Secondary Education Commons^™

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 …

Book Review: Punished For Dreaming, Lorene Deatley

Journal of College Access

No abstract provided.

Well-Being Consciousness And College Access Borderlands: Staff Perspectives On Supporting Students’ Well-Being, Paris D. Wicker

Journal of College Access

More than 2550 pre-college preparation and college access programs in the United States are designed to increase the postsecondary enrollment and degree obtainment rates for historically excluded college students, including low-income and Students of Color. Less known is how these programs address the social emotional, and well-being needs of college-going Black and Indigenous women enrolling at Predominately White Institutions (PWIs). Guided by Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands theory, this study analyzed interviews with five current and former college access program staff to uncover if and how college access programs define and implement well-being into college access initiatives. Findings revealed varied racialized and …

Factors That Influence High School Students' Postsecondary Career Decisions In A Guaranteed-Tuition Based School District, Tracy Y. Miller

Dissertations

This study explored factors that influence the postsecondary career decisions of 427 11th and 12th grade students in a guaranteed tuition-based school district in a Midwestern state. Since 2005, this district has had a “Promise” program where eligible students can get up to 100% of their postsecondary tuition paid to attend a college, university, technical, or skilled trade program, or participate in an apprenticeship. Students have up to 10 years after graduating high school to utilize the funding. In addition, students who decide to enter the military after high school have up to 10 years to utilize the funding after …

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.

Learning About Teaching Writing: The Use Of Roles To Support Preservice Teachers Pedagogical Knowledge And Practices, Kristine Pytash, Denise N. Morgan, Elizabeth Testa

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

If teacher educators are fortunate to be able to teach a writing methods class, they encounter challenges in designing field experiences that support what preservice teachers are learning in their course. In this article, we described how we developed a unique field placement where the preservice teachers worked in teams and rotated roles each week. We found that these taking on these roles provided preservice teachers with unique lenses to learning about writing, students, and general teaching pedagogies.

(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 …

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.

Campus Visits As Predictors Of Postsecondary Enrollment In Low-Income, Rural School Districts, M. Corinne Smith, Ross M. Gosky, Jui-Teng Li

Journal of College Access

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between visits to college campuses by middle school and high school students and postsecondary enrollment rates, where campus visits are classified as both formal college visits and also informal campus visits. Specifically, Traditional Campus Visits and Educational Campus Field Trips are categorized as two distinct service types sponsored by the GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) grant program in 11 rural, western North Carolina school districts. The participants were 2,274 students who started the GEAR UP program in 7th grade and remained enrolled at a participating …

College 101: Sharing Experiences And Stories For Transformative Change, Christine Robinson

Journal of College Access

College 101 is powerful Pre-College Opportunity Program (PCoP) designed to expose at-risk high school students to the benefits of post-secondary education, to motivate them to stay in school, and to help them envision a future that includes post-secondary education. The unique features of College 101 include that it is grounded in the pedagogical approach of Real Talk (Hernandez, 2015), and that it is led mainly by College Positive Volunteers (CPVs). The goal of this study was to explore the experiences of at-risk high school students who engaged in the program at a mid-sized research university located in the Midwest. An …

Integrating Social Emotional Skill Development Throughout College Access Program Activities: A Profile Of The Princeton University Preparatory Program, Catherine M. Millett, Marisol J. C. Kevelson

Journal of College Access

In a prior study we demonstrated that college access program participants have positive views of the extent to which the program supports the development of their social and emotional skills and related college help-seeking behaviors in college. In this follow-up study, we explore the extent to which participant views vary by length of participation in the program in high school (i.e., dosage) and the extent to which alumni enrolled in college differ from college graduate alumni in their perceptions of the influences of the college access program. Results reveal that a multi-year college access program may influence different social and …

What Does It Mean To Be Prepared For College-Level Writing?: Examining How College-Bound Students Are Influenced By Institutional Representations Of Preparedness And College-Level Writing, Ann Burke

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article explores how institutional representations of college readiness (e.g. teacher talk and standardized assessment) and writing expectations influence high school students' perceptions of their preparedness to write at the college level. Findings presented are from an IRB-approved research study. This work offers important implications for how educators and educational institutions represent college-level writing to students and the ways in which those representations influence students’ perceived preparedness and expectations for college-level writing through peer comparison, teacher talk, curriculum, and assessment.

Best Practices For Teaching Discussion As Part Of High School Common Core State Standards, Mitchel Stengel, Leah Nolan, David Donnick, Wesley Skym, Anna M. Wright

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

Instructional discussion is a teaching method used in many classrooms across grade levels. In fact, the Common Core State Standards promote the use of instructional discussion in secondary classrooms (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018a). Students, however, are not always taught best practices for engaging in a discussion and may feel unprepared to participate. As a result, discussions may not produce the dynamic learning opportunity they are intended to foster. This essay provides 10 tips for high school teachers to prepare students in the high school classroom to engage in a meaningful classroom discussion effectively in order to ensure students …

Conceptualizing Latina/O College-Going Behavior In High School, Victor B. Saenz Ph.D., Anna P. Drake Ph.D., Claudia Garcia-Louis Ph.D., Wonsun J. Ryu, Luis Ponjuan Ph.D.

Journal of College Access

This study examined the influence of participation in school and extracurricular activities on Latino males’ intention to pursue a bachelor’s degree in relation to their Latina peers. Using nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study data from 2012, researchers developed two factors and three dichotomous variables focused on academic, non-academic, or pre-college activities and ran multivariate regression models to determine the effect on intention to pursue a bachelor’s degree. After accounting for background characteristics, being female retained a strong positive effect on intention to pursue a bachelor’s degree. Two factors were positively associated with Latino males’ bachelor’s degree intention: Hours on …

Journal Of Communication Pedagogy, Complete Volume, 2018

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

No abstract provided.