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Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction invites students to take an inquiry stance toward issues of interest and significance—exploring issues, framing questions, gathering information, synthesizing findings into messages, publishing or presenting their findings, and assessing their efforts before moving on to other inquiries. CMWI can be seen as a...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... conclude, our most salient finding about how these teachers enacted CMWI principles and practices over one school year is that they managed to orchestrate mediation toward these four instructional goals or targets contributing to language learning and literacy proficiency: 1) confidence and risk-taking; 2) concept development and content learning; 3) meaning-making skills and strategies; and 4) linguistic awareness and cross-linguistic transfer. We can point to three interrelated conclusions based on this finding. First, these teachers clearly recognized the diversity among their students labeled “adolescent English learners.” These teacher researchers (and their data) reminded us that each student is unique and that no instructional approach will work for all students who happen to be learning English as their second, third, or fourth language in school. Second, these teachers not only recognized student diversity, but they attempted to build on the identities, knowledge, and skills that their students brought to the classroom. Third, these teachers did not simply focus on ethnicity or linguistic differences, but also used popular culture, technology, and students’ personal interests as opportunities for mediation. Further research should focus on detailed documentation about when and how teachers mediate toward each of these goals or targets through particular instructional practices, assignments, routines, materials, etc., but also within their conversations with individuals and groups of students. Of course, further research should attempt to link these instructional decisions with data about changes in student writing. The actual influence on student achievement was not considered in the analysis presented here but is, of course, our ultimate goal. Future research should document whether deliberate attempts to mediate these four kinds of learning leads to measureable improvement in students' reading and writing proficiency. These findings also suggest revisions for CMWI. Specifically, CMWI principles and practices might be refined to delineate more clearly how these teachers invite their students to take an inquiry stance and how they enact both short and long-term inquiry cycles. These findings prompted specific revisions for Year 2 CMWI. In Year 2 we expanded the summer institute to five days; we expanded the online support; and we ensured that the role of the observers was seen as primarily supportive--not evaluative. We also used revised versions of the inquiry cycle (Figure 1) and the instructional landscape diagram (Figure 2). In terms of implications for professional development and instruction, we would offer the following general recommendations consistent with the CMWI principles and ...
Context 2
... four teachers whose work is described below left the 2007 CMWI three-day summer institute with plans about how to integrate these principles and practices into their instruction, and they invited observers into their classrooms to help document those decisions. Here, we focus on two questions that emerged as important for these teachers and for the research team: “When should I step in to provide support for a student? When should I back off and let students work independently?” Those questions are central to what has been called a “gradual release of responsibility” model (Fisher & Frey, 2003; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) and are particularly pertinent for teachers of adolescent English learners (Englert, Mariage, & Dunsmore, 2006). Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction (CMWI) is consistent with what Johns (1997) called a socioliterate approach to writing instruction, one in which learners are “constantly involved in research into texts, roles, and contexts and into the strategies that they employ in completing literacy tasks in specific situations” (p. 15). CMWI invites students to take an inquiry stance toward issues of interest and significance (see Figure 1). CMWI can be seen as a rich and dynamic landscape of literacy tasks, routines, practices, materials, and dialogues that invite students to ask questions and to look for answers to those questions. Further, CMWI sets up a series of guided inquiry cycles through which students write messages to authentic audiences for significant purposes. As students engage in these inquiry cycles, the teacher observes them carefully, supporting and mediating for the group and for individual students as ...
Context 3
... instruction can be thought of as a series of inquiry cycles, both small (a single lesson or a conference with a student) and large (an entire unit). Figure 1 represents the recursive phases of this inquiry cycle. The 2007 CMWI professional development project described here consisted of a three-day Invitational Advanced Institute (18 hours), online follow-up support, and four research team meetings throughout the school year (12 hours). During online discussions and follow-up meetings, participants discussed their instructional decisions and students' responses. The research design for Year 1 was to identify and evaluate CMWI instructional tools and practices in these teachers' classrooms and to make revisions in the model for Year 2 professional development. To document teachers’ use of CMWI, five observers collected observational and interview data. Each observer made at least five classroom observations throughout the year. The first observation provided an overview of the classroom and the school environment, and subsequent site visits yielded observational field notes, papers distributed to students, and follow-up interviews with each teacher. Relevant student work was collected when possible. Each observation session lasted at least one class period. A semi-structured, observational protocol focused observers on three foci: description of the campus and classroom setting, description of the instructional tasks/events within the observational period, and description of the interactions between and among teachers and students. Observers recorded scripted, low- inference field notes and made digital audio recordings. Transcriptions of relevant excerpts from these recordings were added to the field notes. Follow-up interviews were also recorded and transcribed and included these open-ended questions: • What happened in this class period that best demonstrates how you are applying the CMWI Principles & Practices? • What patterns are you noticing in the ways students are responding to these principles and practices? In their writing performance? In their attitudes toward writing? • What surprises, puzzles, or anomalies are you seeing related to these principles and practices? • What are one or more specific instructional decisions you have made to adapt or revise your CMWI instruction in response to students’ actions or comments? Observers also asked follow-up questions, including asking for clarification or elaboration regarding teachers’ instructional choices during the observed class. Data also included three letters to the research team during the year about how they enacted CMWI principles and practices. A focus group interview in the summer of 2008 served as a member check of preliminary findings. Student writing samples were also collected, but that analysis is not addressed in this ...
Citations
... This is because children's literature offers a potentially nonthreatening environment from which children can explore and resist daily challenges (Todres, 2018). It is an avenue for students to make deep connections to their lives and to participate in dialogue and critique about those significant issues which they engage in on a daily basis (Patterson, Wickstrom, Roberts, Araujo, & Hoki, 2010). Many children and adolescent books explicitly or implicitly explore themes of human rights and social justice (Todres & Higinbotham, 2015). ...
In most cases, the curriculum chosen for wide-use does not mirror or address the pressing needs of bi/multilingual learners, especially for those who are in middle and high school settings. In light of this and the increasingly negative national discourse surrounding minoritized students, our focus in this article is to offer in-service teachers a heuristic for compiling a multi-genre, multilingual text set to support bi/multilingual students' positive identities and literacies practices. This text set is designed with the themes of identity and social justice in order to reflect the students' struggle to fully participate in the American Dream. It also describes how teachers can purposely plan for linguistic support in students' additional languages, language varieties, and English. Taken together, we believe that deeply exploring these compelling books from a critical perspective with linguistic scaffolds will allow teachers to foster robust multilingual literacy skills to address social justice in the classroom and beyond.
... Thus, caring cannot be narrowed down to one specific action, but is a result of many systematic classroom decisions. Therefore, this study is grounded in literacy education theory that assumes caring for adolescent English learners begins by leveraging students' culturally-embedded ways of knowing in the classroom, fully embracing their assets to mediate literacy instruction (Patterson, Wickstrom, Roberts, Araujo, & Hoki, 2010;Wickstrom, Araujo, Patterson, Hoki, & Roberts, 2011). ...
... Effective instructional actions take place when teachers consider student needs, personal and professional experiences, local and national curricular mandates, professional development experiences, pedagogical stance, and when they see students for who they are (Araujo, 2013;Patterson et al., 2010). Sometimes these instructional decisions are made while teachers are in the act of teaching. ...
... The teachers in this study participated in a professional development approach called "Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction" (CMWI) funded by the National Writing Project (NWP) (Patterson et al., 2010;Wickstrom et al., 2011). For a semester the teachers were immersed in "research-based ideas and guidance" to support the writing needs of English learners in their ELA classrooms. ...
This paper presents the actions of two high school English language arts teachers as they engage in writing instruction with adolescent English learners. Using a naturalistic, qualitative methodology we investigate the actions two high school English language arts teachers engage in to meet the needs of their students. Findings suggest that embracing the students’ resources, building on linguistic knowledge, taking time to choose the right books and activities, being explicit about writer’s workshop and accepting its frenetic pace because it meets the students’ needs, and using the act of writing as a thinking activity, were the actions that made a difference to promote student success.
... In this model, students are provided numerous opportunities to work together and to become active participants in their own learning while receiving the support they need to be successful. The I do-We do-You do model of instruction encompasses a tenet of CRI, which holds that students from diverse backgrounds benefit from opportunities to learn in group scenarios (Ladson-Billings, 1990;Wickstrom et al., 2010). ...
... Before students begin writing, they must determine their subject matter. At this stage in the process, teachers have considerable opportunity to implement two significant principles of culturally responsive writing instruction, namely, that, first, students need to be the decision makers regarding the subject matter about which they will write, and, second, students need opportunities to connect academic instruction to their lives (Wickstrom et al., 2010). Teachers must continually strive to create open, nonjudgmental environments for students to share their life experiences, especially when developing prewriting ideas. ...
... After writing the paper with help from the students, the teacher assists students as they write their own papers independently. A student's sense of identity can influence his or her learning (Wickstrom et al., 2010). Therefore, to ensure cultural responsiveness at this stage in the writing process, teachers should encourage the students to write in a language that is conversational or comfortable to the student. ...
Research suggests that teachers often do not adequately prepare students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) to utilize organizational structures and basic writing skills that are necessary to produce cohesive essays. Among the challenges of effectively teaching writing to secondary students with EBD is how to deliver culturally responsive instruction to students who come from a variety of different backgrounds. This article presents specific strategies for infusing culturally responsive practices into scaffolded instruction for teaching written expression to youth with EBD.
... Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction (Patterson, Wickstrom, Roberts, Araujo, & Hoki, 2010) is a professional development approach funded by the National Writing Project (2007Project ( -2010 2010) which focus is to immerse teachers in " research based ideas and guidance " to support the writing needs of adolescent English language learners, then follow teachers into the classroom to document " what worked " with their students. In the initial institute, teachers inquired about communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1998), funds of knowledge (Moll, 1996), mediation (Vygotsky, 1978), and inquiry-based writing instruction (Wilhelm, 2007). ...
... In our review of the literature, we found several specific pedagogical practices being used to support the writing of ELLs, many of which incorporate the specific literacies and interests of ELL students in U.S. contexts. Wickstrom, Patterson, and Araujo (2010), for example, found that instruction allowing ELLs to take an inquiry stance toward issues that are of interest and importance to them, facilitated by teachers' differentiation of writing instruction based on their students' needs and characteristics, has the potential to improve adolescent ELLs' writing. Multilingual approaches are likewise notable. ...
As writing has assumed increasing importance in discussions of pedagogy for diverse classrooms, attention to the contexts in which secondary teachers develop and implement writing instruction for adolescent English language learners (ELLs) is of great importance. Drawing on ecological language learning theories and situated teacher learning theory (van Lier, 2003; Borko, 2004), the authors present findings from participants in a focus group (N = 10) and follow-up interviews (N = 6) conducted with a set of secondary English language arts and English as a second language (ESL) teachers. Within overlapping institutional/professional and pedagogical contexts, teachers identified teacher expertise, high-stakes testing, classroom assessment and grading, placement and tracking, and disciplinary disconnects as the ecological factors most influential in their instructional choices related to ELL writers. Implications of these findings for research and teacher education are discussed.
... CMWI's theoretical underpinnings were based on a socio-literate approach, which supports students to "constantly be involved in research and into strategies that employ in completing literacy tasks in specific situations" (Johns, 1997, p. 15). Table 1 displays CMWI's principles and practices, which were explored in earlier publications (Patterson, Wickstrom, Roberts, Araujo, & Hoki, 2010;Wickstrom, Araujo, & Patterson, 2011). ...
... Teacher decision-making capacities were reduced to classroom management, attendance, and seating arrangements. Today, however, some teachers are realizing that effective instruction for their students goes beyond the structured curriculum at their disposal (Patterson et al, 2010, Wickstrom et al, 2011. ...
This article presents two case studies that document the decisions of two secondary English language arts teachers in ninth and eleventh grade classrooms who are working with English learners. These teachers were interviewed and observed in their classrooms during the spring semester to investigate their decision-making during literacy instruction. Findings suggest that when decisions focused on building relationships, inquiry instruction, and students' interests and mediated the resources around them, students deeply connected to the learning. One teacher saw students as instructional partners and overtly focused decisions on improved engagement and participation. The other teacher overtly and deliberately focused on empathy, caring and meaningful connections to help students make sense of their academic worlds.
... Finally, as they invite students into these inquiry cycles, CMWI teachers provide a range of support (or mediation), depending on their students' backgrounds, interests, strengths, and instructional targets for growth (Patterson, Wickstrom, Roberts, Araujo, & Hoki, 2010). The apprenticeship model (Rogoff, 1990) is useful in explaining how they mediate students' writing, but CMWI teachers also argue that familiar topics and genre serve as mediators, as well as the students' first language and various instructional tools and practices (mentor texts, anchor charts, graphic organizers, etc.). ...
Literacy educators may dismiss the recent outcry about the U. S. school "crisis" as an emotional and perhaps cynical bid for political gain and private profit, but the drop-out rate and college-going rate highlight an urgent, legitimate concern about whether all students are being served. Admittedly, multiple factors influence how and whether individual adolescents are able to negotiate various cultural, linguistic, economic, emotional, and academic challenges, many of which are clearly beyond the control of school personnel. The quality of instruction, however, is one significant factor we should be able to influence (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Increasingly, literacy research focuses on improving our support of these students, particularly English learners, toward eventual success in the workplace and in post-secondary educational settings, but few publications specifically address the complexities inherent in writing instruction for secondary English learners. The purpose of this study is to examine two high school teachers' decisions about writing instruction, aiming to prepare students for careers and college readiness. The question addressed in this paper is, " How do two high school teachers mediate English learners' academic writing in preparation for careers and college? " BACKGROUND OF THE LARGER STUDY
In order for students to learn, teachers must set conditions for learning to take place and develop a community of learners. Teachers share their experiences with using mentor texts, playing with language, and reading and writing for authentic purposes as ways to set conditions for students to be successful on high-stakes assessments as well as develop an identity as readers and writers.
In this short paper, which reflects on one of my contributions to the systems literature in 1992 (Pluralism and the Legitimation of Systems Science), I discuss the context at that time. Systems scientists were embroiled in a paradigm war, which threatened to fragment the systems research community. This is relevant, not only to understanding my 1992 contribution, but also because the same paradigms are evident in the complexity science community, and therefore it potentially faces the same risk of fragmentation. Having explained the context, I then go on to discuss my proposed solution to the paradigm war: that there are four domains of complexity, three of which reflect the competing paradigms. The problem comes when researchers say that inquiry into just one of these domains is valid. However, when we recognise all four as part of a new theory of complexity, we can view them as complementary. The four domains are natural world complexity, or “what is” (where the ideal of inquiry is truth); social world complexity, or the complexity of “what ought to be” in relation to actual or potential action (where the ideal of inquiry is rightness); subjective world complexity, or the complexity of what any individual (the self or another) is thinking, intending or feeling (where the ideal of inquiry is understanding subjectivity); and the complexity of interactions between elements of the other domains of complexity in the context of research and intervention practice. Following a discussion of the relevance of this theory for complexity scientists, I end the paper with a final critical reflection on my 1992 paper, pointing to some theoretical assumptions and terminology that I would, in retrospect, revise.
