Teachers' Practices and Beliefs About Teaching Writing: A Comprehensive Survey of Primary-Grades Teachers

• In Event: Teacher Beliefs and Practices to Foster Engaged Literacy Learning

Abstract

A random sample of 782 grades 1 to 3 Chinese language arts teachers in Taiwan were asked how they taught writing and their beliefs about writing. While about 37% of teachers spent close to an hour every day teaching writing, the majority of teachers taught writing once a week or less often. Teachers applied many different instructional procedures, but they were generally applied once a month or less often. Teachers were slightly positive about beliefs concerning their efficacy to teach writing, but more mixed in their epistemological beliefs about how one becomes a good writer and knows about writing. Teachers’ efficacy beliefs and epistemological beliefs made unique and statistically significant contributions to predicting how often teachers employed specific instructional procedures.

Authors

• Tien Ping Hsiang, University of Macau

• Steve Graham, Arizona State University, Editor Journal of Educational Psychology

• Yu Mao Yang, National Taichung University of Education