Examining Writing as a Social Process: Audiencing and Identity Performances in a Third-Grade Classroom

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Urban, Immigrant Elementary Students’ Writing Practices

Abstract

This paper examines writing as a social process that is replete of power negotiation over who can write what and how in particular contexts. It particularly focuses on the production of a story by one of the most popular boys in a third grade public school classroom located in a metropolitan U.S. city. Drawing on ethnographic case study methodology and combining sociocultural perspectives on writing with poststructural notions of performance, it connects text production to values regarding studentship in the classroom, as well as students’ repeated performances of gendered, literate, and social identities against interested audiences. Researchers and educators will find this study of interest as it contributes to unveiling the social and micro-political dimensions of the writing process.

Author

• Stavroula Kontovourki, University of Cyprus