An (old) Australian contribution to the debate
I just realized that I haven’t used this article, one of the first I found when I started getting into the teacher-writer question.
The authors did a study of 7 Australian secondary teachers, “four of whom write with their students and three of whom don’t. The aim was to see if there were differences in the way they teach writing.
The authors define teacher writers as teachers who write outside of school hours, regardless of the purpose or the audience of the writing done.
Assumptions formulated by the authors before the study were:
- Teacher -writers possess a “stronger knowledge base “than non writers
- Teachers who write are better able to understand difficulties faced by pupils and respond from personal experience
- Teacher-writers can better motivate students to write as a result of their own passion for writing
All teachers in the study were known as successful writing teachers.
Study:
- teachers observed teaching
- 2 interviews
- questionnaire on beliefs and practice
The study only researched the teaching of personal and imaginative writing.
The 4 teacher-writers held different views on the influence of their own writing experience on their teaching.
No clear correlation between the degree of teacher intervention with individual students, the stages in the writing process at which teachers intervened, and the writing background of the teachers”
“…no clear pattern” in the amount of explicit instruction
There were marked differences in the field of feedback to students but theses did not reflect the writer/non-writer background of the teachers.
Not one of the participating teachers believed that teacher writing improves writing instruction.
Ros one of the participating teachers argued:
“Teachers who were highly attached to their identity as writers might be too prone to have fairly narrow, self-confirming notions of good writing in ways that might be counter-productive for some students” (p. 47).
Small sample
No clear findings in practice which separate teacher writers from non-writers.
“All participant teachers perceived writing oneself and teaching writing as quite separate skills demanding quite different techniques” (p. 48).
Teacher writing is one way of acquiring a knowledge base for the teaching of writing. It may help to understand the task of writing but teachers need far wider knowledge than that.
“No necessary link between becoming a writer and teaching writing better” (p. 48).
Gleeson, A., & Prain, V. (1996). Should teachers of writing write themselves?: An Australian contribution to the debate. The English Journal, 85(6), 42-49. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org
