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1 – 10 of over 12000Jane Nichols, Beth Filar Williams and Chris Ervin
A common way for academic libraries to support student success is through partnership with writing centers. Practices such as applying service design thinking to develop and…
Abstract
A common way for academic libraries to support student success is through partnership with writing centers. Practices such as applying service design thinking to develop and inform integrated library and writing center services can lead to a student-focused space. This chapter outlines how service design, studio pedagogy, and peer learning informed the setup and ongoing services in The Undergrad Research and Writing Studio (URWS or, the Studio), a shared space in the Oregon State University Libraries. The URWS model is grounded in studio pedagogy, which employs a “propose-critique-iterate” approach to student writing development (Brocato, 2009). Research and writing consultants assist student writers when they have a question, mirroring libraries’ point of need service approach. Librarians and studio faculty collaborated on the training curriculum, which emphasizes how research and writing are intertwined processes. Peer consultant reflection and assessment inform the ongoing development of the overarching program, service, space, and training, ensuring alignment with the ethos of centering students and their learning.
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The purpose of this study is to explore Master’s students’ literature reviews to better understand the literacies required for engaging in complexity in this genre and to inform…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore Master’s students’ literature reviews to better understand the literacies required for engaging in complexity in this genre and to inform graduate student pedagogy.
Design/methodology/approach
In this qualitative study, data were collected in the form of student literature review papers (23 drafts and 23 final versions) from students attending a research seminar course in an all-course Master’s program. All papers were analyzed for citations patterns, genre awareness and levels of complexity.
Findings
Results highlight the nature of complexity in this genre – that this complexity is underpinned by discursive issues such as “truth”, “claims” or “facts” that often mislead novice academic writers, and recognizing that knowledge contested in academic contexts is important to understanding and teaching students about complexity in writing.
Originality/value
One of the most challenging writing tasks graduate students face, is the literature review. Literature reviews require sophisticated conceptual maneuverings. Despite being analytical in nature, many students find it difficult to engage with the layers of complexity required in this genre. How do we make the complexity in literature reviews more visible and accessible? The argument in this paper is that understanding the nature of complexity in literature reviews can enhance writing processes and intentional explicit pedagogy.
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Kristien Zenkov, Marion Taousakis, Jennifer Goransson, Emily Staudt, Marriam Ewaida, Madelyn Stephens, Megan Hostutler, Jasmin Castorena and Matt Kitchen
Policy makers, professional associations and scholars continue to advocate for the integration of enhanced clinical experiences for future teachers’ preparation. These…
Abstract
Purpose
Policy makers, professional associations and scholars continue to advocate for the integration of enhanced clinical experiences for future teachers’ preparation. These recommendations reflect the growing recognition that few events in preservice teachers’ education are more significant than their experiences in the classrooms of veteran peers. Aware of the fact that the field of teacher education needs examples of effective clinical experiences, the authors examined the “critical, project-based” (CPB) model, employing Photovoice activities in a dropout prevention course in a secondary education partner school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.
Design/methodology/approach
Aware that the field of teacher education needs examples of effective clinical experiences, the authors examined the CPB model, employing Photovoice activities in a dropout prevention course in a secondary education partner school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article they detail a practitioner research examination that explores the experiences of 12 preservice middle/high school teachers, reporting on these individuals’ considerations of general pedagogies, writing instruction strategies and teaching personas.
Findings
Results suggest that preservice teachers might best identify pedagogical practices that are consistent with their nascent teaching identities via experiences that occur in school-university partnerships in which future teachers are positioned as pedagogues.
Originality/value
This manuscript explores the use of the “CPB” clinical experience model, identifying the impacts of this approach for preparing future teachers.
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Because Pedagogy of the Oppressed has received worldwide acclaim, influenced many, and has uniquely defined Paulo Freire, it is noteworthy to highlight the book’s evolution from…
Abstract
Because Pedagogy of the Oppressed has received worldwide acclaim, influenced many, and has uniquely defined Paulo Freire, it is noteworthy to highlight the book’s evolution from concept to publication. What were the contextual factors that prompted Freire to write the book? What was his approach for converting his thoughts to prose? How long did it take him to write the book? To that end, this article examines those and other questions that brought the world Paulo Freire’s seminal text.
Heinz‐Dieter Meyer and Brenda Shannon
The purpose of this paper is to propose, as a candidate for a signature pedagogy, a method centered on case writing and peer review.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose, as a candidate for a signature pedagogy, a method centered on case writing and peer review.
Design/methodology/approach
In this method, aspiring education leaders use the writing of case studies – frequently featuring themselves as an actor in a narrative of organizational development or change – to advance their reflection in and on action. The study is then shared with members of the candidate's peer group (cohort members, faculty, or senior practitioners) as a step to building and integrating the candidate in a community of practice. To illustrate, the authors publish the case of a novice school‐leader's voyage to create unity and solidarity among a divided staff. The paper shows that case writing can enrich our arsenal of pedagogies that move the novice beyond the dualism of scholarship and practice.
Findings
Case writing uniquely facilitates reflection‐in‐action and the building of communities of practice.
Practical implications
Innovative pedagogies are required if practitioner education and training are to take their distinct place next to that of researchers and academics.
Originality/value
This paper describes the use of case writing cum peer review as a tool to develop the practical knowledge of fledgling educational leaders.
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By engaging levels of W/writerliness, this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers’ personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of…
Abstract
Purpose
By engaging levels of W/writerliness, this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers’ personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of pedagogical agency.
Design/methodology/approach
In this narrative inquiry, the author draws on theories of writing identity and agency to analyze how four mid-career English teachers’ personal beliefs around writing intersect with their professional practice. Data sources include interviews, journal entries and classroom observations.
Findings
Nuanced differences in teachers’ W/writerly identities produce more substantial differences in their pedagogy, especially impacting their performance of agency to (re)define successful writing outcomes and to balance process and product in their writing instruction.
Practical implications
This paper presents one method to expand preservice and in-service English Language Arts (ELA) practitioners’ approaches to teaching writing even alongside limitations of their teaching context by (1) emphasizing their ownership over their own writing in university methods courses; (2) leading teachers on an exploration of W/writerly identities; and (3) investigating ways teachers can transfer their personal and professional learning to students via their own pedagogical agency.
Originality/value
The study extends the work of scholars in the National Writing Project, suggesting that nuanced exploration of ELA teachers’ W/writerly identities in preservice and in-service settings could increase their sense of agency to work against and within cultures of standardization.
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There has been virtually no explication of poetry-writing pedagogy in historical accounts of Australian distance education during the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
There has been virtually no explication of poetry-writing pedagogy in historical accounts of Australian distance education during the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to satisfy this gap in scholarship.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper concerns a particular episode in the cultural history of education; an episode upon which print media of the 1930s sheds a distinctive light. The paper therefore draws extensively on 1930s press reports to: contextualise the key educational debates and prime-movers inspiring verse-writing pedagogy in Australian education, particularly distance education, in order to; concentrate specific attention on the creation and popular reception of Brave Young Singers (1938), the first and only anthology of children's poetry written entirely by students of the correspondence classes of Western Australia.
Findings
Published under the auspices of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with funds originating from the Carnegie Corporation, two men in particular proved crucial to the development and culmination of Brave Young Singers. As the end result of a longitudinal study conducted by James Albert Miles with the particular support of Frank Tate, the publication attracted acclaim as a research document promoting ACER's success in educational research investigating the “experiment” of poetry-writing instruction through correspondence schooling.
Originality/value
The paper pays due critical attention to a previously overlooked anthology of Australian children's poetry while simultaneously presenting an original account of the emergence and implementation of verse-writing instruction within the Australian correspondence class curriculum of the 1930s.
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Emily Machado, Rebecca Woodard, Andrea Vaughan and Rick Coppola
This study examines how writing teachers manage linguistic ideological dilemmas (LIDs) around grammar instruction and highlights productive strategies employed by one teacher in…
Abstract
This study examines how writing teachers manage linguistic ideological dilemmas (LIDs) around grammar instruction and highlights productive strategies employed by one teacher in an instructional unit on poetry. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine elementary and middle-school teachers to better understand how they conceptualized and enacted writing pedagogies in urban classrooms. Then, we documented the teaching practices of one teacher during a 9-week case study. We describe three LIDs expressed by the teachers we interviewed: (1) a perception of greater linguistic flexibility in speech than in writing; (2) a sense that attention to grammar in feedback can enhance and/or inhibit written communication; and (3) apprehension about whether grammar instruction empowers or marginalizes linguistically minoritized students. We also highlight three productive strategies for teaching grammar while valuing linguistic diversity employed by one teacher: (1) selecting mentor texts that showcase a range of grammars; (2) modeling code-meshing practices; and (3) privileging alternative grammars while grading written work. We describe how teachers might take up pedagogical practices that support linguistic diversity, such as evaluating written assignments in more flexible ways, engaging in contrastive analysis, and teaching students to resist and rewrite existing language rules.
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This paper aims to examine two teachers’ beliefs and practices on teaching writing at an urban, high-performing middle school to determine: What discourses of writing are being…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine two teachers’ beliefs and practices on teaching writing at an urban, high-performing middle school to determine: What discourses of writing are being taught in an urban, high-performing US public middle school? What factors prevent or enable particular discourses?
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on case study methods, this study uses a single-case design with two seventh-grade teachers at a high-performing urban school as embedded units of analysis. Data collection took place over one semester. Data sources included observations and interviews with the two teachers, an interview with an administrator and multiple instructional artifacts, including unit and lesson plans. Observational data were analyzed using a priori code for writing discourses (Ivanic, 2004) and interview data were analyzed for factors affecting instruction using open, axial and selective coding.
Findings
Both teachers enacted extended multi-discourse writing instruction integrating skills, creativity, process, genre and social practices discourses supported by their beliefs and experience; colleagues; students’ relatively high test scores; and relative curricular freedom. However, there was minimal evidence of a sociopolitical discourse aligned with critical literacy practices. Limits to the sociopolitical discourse included a lack of a social justice orientation, an influx of low-performing students, a focus on raising test scores, data-focused professional development and district pacing guides. Racism is also considered as an underlying structural factor undermining the sociopolitical discourse.
Research limitations/implications
Although generalizability is limited because of the small sample size and the unique context of this study, two major implications are the need to layer discourses in writing instruction while centering critical pedagogy and develop teacher beliefs and knowledge. To support these two implications, this study suggests developing university-school partnerships and professional development opportunities that create a community of practice around comprehensive writing instruction. Future research will involve continuing to work with the participants in this study and documenting the effects of providing theory and tools for integrating the sociopolitical discourse into middle school curricula and instruction.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the field of literacy education’s understanding of internal and external factors limiting the sociopolitical discourse in a high-performing, urban middle school in the USA, an understudied context.
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John H. Bickford, Jeremiah Clabough and Tim N. Taylor
Elementary classroom teachers can infuse social studies into the curriculum by integrating history, civics and English/language arts. Elementary teachers can bundle close reading…
Abstract
Purpose
Elementary classroom teachers can infuse social studies into the curriculum by integrating history, civics and English/language arts. Elementary teachers can bundle close reading, critical thinking and text-based writing within historical inquiries using accessible primary sources with engaging secondary sources.
Design/methodology/approach
This article reports the successes and struggles of one fourth-grade teacher's theory-into-practice interdisciplinary unit. The month-long, history-based inquiry integrated close readings of primary and secondary sources to scaffold and refine students' text-based writing about the oft-ignored interconnections between two Civil Rights icons who never met.
Findings
Findings included the import of historical inquiries within the elementary grades, students' abilities to scrutinize and extract meaning from dozens of sources and the value of revision for text-based writing, particularly its impact on the clarity, criticality and complexity of students' writing.
Originality/value
The inquiry's length, use of repeated readings, bulk of curricular resources and integration of revision are each comparably unique within the elementary social studies research literature.
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