General Questions
- How are 7th-10th grade teachers across subject areas currently teaching writing in their classrooms?
- How much time do teachers devote to various writing skills and concepts?
- What techniques are teachers using to engage students in writing instruction?
- How do teachers decide which writing skills and concepts to prioritize in their instruction?
We are looking for groups of teachers within a school to participate. Those teachers should teach 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th grade and should teach a content area that involves regular writing (e.g., English, History). Some schools would be treatment schools whereas others would be control schools.
Teachers lack the resources to teach writing well. Unlike in mathematics, where there are coherent, evidence-based sequences for effective teaching, there is currently no coherent roadmap of writing skills that teachers can use to support their students. Successful writing instruction is necessary to close gaps in equity, access, and success across schools. Therefore, our goal is to establish a logical progression of writing skills and corresponding approaches to instruction. To meet that goal, we must do two things:
There is a clear gap in the research about writing instruction that has been completed to date. Since the majority of research is grounded in data derived from surveys or observations conducted a few times per year, there is a lack of clarity about daily writing instruction in classrooms and schools. That is why we are focusing our efforts on capturing data to describe the daily writing strategies and approaches that teachers currently employ over the course of a full academic year in a wide range of classrooms.
Too often, research is done about teachers rather than with teachers. Because our work is meant to be enacted by educators, teachers must be vital partners in our project. Teachers will be an essential part of the process both by participating in the analysis of the data collected and co-constructing the writing pathway and by participating in learning communities to refine and improve the pathway that has been developed. We will also reflect back to teachers their individual data so they can examine their own practice. With teachers as our partners in data collection and pathway design, we will ensure that educators have a true voice in the guidance they will ultimately use in their classrooms.
Information for Interested Teachers
- Treatment school teachers will incorporate the writing pathway into their curriculum, fill out a daily 2-minute survey about their writing instruction that day, give a pre- and post-test to their students, and meet with the team for one (1) hour six (6) times during the year.
- Control school teachers will only give the pre and post-test and fill out the survey once a week.
- Each treatment school teacher will be compensated $2,000 for the year.
- Each control school teacher will be compensated $450 for the year.
Upon completing the intake survey, each teacher will be assigned a unique code. Teachers will then be given a unique survey link based on their code. This unique survey link will allow teachers to complete the writing instruction survey without entering any identifying information. As teachers complete their surveys, researchers will aggregate and analyze the de-identified data.
If information from this study is published or presented at scientific or professional meetings, teacher names and other personal information about you will not be used.
