Designing a Mentoring Environment to Support Prospective Teacher Learning about Writing, Writers, and Writing instruction

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Unforgetting, Worldmaking, Navigating, and Creating: Literacies of Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper reports on the process of conjecture mapping within a design-based research study of a writing mentor program designed as a learning environment for preservice teachers (PTs) to practice identity-affirming, individualized writing instruction. We detail problems identified during the mapping of conjectures, and explore how these problems implicate both values about writing as a human practice, and science (broadly construed) about writing development. We investigate what PTs learn about writing, writers, and instruction in this environment, and how conjecture mapping supports their understanding of the relationship between writing research and their teaching values. Drawing on Ivanic's (1994) identity framework and Gutierrez et al.’s (2009) concept of re-mediation, this work contributes to humanizing literacy instruction and teacher education in writing.

Authors

• Sarah W. Beck, New York University

• Theresa Jane Dietrich, New York University

• Kate Lan, New York University

• Michelle Hu, New York University