This article reports the results of interview research examining writing instruction and assessment practices in 216 Grades 4-8 classrooms across the 10 Canadian provinces and 2 (of 3) territories. Researchers found that participating teachers scheduled daily time for writing, either in language arts classes or through integrating writing throughout the curriculum. Teachers assigned creative writing most frequently and did not speak about writing for learning. Students talked to each other while writing and engaged in peer editing. Much of teachers’ feedback to students on their writing was verbal. Computers were used primarily to retype handwritten compositions to create polished copies.
Research in the teaching of writing involves a complex interplay of focuses and priorities. Teachers must take into account a vast array of explicit and implicit contextual constraints and mandates. What kinds of assignments do they give? How do they attend to aspects of children’s writing processes? In what ways do they foster collaborative talk and peer response in their classrooms? How do they use computers and digital resources for teaching writing? These and dozens of related questions permeate teachers’ daily writing instruction and program development. Perhaps because of the complexity of the enterprise, teachers’ practices in writing instruction are underresearched. In the United States, according to Cutler and Graham (2008),“researchers currently have little data on what writing instruction looks like in schools” (p. 908). National studies provide baseline information showing how classroom practice has been influenced by research and provincial and school district initiatives. As such, national studies provide direction for policy, teacher development, and teacher education program planning. Prior to our current study, the only comprehensive national data on classroom writing practices in Canada came from a study of teachers’ writing assessment. This research was based on teachers’ responses to a questionnaire component of the national writing test, the 2002 School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP), for 13- and 16-year-olds (Hunter, Mayenga, & Gambell, 2006). Similar to the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the United States, the SAIP uses writing samples of 13- and 16-year-olds to generate interprovincial comparisons of writing achievement. The test also includes a teacher questionnaire with questions about the provincial/district, community and school contexts within which teachers work, as well as questions about their teaching and assessment practices, their views on teaching writing, classroom routines, and their students’ views of themselves as writers.
In this article, we report findings from a national study of the teaching of writing across the 10 Canadian provinces and two (of three) territories. We address the overarching research question: What are the practices of and contexts for teaching writing using print, multimedia, and digital technologies in contemporary Canadian Grades 4-8 classrooms? This research includes data from telephone interviews with 192 teachers. We focus upon teachers of Grades 4-8 because we see early adolescence as a particularly important time in the development of literacy practices. This is a time when young people are more likely to “turn off” school literacy (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002), often due to the gap between what young adolescents perceive to be the “real world” of literacy and their teachers’ schoolbased literacy demands (Carrington, 2006; Ferreiro, 2003). It is more critical than ever that teachers contribute to students’ continuing literacy development, as the demands of the contemporary literacy world are changing and young people’s school literacy experiences must help foster their participation in literacy environments.
The Canadian context in which we undertook this investigation is similar in many respects to the contexts with which teachers in other English-speaking countries contend. Teachers grapple with the rapidly changing literacy environments in which they and their students live, and teachers are mandated to incorporate new digital literacy practices. Canadian teachers face conflicting demands from the public and from district and provincial administrators with regard to these new literacy practices, while coping with a culture of testing and accountability (Stack, 2006). Although current provincially mandated writing assessments are designed only in traditional paper-and-pencil mode, provincial curricula for English language arts require teachers to infuse digital technology for learning in their classrooms (Alberta Education, 2000; Nova Scotia Department of Education and Culture, 1998; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2006; Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, 2001).
Surveys of Teachers’ Writing Instruction and Assessment
Although most large scale studies of teachers’ writing instruction have used questionnaire data with closed responses, a few break this trend. The questionnaire-based studies have been conducted in each of the past 3 decades in the United States. Responses to a written survey provided the data for a study of 897 elementary, middle school, and high school teachers, 12 principals and 2,394 students in one state (Stevenson & Kosmidis, 1987), and of 273 K-6 teachers’ teaching practices in 16 counties in another American state (Laframboise & Klesius, 1993). Most teachers participating in the 1987 study had not been introduced to process writing. Their students spent more time completing fill-in-the blank, sentence-completion and multiple-choice exercises than they did writing essays, creative pieces or writing in journals. In contrast, process writing was an element of more than 60% of teachers’ writing instruction in the 1993 study, although students in their classrooms spent twice as much of their language arts time on traditional seatwork as they did on process writing. Almost 20% of their students’ writing time involved creative/expressive writing and 16% of their writing involved journal writing. Much less time (8%) was devoted to informational writing. The participating teachers in the 1993 study indicated that they primarily used textbooks and county-developed materials, including county lists of objectives, as teaching resources. Computers were used in almost half of participating teachers’ writing classrooms for skill drill and practice, yet only 17% used computers for word processing. In almost half of participating teachers’ classrooms, students never engaged in peer editing and almost 25% of teachers did not conduct student-teacher conferences with students on their writing.
A more recent large-scale study of 174 Grades 1-3 teachers’ writing instruction in the United States (Cutler & Graham, 2008) also used questionnaire data. With greatest frequency, participating teachers engaged their students in writing stories and in drawing pictures and writing something to accompany the picture. They assigned the writing of plays and comic strips least frequently. Teachers taught writing skills (e.g., handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar) to a greater degree than they engaged in any other writing instructional practice. Minilessons, and the use of graphic organizers and modeling writing strategies were the next most common practices among participating teachers. Almost half of participating teachers indicated that they never used computers to teach writing and 25% indicated that they used computers less than once per month.
Breaking with the trend to examine teachers’ writing instruction on a large scale using questionnaires exclusively, Bridge, ComptonHall, and Cantrell (1997) used both survey and observational data to determine the amount and type of writing completed by students in three elementary grades in one state. They replicated a study conducted by one of the authors in 1982, drawing on the results of 206 surveys and observations in 12 classrooms to show changes in teaching practice between 1982 and 1995 (the 1982 study had 235 surveys). Their study, similar to other large-scale studies, showed a trend toward more time engaged in composing extended text, and less time on lower-level, traditional writing tasks (such as fill-in-the blank activities and copying from the blackboard) in the later decade.
McCarthy (2008) conducted another study using data sources other than questionnaires. She categorized teachers’ approaches to teaching writing using interview and observational data drawn from a sample of 29 third- and fourth-grade teachers in four American states. In her study, participating teachers predominantly used a genre-driven approach focusing on explicit instruction of the elements of various genres. There was wide use of graphic organizers to teach writing. McCarthey noted that more teachers took a teacher-directed approach, using skills/packaged programs that focused on organization, punctuation and grammar, than used writers’ workshop, consisting of student-selected topics with time for conferences with teachers or peers, minilessons, and writing and sharing time. She observed with least frequency an integrated curriculum approach, where writing was taught throughout the school day.
Recent research seems to indicate that writing instruction in the United States has moved away from a skills approach that was highly controlled by teachers and left little opportunity for students to write extended text. Although there is evidence that such an approach is still present in current writing instruction, teachers are providing more time for students to engage in sustained writing of a variety of types of texts, with narrative predominating. The use of computers in writing classes is growing, but not widespread.
Methods
Data Collection
Cutler and Graham (2008) noted that examining all aspects of classroom writing practices is “impossible in a survey study, as very few teachers would be willing to complete such a questionnaire” (p. 918). Interviews allow for a broader range of issues related to writing instruction to be examined because teachers highlight what is significant to their particular contexts and are willing to take part in more extensive discussions of their practice (Fontana & Frey, 1998). Of course, while both questionnaires and interviews offer the benefit of allowing participants to offer their own perspectives, they also both share the limitation of being self-reported data without triangulation. Unlike other previous large-scale surveys of teachers’ writing instruction (e.g., Cutler & Graham, 2008; Laframboise & Klesius, 1993), our study used telephone interviews to gain a richer sense of the contexts in which teachers teach writing. Brandt and Clinton (2002) point out that the meanings and forms of literacy practiced by students and teachers are influenced by both local and global contexts. Large-scale surveys of teachers’ practices tend to highlight global issues and contexts, and researchers are unlikely to gain substantial access to local issues. In an interview, however, teachers are able to bring up local references and issues that are part of their daily classroom lives. We set out to address the need for national data on the teaching of writing in Canada, but we were also mindful of the importance of local contexts. Indeed, some of our protocol questions asked directly about local contexts and their influences on teachers’ practices (see Appendix).We used conversational interviews with a large number of teachers across the country as a method both to provide a broader picture than is possible with observational research and also to capture the particularities of each teacher’s classroom and practices. Working within a social constructivist perspective, we re mindful that individuals construct meanings from their particular circumstances and experiences. The telephone interviews enabled our research team to seek follow-up comments to illuminate individual teacher’s comments, and to understand teachers’ perspectives on global and local contexts more completely than a questionnaire would allow.
In telephone conversations, teachers talked to us about the issues that mattered to them, rather than being put in a position to respond to a researcher’s notion of what is significant in teaching and assessing writing. The interviewers—all experienced classroom teachers—encouraged teachers to follow up and expand on their answers to questions, allowing digressions and repetitions for a conversational informality.
Our 192 participants included 144 female teachers and 48 male teachers from 10 Canadian provinces and 2 territories. We selected four school districts—two rural and two urban wherever possible—in each province and three to six schools within each district. A total of 142 schools are represented in the study. As the population of elementary teachers is overwhelmingly female, we did not attempt to include an equal percentage of male and female teachers. Participants taught in Grades 4-8 classrooms, in a variety of school structures (K-6, K-8, or 4-6, for example). Many of these teachers taught in self-contained classrooms, being responsible for all or most of the core subjects. A smaller number of the teachers, mostly at the Grades 7-8 level, were subject-area specialists. Table 1 shows the distribution of grades taught by participating teachers.
Data sources are transcribed telephone interviews with Grades 4-8 teachers, with an average length of 30-45 minutes per interview (ranging from 18 to 90 minutes). The interviews were recorded with teachers’ consent. The interview protocol included 20 base questions concerning all aspects of teachers’ contexts and practices for teaching writing (see Appendix). Interview questions reflect well-recognized theories and models of writing and writing instruction: cognitive processes approach (Flower & Hayes, 1981); process approach to teaching writing (Graves, 1994); natural process model (Elbow, 1998); explicit teaching of skills and strategies (Graham, 2006); and development of genre knowledge (Donovan, 2001). We also drew upon social constructivist theory (Vygotsky, 1986) and multiliteracies theory (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006; New London Group, 1996); the latter for both its valuing of literacy as a social practice, and for its recognition that contemporary literacy practices involve a broader view of literacy and attention to the multiple modalities of literate communication and expression.
Data Analysis
The recorded interviews were transcribed and then imported into Excel 2007 with macros written to allow for the separation of multiple codes. We developed a preliminary code book based on the thematic grouping of 20 questions and then used constant comparison thematic coding (Cresswell, 1998; Glaser, 1992) of 13 transcripts to revise our code book. We conducted interrater reliability exercises four times over 5 months, discussing interpretations each time to improve consistency. The accuracy rates improved each time, going from 74%, to 76%, to 83% and finally to 89% interrater agreement.
As noted above, we structured our interview procedures to encourage teachers to speak conversationally about their practices, on the assumption that a fuller and more accurate accounting of their views would help us develop a more comprehensive picture than if we expected teachers to adopt our terminology for their practices. In our analysis of teachers’ comments about their understandings of writing as process, for example, we noted a range from a basic understanding to a more comprehensive understanding. A teacher with a basic understanding seemed to consider the process as going from brainstorming to good copy:
understanding that there’s a process to writing and we don’t just sit down and write something and it’s done. I really spend a lot of time working on that; that we need to start with exploring the idea of a draft writing, revising, editing. (Nova Scotia Grade 3/4 teacher)
We considered a more comprehensive understanding of writing process to include recognition of audience and purpose of design, as illustrated by a Grade 8 Saskatchewan teacher:
I think that first and foremost, I want the students to be able to see writing as purposeful and as a form of communication and a way to express themselves. And once I get the students feeling a little more comfortable with those kinds of ideas then I start to try to help them organize their thoughts—you know, start to think about form and audience and purpose and those kinds of things.
The conversational structure of our interviews allowed us to work more integrally with teachers’ voices and perspectives. This research design, we believe, was generative and rich. The range and depth of their comments made coding and interpretation more complex. This complexity allowed us to develop a better understanding of the local and global influences on teachers’ practice.
Findings
We discuss findings from the interviews in the following categories: (1) teachers’ goals and their perception of student needs, (2) instructional practices and assigned writing, (3) peer and teacher feedback, (4) resources, and (5) use of technology and multimedia.
Teachers’ Goals and Their Perception of Student Needs
For the most part, teachers’ goals for their students as writers were affective, as 62% of teachers identified students’ enjoyment of writing and hoped that students would view writing as an important part of their lives. Next, 47.9% of teachers hoped that students would gain greater awareness of the purpose and audience for their writing, as explained by a grade 8 Saskatchewan teacher whose goal was that her students should “not be scared to take chances; be creative and feel comfortable writing.” Teachers also hoped that students would become better at communicating their thoughts and ideas in writing (42.7% of teachers) and show a greater commitment to various stages of the writing process (28.6%). This goal often focused on editing, as one Grade 4 Quebec teacher wanted students “to learn to edit their work and learn that they’re not just going to write their first draft and that will be it.” Teachers also identified helping students to use writing conventions correctly as a goal (18.8%). Their goals also included helping students with the craft of writing to include greater detail, developing characters, and so on (16.7%). Just over 10% of teachers aimed to support their students in achieving greater success on provincial achievement tests and 2.6% hoped to improve their students’ use of technology to write.
Many teachers described multiple goals that ranged from mundane traditional correctness to more lofty communicative orientations. Sometimes, these goals were expressed almost literally in the same breath, as with this grades 5-8 New Brunswick teacher:
I think first and foremost it goes to the basics … these kids are so digitally enhanced…They’re a culture of technology.… [Y]ou can watch a movie and you can see no capitals in the names of the actors when it comes on the screen, so they’re seeing a lot of things that don’t jive with the writing format and the grammar rules. So my big thing is to show them how it all connects and … that you can create your own newspaper story or create a graphic novel, which some students are doing now, or maybe you can share this as a podcast on the district site [that] other people listen to. And to realize that there’s an end goal for all that writing. I guess it’s two parts.I want my students to be able to be good writers who have a great sense of their format, their punctuation and their style.I want writers to realize it’s not just to hand in their writing to the assignment bin; that this is something [they] created and shared,. There’s a purpose to it, an end goal.
The primary goal, student engagement in their writing and personal development through writing, was identified by 39.6% of teachers as students’ most pressing need as writers. Teachers identified students’ commitment to all stages of the writing process and their use of writing conventions as pressing needs with the next greatest frequency (25.5% each). Another significant need was time to write (identified by 18.2 % of teachers). One Grade 4/5 Alberta teacher noted, “A school timetable does not allow for a good writing process.” Teachers also perceived that their students needed to become more competent at writing craft elements, such as developing characters and using descriptive language (14.6%), that they needed to develop the ability to communicate with others (12%), and to become better at achieving the purpose of their writing and addressing audience needs (10.4%). A Grade 5 Quebec teacher said, for example: “What they really need, despite the constant encouragement, is to add detail to their writing. A lot of them prefer just to write a quick page, but there’s a lot of information missing that leaves the reader with many questions.” Only 1.6% of teachers felt that students needed to develop technological skills in order to write more effectively, and a fraction of teachers (0.5%) identified success on provincial achievement tests as a pressing need.
Instructional Practices and Assigned Writing
Instructional practices and assignments are the enactment of teachers’ priorities. The majority of teachers (78.1%) attempted to address their stated goals and their students’ needs by scheduling daily time for writing, either in language arts classes or through integrating writing throughout the curriculum. During that time, 93.8% of participating teachers engaged students in brainstorming, minilessons and comparing their work to exemplars and 87.5% of teachers allocated time for students to write, collaborate with peers, and provide feedback to students on their writing, either through informal meetings or scheduled student-teacher conferences. Just over half (51.6%) of teachers talked about writing as being embedded in all instruction; a Grades 38 teacher in the Northwest Territories, for example, noted that “students do far more writing than is required in the curriculum because I find a way to have them write about everything.” This teacher, like many other participants of this study, spoke of focusing her writing instruction on the important aspects of her students’ lives:
[Students] live a fairly traditional Aboriginal life. They depend on the bush for a great deal of their livelihood; not only for trapping but for the food on their table. So parts of nature have much more significance to them than a class in the city. So that’s where I focus a lot. Trying to value what is valuable in their lives. And trying to bring it into the classroom as much as possible, and encouraging them to see that it’s interesting to write about that.
Author’s chair and the publishing of student writing were identified by 37.5% of teachers as part of their writing classes. Twenty-seven percent of teachers referred to writer’s workshop. Twenty-one percent of teachers primarily involved their students in writing to prompts. Regardless of the form of instruction, 44.8% of participating teachers said that they write regularly with their students.
Arguing that having fewer assignments provides more time for students to draft, revise and edit, 38.7% of participating teachers assigned 1-5 per term, and 29.7% assigned 610 compositions per term. It was less common for teachers to assign more than 10 written compositions per term: 18% assigned 11-20 pieces of writing, and 13.5% assigned more than 20 pieces of writing per term.
As shown in Table 2, in participating teachers’ classrooms, the most frequently-assigned written forms were creative (e.g., stories, plays, scripts, poetry, historical fiction). Teachers (72.9%) saw students as being most competent in these creative forms. Personal writing (e.g., journal, memos, friendly letters) and subject-area writing (e.g., descriptive, biographical, newspaper reports) were also frequently assigned forms. Teachers found students to be less competent in these forms: 16.1% of teachers felt that their students were competent in subject-area writing, 15.6% in personal writing, and 12.5% in research reports and essays.
Peer and Teacher Feedback
Student talk was an integral part of 96.8% of participating teachers’ writing instruction. Students talked to each other about their writing during brainstorming sessions and while they wrote. In addition, peer editing was a component of writing instruction in 93.7% of teachers’ classrooms. The importance of oral communication was also reflected in teachers’ feedback to students on their writing. Eighty-two percent of participating teachers provided verbal feedback to students either informally or in scheduled formal student-teacher conferences. A Grade 3/4 teacher from Nova Scotia explained the value of such feedback:
I think it’s very important that they see that their writing is important. Sometimes they worry too much about the structure of it. If I spend a lot of time correcting the spelling, then they think that they didn’t do well on it. So when I get to discuss it with them, they can see that I value what they have written.
Almost two thirds of the teachers (65%) indicated that they provide written feedback. Many teachers (42.7%) used tools with prespecified criteria, such as provincial scoring guides and rubrics, to provide feedback, usually in the form of grades. Writing portfolios were used in 16.1% of teachers’ classrooms and 11.5% of teachers encouraged students’ self-assessment and peer assessment as sources of feedback to students on their writing. Teachers felt that both teachers’ feedback (85.2%) and peer feedback (93.7%) have an influence on students’ revisions of writing, with 12.4% of teachers observing that the impact of the teacher feedback depends on the student writer. Peer feedback was often handled in a “one star and two wishes” structure, in which peers are taught to offer one positive comment before making suggestions for improvement. Another common procedure was to pair stronger writers with weaker ones for peer consultations.
Resources
A variety of commercial, provincial, community, and Internet resources guided and/or complemented participating teachers’ instruction. Among the 89.6% of teachers who said they used commercial resources, Vicki Spandel’s 6-Trait Writing (2005) was most widely used. Based on Diederich’s (1974) inductive analysis of characteristics that teachers and other professionals used to assess the quality of writing samples, and later on Purves’ (1992) work on international writing assessment, Spandel identifies the six traits as ideas (the writer’s main message and supporting details), organization (internal structure supporting the communication of ideas), voice (sense of the individual writer and rapport with the reader), word choice (selecting words that clarify or vivify meaning), sentence fluency (flow and rhythm of sentences), and conventions (enhancing meaning using punctuation, spelling, grammar, capitalization, and layout) (Spandel, 2005, p. 2). Teachers’ comments reveal conflicting and overlapping issues related to using officially designated resources; teachers appreciated having resources available but resisted being required to use new ones too frequently. A Grade 8 Prince Edward Island teacher appreciated the freedom that “nobody forces us to use any one thing. You’re free to draw upon what you need in order to do what you need to do.” Conversely, a Grade 8 Ontario teacher approved of the variety of resources but objected to the pace of introduction of new resources: “What I find is that one is not given a chance to effectively implement a program before another one has been added.”
School district publications were used by 30.7% of participating teachers. Teacher-created resources and materials downloaded from the Internet were used by 29.2% and 30.7% of participating teachers respectively. Approximately one quarter (26.7%) of teachers used children’s literature to teach writing and 20.8% identified the provincial curriculum guides as references for their writing instruction. Professional development activities also played a role in resources used to teach writing: 19.3% used materials from workshops and conferences and 17.7% drew on educational journals, magazines and newspapers. Students wrote in workbooks, skill books and activity books in 13% of teachers’ classrooms and they viewed movies, music, television programs, and screenplays as part of their writing instruction in 7.3% of participating teachers’ classrooms.
Most teachers (70.2%) made use of community resources, such as storytellers, local journalists and writers, to teach writing. Additionally, they encouraged their students to participate in writing contests and correspond with pen pals.
Use of Technology and Multimedia
As Table 3 indicates, the majority of teachers used word processors at some point in their writing program. Few teachers, generally those who taught students with disabilities, indicated that their students were composing on computers in class. Many teachers either said that computer time was used for retyping handwritten compositions or said that they felt students should write using a pen first. An eighth-grade Ontario teacher elaborated on this view:
Do the rough copy by hand, and the final copy from the computer, fine, but the majority of kids just go on the computer, they lose their train of thought and they don’t have the logical order, the coherent links and whatnot, because they just write everything off the top of their head, without trying to do a plan.
Generally, their rationales ranged from believing that handwritten papers are a truer reflection of students’ writing abilities to being concerned about plagiarism. Participating teachers were also concerned that students relied too heavily on the spell check function, explaining that this reliance prevented students from learning to spell independently.
Teachers also cited logistical difficulties in using computers in writing classes, as illustrated by a Newfoundland fifth-grade teacher:
I don’t [ask students to] compose on the computer. One of the problems is that the time is not there. Usually I get them to write their first draft and we do the peer editing and stuff on it. Then they do what they think is a final copy, but after they get it done there is still some work to it. Then we will do the final copy on the computer. The problem with this here is that we have 18 or 19 computers in the computer room, but I have 25 kids in the classroom. So you can’t get one computer per child. If you‘re doing composing that limits you because you’ve got so many of your kids working by themselves. And you can’t put two kids together to compose, because they’ve got two different heads and they don’t work the same way. It’s good to pair them up for revising and things, but for the writing part, no. I usually do the writing by hand.
A number of teachers (26.1%), more often those in the upper grade levels, required word processed final copies; 43.2% of teachers found that their students handed in final written assignments that had been word processed. Some teachers encouraged students with bonus marks for papers that were word processed at home. Approximately one third (30.6%) of teachers said that their students generally handed in writing that had been hand-written. Of the 135 responses indicating the use of computers for word processing, 56 teachers were in the lower grades (Grades 4-6) and 79 teachers were in the upper grade levels (Grades 7-8).
Only 9.8% of participating teachers reported advanced usage of computers involving web or sophisticated graphic design; of these teachers, five were teaching Grades 4-6 and 14 taught Grades 7 and 8. A Saskatchewan sixth-grade teacher provides an example of students’ more sophisticated use of computers for writing:
So I think generally the kids are comfortable using technology to write. It’s those other aspects like the video projects or the podcasts which require a little bit more steps and they don’t do those at home, but I know the blogging, for example, they do it quite easily and many are doing it at home without me directing them.
This teacher distinguished between unfamiliar activities for which the students needed instruction and other activities for which students already possessed the needed competencies.
Discussion and Implications
A generation ago, Hairston (1982) heralded the advent of a new paradigm in writing instruction, noting “winds of change” indicating that the predominant product orientation of traditional writing instruction of that time was giving way to the process orientation of the future. Our research shows that this paradigm shift does in fact seem to have occurred in Canada. A process approach permeates all aspects of teachers’ writing instruction—their goals reflect a broad view of teaching writing that includes communication and expression of ideas to an audience, enjoyment of writing, confidence as a writer, and so on. Their intentions include many writing assignments that would be personally relevant for students.
We find a social constructivist philosophy apparently underpinning participating teachers’ stated practices for teaching writing. These practices include scheduling large amounts of time for writing and structuring opportunities for students to give and get feedback from each other and the teacher. Teachers used their observations of students’ writing to guide their formal instruction as they developed minilesson topics. A number of teachers encouraged students to write for audiences beyond the teacher. As in writing classrooms observed by McCarthey (2008), graphic organizers were a prominent feature in participating teachers’ explicit instruction in minilessons.
Participating teachers showed a strong sense of professional autonomy in their teaching decisions. Most teachers identified students’ enjoyment of writing, rather than success on provincial achievement tests, as a primary goal for their writing instruction. When using commercial teaching resources, teachers selected what fit with their goals for their students and addressed the perceived needs of their students.
In keeping with a writers’ workshop approach (Graves, 1994) and sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1986), participating teachers clearly regarded talk as important in their writing instruction: they structured group and fullclass oral brainstorming opportunities, provided oral feedback during writing, encourage peer consultation and feedback, and encouraged students to share their compositions among peers and outside audiences. Participating teachers also reported that they used resource books that have process underpinnings and link assessment with instruction.
However, one important aspect of most traditional writing process approaches was not evident in our interviews. Teachers did not speak about writing for learning. Advocates of writers’ workshop and other process-oriented approaches underscore the importance of writing to discover one’s own thoughts. Influential scholars and teachers, such as Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, and Rosen (1975), Elbow (1998), Graves (1994), and Newell (2006), clearly identify the benefits of exploratory writing as a means of pushing one’s learning—both in terms of curricular areas and of personal growth. Such a view seems not to be part of participating teachers’ thinking about why they teach writing and their goals for their students as writers. We are left with some questions about this absence; questions that will perhaps be more clearly illuminated in the second phase of this study when we conduct classroom observations and follow-up conversations with a number of the teachers who were interviewed in Phase 1 of the research. We are reluctant to conclude that teachers who did not mention exploratory writing and writing to learn are necessarily unaware of this kind of writing; yet we also wonder whether a teacher can truly be a process-oriented teacher without this understanding. One explanation may hinge on the meanings that teachers attach to their own labels. It is possible that the discussion of a number of teachers of “creative” and/or “expressive” writing may be their shorthand for “writing to learn” or “exploratory” writing.
Writing instruction exists within cultural and educational contexts of particular times and places. The shift to a process orientation from a product orientation was the new “wind of change” that Hairston discussed in 1983. While we do not have the historical comparison with national data from Canadian classrooms, we do find much evidence of teachers using a process orientation, as well as attention focused on extended writing and daily practice. Participating teachers in our study generally assigned fewer than 10 writing projects per term, ensuring that students had extensive time to plan, draft, revise and edit. When we asked about a typical writing class, they did not mention the fill-in-the-blank activities that American researchers found in earlier studies (Laframboise & Klesius, 1993; Stevenson & Kosmidas, 1987).
The comparable (or, many would argue, far more far-reaching) change in contemporary education involves the integration of multimodal and digital aspects of literacy (New London Group, 1996), As noted above, multiliteracies theory is evident in Canadian provincial and regional curricula for English language arts and for information and communications technology. In considering current literacy practices, researchers and theorists point to the explosive popularity of Web 2.0 practices, particularly possibilities associated with the practices of social networking, the identity work it inspires and reflects, and the remix practices that support the creation of new material by recombining available digital material (Knobel & Lankshear, 2008). Web 2.0 practices encourage interaction to solve problems and the collaborative development of expertise. Such new sensibilities allow people of all ages to develop digital material to showcase their own interests and expertise, rather than merely accessing material developed by others, as in earlier Web 1.0 practices. Teachers who are Web 2.0 savvy would need to conceptualize their stance regarding students’ expertise and engagement accordingly. We did not see much evidence of such conceptualization in the interviews with our teacher participants.
Our study shows that this “wind of change” has not yet had a strong influence on classroom practice in Canadian Grades 4-8 classrooms. Participating teachers’ concerns are Web 1.0 concerns—those that foster the development of individual expertise and independence—such as becoming independent spellers without the help of spell check, and about limiting Internet use so as to limit opportunities for plagiarizing. Very few teachers in our study have taken up multiliteracies theory, using computers and multimedia to teach writing in ways that reflect a “distributed, collective and hybrid,” Web 2.0 perspective (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 41). Moreover, they do not voice awareness of the possibilities for such work to engage, enrich, or empower their students. Only one percent of participating teachers identified students’use of technology to create multimodal texts as an important goal for their students as writers. Again, however, we anticipate the importance of classroom observations in Phase 2 of this study to flesh out teachers’ practices and thinking. Given the limitations of interviews as data sources, we do not know, for example, all the classroom, school, and districts issues that influence how teachers use computers to teach writing. Additionally, we are well aware that this research is time sensitive: each year brings change to teachers’ practices, in part because of district initiatives and increased access to technology and support for the use of technology in classrooms. Changes in attitudes about the relative dangers and benefits of social networking will also come in time.
Educators in Canada and the United States face many similar contexts and issues, though these play out differently in local contexts. As such, the Canadian data and discussion are germane to literacy education in the United States. This study offers scope for consideration of how teachers do or do not take up the challenges of teaching writing using contemporary literacy affordances. Though teachers are encouraged through provincial and regional curricular documents to take up the challenge of teaching writing with a greater focus on newer technologies and literacy environments, clearly there is much work to be done to support teachers in these efforts.
This research was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant. The authors are grateful to the funding agency and especially thankful to all teachers who participated in this research study.
Appendix: Teacher Interview Questions
Talk about the community surrounding your school. Would you consider the school to be in an urban or rural community? What kinds of writing do you feel that members of the community engage in? What value do they attach to writing, in your view?
What are your goals for your students as writers?
How much time do you schedule for formal writing instruction?
What happens in writing class in a typical week in your classroom?
What resources do you use when you teach writing? What commercial programs are available in your school? school district? What do you see as the advantages/disadvantages of the program(s)? How many of these resources have you used? Which were most useful and why?
How much time do your students spend writing in a typical day?
What kinds of writing do you ask students to do in language arts and in other subjects? How many writing assignments do students hand in during a report-card period?
What kinds of support do parents of your students give to their children in their writing?
What do you feel are your students’ most pressing needs in becoming successful writers?
Do you structure your writing classes so students talk to each other? How much talking do students do in your writing classes?
Do you use multimedia and computers in teaching writing? If so, how? Talk about some examples of ways your students use computers and multimedia at home. What percentage hand in printed-out work rather than hand-written work?
What kinds of writing do your students do outside of school that you know of? Do you incorporate these types of writing in your classroom writing expectations and instruction?
What genres/forms do you find students are most competent writing? Which ones do you usually teach? How do you teach them?
How do you give feedback to your students on their writing? How important do you feel this feedback is in helping students with their writing? What do you use to assess?
Do students give feedback to each other on their writing? How important do you feel this feedback is in helping students with their writing?
What do you feel are the strengths of your writing instruction?
What would you like to change about your writing instruction?
What is unique about the students in your classroom that influences how you teach writing?
Who, or what, has influenced your writing instruction most?
Are you a writer, yourself, outside of school?
