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Writing in Context: Reluctant Writers and Their Writing at Home and at School
Abstract
This study investigated the engagement with writing of reluctant writers in the contexts of home and school. A structured and semi-structured survey method was used to capture responses from 106 reluctant writers in 9 primary schools (age range 6-9 year olds) in the UK. Findings show that although these students were deemed to be reluctant writers by their teachers, the majority admitted to writing in a range of genres in the home context. It was found that these students had access to adult help with their writing in the home and also had ready-made audiences. A sociocultural perspective is used to explain the discontinuity in the writing behaviours of these students between home and school. The implications of this study are applicable to societies with highly prescriptive writing curricula in which transcriptional writing skills are privileged over creativity and compositional processes. The corollary is that schools need to adopt ethnographic approaches to literacy in order to capture the varied identities of students as writers, and provide the means by which students can freely apply literacy practices developed in the home to writing in school.
... A supplementary question asked students to try to explain the reason for their choice (i.e., Why so?). In addition, questions from Gardner's child-friendly questionnaire (Gardner, 2013) were adapted to assess the types of writing activities children do at home (e.g., What kinds of writing do you do at home? Do you write (6 options: stories; lists; diary; letters or cards; notes; any other writing activities) and their perceptions of their parent's involvement in their writing (e.g., Does anyone help you write at home?). ...
... Do you write (6 options: stories; lists; diary; letters or cards; notes; any other writing activities) and their perceptions of their parent's involvement in their writing (e.g., Does anyone help you write at home?). This survey, which was developed and worded specifically for lower-primary-school-aged students, was found to have good ecological validity when previously tested (Gardner, 2013). To cater for the developmental needs of this cohort, questions were read aloud by the researchers, and open-ended responses were audio-recorded. ...
... Our findings are consistent with Gardner's (2013) interviews with primary-aged children (n=106) identified by their teachers as "reluctant writers". His findings indicated that children engaged at home in a variety of writing genres had consistent adult support and "ready-made audiences" (Gardner, 2013, p. 71). ...
There is a strong body of research showing associations between handwriting automaticity and children's writing performance. However, less is known about keyboarding automaticity and young students' writing performance. We investigated the relationship between handwriting and keyboarding automaticity and writing performance in both modalities in a sample of 49 students, as well as children's attitudes toward writing in each modality. We also examined the frequency and the nature of the teaching strategies implemented to support children's writing development at school, and the writing practices and support that children reported experiencing at home. Our findings showed statistically significant associations between letter writing automaticity in both modalities and the quality and the length of Year 2 children's handwritten and keyboarded texts. Results further suggested statistically significant moderate to strong associations between all handwriting and keyboarding variables assessed. While our findings concur with research stressing the importance of preparing students to become "hybrid" writers by mastering both handwritten and keyboarding modalities, they also stress the need to examine contextual factors, such as teaching and home writing practices, to gain a more comprehensive view of factors impacting children's writing acquisition and development.
... Whakapapa encompasses the ways people are connected with one another across generations, spaces, and realms (MoE, 2011). This connects with the idea that teaching writing must be informed by both personal and sociocultural dimensions in order to be effective (Gardner, 2013;. In order to understand learners' whakapapa, teachers must endeavour to know the cultural experiences and prior knowledge that are fundamental to who they are. ...
... Everything we write tells us something about who we are, and the relationship we want to have with others as credible members of a particular group (Hyland, 2016). Gardner (2013Gardner ( , 2018 proposed a sociocultural view of writing driven by writer identity, which is instrumental in motivating and engaging all writers. In teaching and learning about writing, our identities come to light through the texts we engage in and the linguistic choices we make. ...
Reported trends signal that current approaches to teaching writing are not working as well as they could to engage all students. This review of literature focuses on a culturally responsive ethos for the teaching of writing in Aotearoa New Zealand, incorporating information from over 80 publications from 2000 to 2020. The new understandings generated through this analysis are presented in three sections guided by Indigenous Māori concepts: whakapapa, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga. This review indicates all writing practitioners should teach in ways that honour identity, language , and culture as foundational strengths from which to build in the teaching and learning of writing. Finally, some directions for teacher education and classroom practices are proposed.
... Mange af børnene i min undersøgelse fortaeller om negative oplevelser med skrivning i skolen, hvilket stemmer overens med andre forskeres resultater (Clark et al., 2023;Gardner, 2013;Healey, 2019;Nolen, 2007). Derfor er det en vigtig metodisk pointe og konklusion, at artiklens interesse for nogle børns gode skriveoplevelser bringer vigtig viden frem i lyset. ...
This article presents results from an exploratory ethnographic study of children’s writing in free-time author schools. The article is based on material from a larger project motivated by an interest in investigating writing enjoyment empirically. In existing research, knowledge about children’s own perspectives on writing enjoyment is scarce. The article analyzes selected examples of children’s concrete writing experiences in author schools. In the analysis, the empirical material is foregrounded, and the article is anchored primarily in theory on children’s perspectives and writing experiences. The result of the article’s analysis is that a deeper understanding of these children’s experiences leads to enhanced attention to the establishment of a particular writing community, which for the children is a crucial aspect of their writing enjoyment. The article therefore unfolds characteristics of this experienced writing community in the author schools where one important feature is togetherness, in terms of both sharing and being in writing. Attention is drawn to the role of the adult author as a writing instructor, and following this, the article discusses whether this knowledge about the experienced writing community in author schools can inspire new ways of thinking about writing in the Danish L1 subject and about the Danish teacher as writing instructor. The article thus encourages a renewed focus on the experience of writing, establishing an active practice of writing in classrooms, and the teacher’s participation in this practice.
... I attempted to review research articles that were available on topics like students' reluctance to writing tasks, ways of developing students' writing skills, and ways of teaching writing skills in the classroom. Gardner (2013) published an article based on his research in the UK age group between 6-9 on teachers called "reluctant writers" and found that they were reluctant because they were confused because of the lack of knowledge of what to write. Similarly, Adhikari (2019) carried out an exploratory action research on the topic, "My students do not appear to be interested in writing, and they have difficulties in writing with grade eight students," and concluded that the students were found to be interested in writing but they had difficulties in writing because they did not have adequate vocabulary power to write. ...
Writing is a secondary skill as it requires a lot of training and practice to acquire. It is also important for language students in grades eleven and twelve in Nepal as it is the only means of evaluating students' levels of skills and knowledge of the language. This article is based on the first phase of an exploratory action research project. I discovered that students who were hesitant to engage in writing tasks and attempted to discover why they were hesitant despite the importance of writing tasks in passing board exams. Analysis of students' writings, classroom discussion, focus group discussion, and self-reflection were used to collect the data. After the analysis and interpretation of the data, it was found that students’ lack vocabulary and limited understanding of writing mechanics and organization of ideas in coherent manner discouraged them from being involved in writing tasks in the classroom. Moreover, they were not taught writing systematically and both teacher and students spent less time in the class developing students' writing skills.
... For example, many children experience negative emotions while writing (Zumbrunn, Ekholm, Stringer, Mcknight, & DeBusk-Lane, 2017), have deeply entrenched identities as poor writers (Gardner, 2013), and possess unsophisticated knowledge about the writing process (Gillespie, Olinghouse, & Graham, 2013). Indeed, theorists have been concerned about children's attitudes towards writing, with studies suggesting that children comply with writing as a school activity without developing their own writer identities (Grainger, Goouch, & Lambirth, 2005). ...
The structure of a child’s writing experience stems from the affect, embodiment and materiality of their immediate engagement with activities in the classroom. When a child’s movements and emotions are restricted, so too is their writing. This engagement shapes the experiential landscape of classroom writing, and the way that children perceive, value and feel about writing affects their motivation which predicts their writing attainment. This paper reveals the structure of children’s consciousness while expressing ideas through creative writing. It does so by presenting an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the writing experience in the classroom. In the study, eight Year 6 (11-12 years old) children from a school in Perth, Australia were interviewed and qualitative data were analysed to interpret the essential components of the writing experience. The results produced three main themes (sub-themes noted in brackets): The Writing World (Watching, Ideas from Elsewhere, Flowing); The Self (Concealing & Revealing, Agency, Adequacy); and Schooled Writing (Standards, Satisfying Task Requirements, Rules of Good Writing). The themes indicate a binary experience of writing where the child’s consciousness shifts between their imagination (The Writing World) and the task before them (Schooled Writing), and each affects the way the experience of the self appears to the writer. When comparing the experience with that of authors, one notices that the experience of words as authorial tools is missing. The results imply that the writing environment, and the individual’s response to it, may restrict the engagement and the phenomenality of writing.
Schreiben und Lesen sind elementare Kulturtechniken, welche Kinder während der Grundschulzeit nicht nur erwerben, sondern auch im Freizeitkontext nutzen. Sie eröffnen den Zugang zu kultureller Teilhabe und können als integraler Bestandteil kultureller Bildung betrachtet werden. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht auf Basis der vier ihr zugrundeliegenden Zeitschriftenartikel der Frage nach, welche Determinanten freizeitliches Schreiben und Lesen von Kindern im Grundschulalter erklären. Um den aktuellen empirischen Forschungsstand zu Determinanten und Kriterien freizeitlichen Schreibens und Lesens von Kindern im Grundschulalter aufzuarbeiten, wurde ein Scoping Review durchgeführt (Birnbaum & Kröner, 2022): Von 982 in Scopus aufgefundenen Originalarbeiten entsprachen n = 62 den Einschlusskriterien. Die meisten dieser Publikationen fokussierten auf das Lesen (n = 58) und nur wenige Arbeiten (n = 4) bezogen sich auch oder ausschließlich auf das Schreiben. Am häufigsten wurden Zusammenhänge von freizeitlichem Schreiben oder Lesen mit bereichsspezifischen Variablen berichtet. Die vorliegende Evidenz bezog sich überwiegend auf korrelative Befunde. Darüber hinaus zeigte sich, dass die meisten Arbeiten nur ausgewählte Determinanten einbezogen, nicht aber eine große Bandbreite. Im Rahmen des Scoping Reviews wurde als Forschungsdesiderat sichtbar, dass eine umfassende empirische Untersuchung einer großen Bandbreite an Determinanten freizeitlichen Lesens und insbesondere Schreibens noch aussteht. Hierauf beziehen sich die drei im Folgenden dargestellten, eigenen empirischen Originalarbeiten. Als theoretisches Rahmenmodell wurde das Person-Umwelt-Transaktionsmodell verwendet, in welchem das Ausmaß kultureller Aktivitäten auf darauf bezogene bereichsspezifische Überzeugungen zurückgeführt wird (untergliedert in den intrinsischen Wert sowie weitere, diesem vorauslaufende verhaltensbezogene, normative und Kontrollüberzeugungen). Die bereichsspezifischen Variablen werden wiederum durch bereichsübergreifende Variablen (wie Geschlecht und Bildungshintergrund) erklärt (Kröner, 2013). Darauf basierend wurde in den ersten beiden Beiträgen die Frage untersucht, welche bereichsspezifischen Überzeugungen Kinder gegenüber freizeitlichen Schreibaktivitäten aufweisen und welche Relevanz bereichsübergreifenden Determinanten zukommt. Letzteres wurde exemplarisch anhand des Geschlechts der Kinder und anhand des Bildungshintergrundes der Mutter untersucht. Im ersten Zeitschriftenartikel wurden im Rahmen von Vorstudien Skalen zu den freizeitlichen Schreibaktivitäten, zum intrinsischen Wert und zu weiteren Überzeugungen entwickelt (Birnbaum et al., 2019). Im zweiten Zeitschriftenartikel wurden die entwickelten Skalen bei einer größeren Stichprobe eingesetzt. Es bestand die Erwartung, dass die vorauslaufenden Überzeugungen zu den Schreibaktivitäten deren intrinsischen Wert erklären, welcher wiederum Varianz in den freizeitlichen Schreibaktivitäten der Kinder aufklären sollte. Außerdem sollten der intrinsische Wert und die weiteren Überzeugungen die Effekte von Geschlecht und Bildungshintergrund der Mutter auf das freizeitliche Schreiben vermitteln. Die Analysen erfolgten mittels Mehrgruppen-Strukturgleichungsmodellen, welche die aufgestellten Hypothesen weitgehend bestätigen konnten: Alle Überzeugungen trugen zur Erklärung freizeitlichen Schreibens bei. Es deuteten sich keine oder allenfalls geringe Effekte des Bildungshintergrunds der Mutter auf die Überzeugungen an. Jedoch zeigte sich, dass Mädchen in ihrer Freizeit mehr und häufiger schreiben als Jungen (Birnbaum, Schüller & Kröner, 2020). Die Geschlechtsunterschiede im freizeitlichen Schreiben konnten vollständig durch die Mittelwertsunterschiede im intrinsischen Wert erklärt werden. In der dritten eigenen empirischen Studie wurden – analog zu den Studien zum freizeitlichen Schreiben – sowohl Analysen zu Effekten einer großen Bandbreite bereichsspezifischer Determinanten als auch zur Relevanz von Geschlecht und Bildungshintergrund der Mutter für freizeitliches Lesen vorgenommen (Schüller et al., 2017). Bei den bereichsspezifischen Determinanten für freizeitliches Lesen zeigte sich die gleiche Faktorenstruktur wie für freizeitliches Schreiben. Durch ein Mehrgruppen-Strukturgleichungsmodell mit dem intrinsischen Wert als Mediator, das analog zu dem Modell zum freizeitlichen Schreiben gebildet wurde, konnte substanzielle Varianz im Ausmaß des freizeitlichen Lesens aufgeklärt werden. Wie in Bezug auf freizeitliches Schreiben waren auch für freizeitliches Lesen die Effekte der bereichsspezifischen Überzeugungen weitaus stärker als die der bereichsübergreifenden Variablen. Ebenso lagen keine oder allenfalls geringe Effekte des Bildungshintergrunds der Mutter vor und es konnten höhere Mittelwerte für Mädchen als für Jungen in allen Skalen nachgewiesen werden. Es gab jedoch auch einen Unterschied zwischen freizeitlichem Lesen und Schreiben: Die Geschlechtsunterschiede im freizeitlichen Lesen konnten – im Vergleich zum freizeitlichen Schreiben – nicht vollständig durch die Mittelwertsunterschiede im intrinsischen Wert erklärt werden. Insgesamt zeigten die empirischen Studien, dass es wichtig es ist, eine große Bandbreite bereichsspezifischer Überzeugungen zu berücksichtigen und dass diese Überzeugungen die Effekte von bereichsübergreifenden Variablen wie Geschlecht und Bildungshintergrund auf freizeitliches Schreiben und Lesen weitgehend vermitteln. Dies spricht sowohl für die entwickelten Überzeugungsskalen als auch für die Eignung des verwendeten Person-Umwelt-Transaktionsmodells als theoretisches Rahmenmodell der empirischen Untersuchungen. Die Wahl des theoretischen Rahmenmodells wird reflektiert. Die zentralen Befunde und die gewählte methodische Vorgehensweise werden diskutiert. Des Weiteren werden Desiderate für die weitere Forschung erschlossen. Abschließend werden zwei Ideen für die weitere Forschung erläutert, die aufbauend auf die vorliegende Arbeit freizeitliches Schreiben und Lesen von Grundschulkindern unter Berücksichtigung des digitalen Wandels und des Empowerments in den Blick nehmen.
It is desirable that children engage in reading and writing beyond school. What is known about various individual and environmental variables that may be related to children’s leisure reading and writing? And how strong is existing evidence? Our scoping review aims at mapping research on leisure reading and writing in first- to fourth-graders. Using content analysis, we extracted 135 research findings, among them only 6 on leisure writing. In most findings, leisure reading and writing were considered as consequences of variables like reading competence, motivation, and attitudes. Considerably fewer findings included leisure reading and writing as antecedents. We discuss the need for more longitudinal and experimental studies and a stronger focus on the connection between leisure reading and writing.
Paradoxes are particularly problematic in literacy as they often complicate learning. However, identifying and examining them can also tell us something about the inherent problems within social, political, and educational systems. This paper reports on an analysis of a total of 205 AJLL articles and editorials, published between 2011 and 2021. The purpose of the study was to identify the paradoxes associated with student language and literacy learning. The systematic literature review identified 311 instances of paradoxes across these 205 articles. Thirty instances of paradoxical terminology associated with student literacy learning were selected from the 311 instances. The excluded 271 instances of paradox were associated with policy contexts, teacher performance, and accountabilities, which are outside the scope of this article. The research in the 205 articles found that literacy learning was shaped by the skills of literacy learning, the complexity of student learning through standardised approaches, and textual plurality. The contexts of literacy learning spanned the virtual and real, the implications of national testing on local situations, and the changing nature of text and what it means to be literate. This review identified that students negotiate paradoxes associated with the risks of standardised testing, the narrowing of the writing curriculum, and understanding the variety of textual forms and practices. Identifying and examining these paradoxes will help address some of the persistent problems in literacy learning faced by students and teachers.
Spelling is a key transcription skill for writing. While little is understood about the particular challenges some students experience when learning to spell, explicit instruction is known to improve spelling performance. The study reported in this article draws on eight case studies from a larger Australian mixed‐methods study examining spelling acquisition, as represented by a stratified random sample of Australian students aged 8 to 12 years (n=1,198). This case study utilised Triple Word Form Theory for the spelling error analysis of dictated words, narrative and expository writing, as well as semi‐structured interview data from a randomly selected sample of low‐achieving spellers. Analyses of phonological, orthographic and morphological spelling errors revealed studentss' common and unique challenges in learning to spell. Qualitative analysis of semi‐structured interview data identified that the students lacked confidence in spelling, used limited strategies for spelling unknown words, and displayed constrained metalanguage associated with spelling. Interview data from the respective classroom teachers revealed that the teachers had inadequate strategies for teaching spelling and lacked confidence in their ability to teach spelling. The findings highlight the need for improved ways to support those students beyond the first few years of schooling who find learning to spell challenging.
Literary criticism of children’s literature asserts a one-directional view of power with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using “aetonormativity”– adult perceptions of normality – this paper explores what happens when children co-construct publishable fiction. Our analysis of drama and creative writing workshops shows how whilst we were interested in developing the story of the protagonist, the children wanted to develop a gaming narrative. As a community of writers, we constructed a “hybrid” text which, unlike GameLit, explores the relationship between the protagonist and gaming, whilst providing positive portrayal of gaming. As the children became invested in the fiction, they became editors and revisions were taken on board. The paper concludes that involving children in writing children’s literature can result in texts which disrupt aetonormativity by representing lived experiences. The paper also acknowledges that that further research is needed to explore how other children respond to such texts.
Culture can construct what counts as reading and who counts as a reader.
This article is a synthesis of early literacy research organized according to critical lessons that delineate our shared knowledge base that we name a ‘transactional perspective on early literacy development.’ The critical lessons are grouped into three sets to present the continuum of methodological stances that interpretive researchers take as they design and carry out early literacy studies. This synthesis is particularly timely now – as children and teachers in classrooms around the world struggle to maintain control over literacy learning and teaching within narrow governmental agendas and mandates. Given current governmental agendas (i.e. No Child Left Behind in the USA, the National Literacy Strategy in the UK, among many), it is critical to remember that we share a robust theory, a transactional view of early literacy development that explains how young children come to be literate members of society.
In this exploration of school improvement work, two teachers at two schools worked hard to improve literacy achievement, but the performance at only one of the schools resulted in significant growth. By spending time observing classrooms and interacting with students, the authors believe that two factors made the difference: school structures and instructional procedures. The more successful school used time to their advantage and agreed to specific content literacy strategies that were used across the school day to develop students' thinking skills.
By drawing upon numerous real-world experiences with reluctant writers, the author illustrates how tapping their interests can lead to improved writing skills and attitudes toward writing. The critical link between identity and writing is emphasized. Though the experiences in this article are drawn from the author's work with basic writers at the community college level, the article is applicable for writing teachers of all levels. The author presents both practical applications and research-based responses to many of the issues facing teachers who are charged with the task of improving the writing skills of reluctant writers.
This paper draws on research funded by the Bedford Charity (Harpur Trust) in which the narrative writing of reluctant writers in 10 Lower Schools (pupils aged 5–9) was levelled using, firstly, the Assessment of Pupil Progress (APP) criteria used in English primary and secondary schools and, secondly, criteria devised by the researcher. The latter were specifically designed for the assessment of narrative writing, whereas the APP criteria are generic. Findings resonate with the contrasting paradigms critiqued in D’Arcy’s paper on the teaching and assessment of writing (D’Arcy 1999). Evidence suggests that levels assigned to individual texts can vary between one assessment criteria and another. In many cases, pupils achieved higher levels against criteria designed to evaluate creativity and the ability to tell a story. Appropriate assessment criteria are critical not only to summative evaluations but also to the planning of future teaching and learning. However, it is suggested that the dominant assessment paradigm and concomitant approaches to the pedagogy of writing in England have been influenced by discourses over which teachers have had little control. However, the future for the teaching and assessment of writing necessitates a paradigmatic shift. A retrospective of D’Arcy’s paper may provide teachers and academics with the impetus for change.
This chapter explores the chronotopic lamination (Bakhtin, 1981; Prior, 1998) of writers' literate activity—the dispersed, fluid chains of places, times, people, and artifacts that come to be tied together in trajectories of literate action along with the ways multiple activity footings are held and managed. Twenty-one academic writers (undergraduates, graduates, and professors) participated in interviews where they were asked to draw and then discuss two representations of their processes in writing a particular piece. To further explore writers' multiple streams of activity and the ways texts mediate that activity, we also asked participants to share drafts, final texts, notes, annotated readings or other material they used in their writing. We focus here on four case studies that illustrate our findings. The interviews showed that the writers' work crossed institutional settings, especially mixing home, community, and discipline, and thus was deeply laminated (multimotivational and multi-mediated). In particular, we found that writers actively engage in what we call ESSP's (environment selecting and structuring practices), which not only lead to their texts but also contribute to the distributed, delicate, and partly intentional management of affect, sense, identity, and consciousness. A psychology professor reports to us that when she is revising an article for publication she works at home and does the family laundry. She sets the buzzer on the dryer so that approximately every 45 minutes to an hour she is pulled away from the text to tend the laundry downstairs. As she empties the dryer, sorts and folds, reloads, her mind wanders a bit and she begins to recall things she wanted to do with the text, begins to think of new questions or ideas, things that she had not been recalling or thinking of as she focused on the text when she was upstairs minutes before. She perceives this break from the text, this opportunity to reflect, as a very productive part of the process. In some respects, this story is a familiar one in cultural- historical activity theory (CHAT), a tale of how tools (external aids) mediate activity, altering the flow of behavior. The dryer-buzzer is acting here, in one sense, as an externalized memory system (like such classical examples as a notch on a stick, a knot in a rope, the words on a page), reminding the professor, in effect, to take a break. However, there are other elements of this story that we believe are less familiar and that deserve serious theoretical and methodological attention. Here we see two activity systems—the domestic activity of the home, the disciplinary activity of the workplace—becoming to some degree interwoven, and each is thereby altered. The gendered work (with doing laundry often still associated with "women's work") of family household chores is routinely blended into a scientific/disciplinary activity. The psychology paper is revised as the family laundry is done.
This article reviews the 'Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for Primary English', which specifies what students who are intending to become primary school teachers must be taught about the English language. It also refers to two other key policy texts, the 'National Curriculum for English' for primary school pupils, and the 'National Literacy Strategy'. It argues that these policy documents appear to have little regard for the fact that language use, language description and the status of a standard language are, at least in part, social and political issues about which there is not a consensus. Having considered the views of language and the discourse in which those views are represented in the policy documents in question, the article proposes that a realist analysis of the relationships between language, structure and agency is helpful to understand unfolding developments in explicit teaching and learning about language in the contemporary English primary school system.