AAACE 2021 Annual Conference

Writing Pedagogy, Online Writing Environments

Mentoring in-service teachers about writing pedagogy is intricate, multilayered, complicated work. In this study, researchers investigated the practice of sharing writing, a tenet of writing instruction, via an electronic versus face-to-face format. Results indicated significant issues within writing instructional practice that surfaced through an examination of feedback and writing pieces.

Session participants will explore how a select group of educators grappled with the teaching of writing and how issues were exacerbated when confronted with teaching writing in an online environment. The foundational tenet of the National Writing Project, wherein teachers who teach writers are writers themselves, sparked a group of teachers to reconsider how they taught writing and what they valued regarding writing pedagogical practices. Developing in-service teachers into confident, capable writing teachers is complicated work encompassing relationship skills, pedagogical knowledge, self-confidence, and the capacity to work collaboratively. Within the last several decades, the field of education has been portrayed as failing (Berliner & Glass, 2014), paving the way for the commodification of teaching and subsequent policies and politics that favor lock-step, canned, and commercial writing curriculum and ignore issues such as cultural literacy, student choice, and community (Applebee, 2012; Bickmore, Bickmore, & Sulentic Dowell, 2013; DeVoss & Eidman-Aadahl, 2010; Nagin, 2012; O’Donnell-Allen, 2012). This research highlights the importance of writing professional development that honors writing as a basic civil right, values choice, and allows students to explore their communities and selves through writing. Issues of access, agency, and a renewed perspective of writing as a social justice issue emerged.