Reshaping writing practices
Submitted by:
Petra Magnusson
Abstract:
This paper reports an ongoing project in an F-9 environment in Sweden where teachers and researchers cooperate to develop the enactment of writing practices in teaching throughout the curriculum. The teachers’ identification of the need to develop writing in teaching and learning in the actual school is paralleled with national concerns and informed by the results of a metastudy by Graham et al. (2020), concluding the positive effects of writing for learning.
The purpose of the project is to enhance teachers’ awareness of the importance of writing for learning and to develop and integrate writing tasks in teaching. RQ1: What writing is taking place and how can it be developed? RQ2: What aspects of the used theoretical approaches are considered useful among teachers in integrating writing into their teaching?
The project is theoretically framed by Habermas (1971) and Berge (1988) to overview and describe writing to understand how writing as events, practices, purposes, and acts can/needs to be developed in the actual teaching contexts, drawing on New Literacy Studies including the multimodal and digital aspects of writing (Barton, 2007; NLG, 1996). Through the lens of the writing wheel, used to understand and enhance conscious and informed didactical considerations and choices (Berge et al. 2016), teachers and researchers discuss and develop writing tasks iteratively after implementation in classroom work.
As initiated by the teachers the project is design-based (McKenney & Reeves, 2019) with a strong focus on mutual learning through methods of workshops, focus group discussions and lessons with design, evaluation and re-design, observed and documented through fieldnotes, audio recordings and collection of teaching material and students’ writing, both pre – and during project. The analytical approach is yet to be developed further.
Findings are expected to show development of teachers informed didactical use of writing in their teaching by establishing ways of analysing and talking about both writing tasks and students' writing in relation to curriculum goals. Additionally, findings are expected to give insight into ways to implement and develop theory in teachers’ daily work.