New Learning and Changing Practice: How Teachers Bridged the Gap Between the College-Ready Writers Program and Their Classrooms

• In Event: 18.071 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 18.071-4 - Building and Leveraging Teacher-Leaders' Expertise to Improve Students' Writing: National Writing Project's College-Ready Writers Program

Abstract

The CRWP produced measurable differences in student achievement in argument writing in especially challenging educational milieus—high-poverty, rural districts where the teaching of writing before the program was often minimal. This paper examines the changes in teachers’ thinking and classroom practice that produced these student results. While there is increasing agreement in the field about program components that can help bridge the gap between professional development and improved classroom practice (Cohen & Hill, 2000; Desimone, 2009; Borko, 2004; Penuel, et al. 2007), less is understood about how and why such components function at the teacher level to support the kinds of deep and consistent changes we observed, and that form the foundation for teacher leadership. Drawing on teachers’ voices and perspectives both during and after the two-year CRWP program, supplemented by classroom observations, this paper examines what kinds of changes occurred in teachers’ thinking and practice, as well as analyzing how and why the design of CRWP supports contributed to those changes.

Teachers described their classrooms and their teaching through “before and after” portrayals, along key dimensions of change. Table 8 outlines the contrasts along five dimensions that the paper portrays: teaching writing, teaching argument writing, nature of teaching, student-teacher relationships, and expectations of students. For example, teachers explained that before the CRWP they taught almost no writing, except when using worksheets or formulaic writing. They contrasted this dearth of writing instruction with the daily writing of multiple kinds that characterized their teaching after the CRWP. These contrasts in teaching practice represent the types of scaling for depth, for example shifts in belief, and spread, for example moving beyond the use of specific CRWP materials, that Coburn (2003) argues represent crucial components of effective scaling.

Teachers identified key elements of the CRWP program that brought about these changes—features that contrast with the professional development that teachers normally receive:
• regular professional development meetings with consistent leadership over time
• learning in collaboration with colleagues
• practical, flexible tools and resources for teaching argument writing
• co-implementation, with support
• pressure to implement based on professional commitment rather than administrative mandate

The paper concludes with an analysis of why these strategies worked so effectively in this context. The discussion points to particular elements of professional culture, to the design principle of “generative structure,” and to the idea of “scaffolding the scaffolding.” All of these help to elaborate and refine what “teachers teaching teachers” actually looks like, and accomplishes, in the National Writing Project.

Author

• Barbara Heenan, Inverness Research