Preservice Teachers' Experiences With Generous Readings of Peers' and Children's Writing

• In Event: Understanding, Responding to, and Valuing Student Writers Through Reflective Tools and Practices

Abstract

In their 20-year review of preservice teachers’ preparation to teach writing, Morgan and Pytash (2014) found that PSTs’ practices were influenced by their perception of themselves as writers and their attitudes toward writing; methods courses focused on writing instruction helped them develop their understandings of writing pedagogy. Bomer et al. (2019) found that positioning PSTs as writers, providing opportunities to examine student work, and viewing students from the perspective of capable writers can be effective elements of teacher education programs. Transforming the teaching of writing, however, requires countering deficit perspectives and reframing writing as a social political activity within teacher education programs. One area that is particularly important in positioning students as capable writers is to design tools that can help PSTs reflect on student writing in robust and culturally responsive ways before providing feedback to students for revision. This is particularly salient as teachers provide little improvement-oriented feedback to students while giving positive evaluative feedback to strong writers and negative feedback to weaker writers (Dinnen & Collopy, 2009).

One such tool, “Generous Readings of Student Writing,” has been developed by Author (2017) for work with practicing teachers. This study builds on that work by introducing the tool to preservice teachers in a writing methods course. In the first phase of the study, preservice teachers will use this framework to provide feedback to each other on their “Teacher-as-Writer” projects. These projects consist of preservice teachers choosing a genre of writing, crafting a 5-10 page paper, and revising the text as part of the required elementary writing methods course. An important component of the project is peer feedback before revision. Despite efforts to assist PSTs in giving and receiving constructive feedback, peer response in past efforts has consisted of general praise and/or error correction, lacking substance or attention to features of quality writing. Providing instruction using the tool, focused on learning about the writer and providing literary perspectives such as “voices of others” and “figurative speech,” has the potential to change their responses to peers’ writing. Further, the responses can serve as a model for discussions of children’s writing by emphasizing sociocultural contexts. The second phase of the writing involves using the tool for preservice teachers to discuss their own students’ writing that they collect as part of the implementation of a sequence of lessons in their classroom placements.
Data sources will include recorded observations of discussions and the accompanying texts (preservice and students’). A discourse analysis of observations will focus on preservice teachers’ responses to peers and students’ texts. Textual analyses will draw from the categories developed by the National Writing Project’s Analytic Writing Continuum (2010), but also include developing sensitivities to linguistic varieties. The study will support preservice teachers in becoming more reflective about their own writing, moving away from deficit-oriented perspectives, and appreciating linguistic varieties in preparation for responding to students’ writing.

Author

• Sarah J. McCarthey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author