Writing Instruction in the Age of Accountability

Most educators agree that writing is an essential skill for student success in school and in the pursuit of college and career. So the stakes are high for writing teachers. Unfortunately, often a lack of preparation and suffocatingly narrow policies of what and how to teach writing hamstring English teachers’ ability to prepare their students to master this critical skill, according to Juliet Wahleithner, a PhD student in the School of Education.

Wahleithner, whose expertise is in the teaching of writing and preservice teacher preparation, will present a study that took a deep look at two writing teachers and the strategies they used to navigate a system and set of policies to teach writing to their students.

“Teaching writing requires complex knowledge beyond knowing how to write,” said Wahleithner. But preservice English teachers are not required to take a specific course on writing instruction. Combine that lack of training with the pressure teachers feel, particularly at low-performing schools, to ensure their students score well on standardized tests, and Wahleithner found that a lot of teachers may be at a loss.

Compounding the lack of preparation is a reliance on standardized curricula aligned to high stakes assessments. According to Wahleithner, in all grades except fourth, seventh, and tenth, writing is assessed through multiple-choice items. Under pressure to raise test scores, many teachers focus on preparing them to pass the test rather than actual writing.

“Most teachers know they aren’t getting their students to write well, but they often don’t have the tools or strategies to get them to the next level,” said Wahleithner. In her comparison of two teachers from the same district, she found that the teacher who lacked training in how to teach writing too often focused on superficial issues, such as punctuation and grammar or whether the student has a good topic sentence.

But the researcher did find a teacher who figured out how to meet narrow district curriculum and testing requirements while also assessing students’ individual needs and adjusting her teaching to meet those needs. Because she had taken professional development workshops that prepared her with tools to teach writing, “she was able to use her knowledge of writing instruction to negotiate district policies while still instructing students in a way that met her professional standards,” said Wahleithner.

Wahleithner presents “Examining How Knowledge of Writing Instruction Impacts Teachers’ Abilities to Negotiate Policy” on Tuesday, April 30, 2013, at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.