachers who teach writing and also write themselves. What are the key essentials for teachers to sustain a writing life? What habits of mind or attitudes are necessary for teachers to sustain a writing life? Interviews served as the primary data source along with writing artifacts from the participants’ own writing life. Findings indicate that teacher-writers committed to a writing life do so for the purpose of 1) discovering meaning, 2) connections to others 3) commitment to learning and 4) well-being, with an overall …

Keeping Things Going: Reflections On Teaching “Teaching Writing” Online, Emily S. Meixner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

What does it mean to “keep things going online” in an undergraduate teacher education course on teaching writing? In this article, a teacher educator describes how, in consultation with her students, she adapted a secondary English methods course on teaching writing to teach it online. While highlighting and celebrating what worked, she also reflects on lessons learned and teaching questions that continue to persist.

The Rise Of Infographics: Why Teachers And Teacher Educators Should Take Heed, Katie Alford

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

How can teacher educators utilize infographics to prepare preservice ELA teachers for the complex task of creating both critical consumers and conscious creators of this 21st-century genre? As what counts as “text” expands because of our digital world, teachers are struggling to keep up with the demands of knowing and being able to support students in both their reading and writing of many new genres. Infographics have proliferated on the internet and have now hit print media, so they are a growing reality in our world today. This article lays out what we know about infographics in education today and …

Journal Of Communication Pedagogy, Complete Volume, 2018

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

No abstract provided.