Paper Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Teacher-Writer-Crafter-Maker: Moving Beyond the "Teacher Writer"

Sun, April 10, 10:35am to 12:05pm, Marriott Marquis, Floor: Level Two, Marquis Salon 15

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners have long argued for the importance of teacher writing, most often focusing on the pedagogical affordances (as seen in Murray, 1968; more recently in Kittle, 2008, and in many others) and opportunities for professional participation (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Whitney et al., 2012) that emerge when teachers develop and reflect on their own writing practices. Recently, Whitney et al. (2014) documented “at least three phases in the development of the teacher-writer: the writing process phase (1970s and 1980s), the teacher research phase (1990s and 2000s), and currently, teachers as advocates and intellectuals” (p. 177). However, even this radical stance toward teacher writing for agency, advocacy, and intellectualism neglects to theorize writing broadly as composing, making, or crafting, a contemporary position we take up in this panel. This paper is particularly interested in how conceptualizing “writing-as-making” encourages expanded notions of teacher-writers’ activities, artifacts, collaborations, communities, and identities, including that of ‘teacher-writer’ itself.
This paper presents a longitudinal case study of a teacher-writer-crafter participating at a National Writing Project Summer Institute with a focus on daily writing and digital composing, teaching in her high school English classroom, and writing craft and teaching blogs online. Data collected included: field notes, artifacts, audio-recordings, and selected transcriptions from classroom observations (n=22) and professional development observations (n=19); audio-recordings and transcriptions of formal interviews (n=3); and artifacts of teacher blog writing (n=48). In the analysis, I focus on the teacher’s “knotworking” (Engeström, Engeström, and Vahaaho, 1999), or tying together of seemingly disparate activities across spaces and identities. In particular, I examine how, where, and why she knotworks diverse making practices and identities, including crafting, writing, teaching, and digital making.
Ultimately, this case highlights how one teacher-writer engaged in maker practices in profoundly social ways, and her complex interweavings of seemingly disparate maker practices over time and across contexts, including in her English classroom. It pushes research on teachers-as-writers to come more fully into conversation with research on teachers-as-makers and writing-as-making.

Author