Prospective English Teachers Learn to Respond to Diversity in Students’ Writing through the Student Writing Archive Project (SWAP)

Abstract

Responding to students’ writing is integral to English teaching. However, preservice secondary English teachers (PSETs) often have few opportunities to practice this skill or to see how experienced teachers respond to diverse writers. I built an online database of students’ writing, teacher feedback, and teacher interviews; 32 PSETs in my English methods courses explored this database in conjunction with fieldwork in local classrooms. In this article, I analyze PSETs’ database discussion forum posts, comments on field-placement students’ writing, and reflections about learning to provide feedback. Reading teachers’ feedback positioned PSETs as students, evoking recollections about receiving teacher feedback, while writing their own feedback positioned them as teachers, evoking visions of what a writing teacher must do/be to claim authority in the classroom. All but two PSETs provided feedback of the kind they had claimed to hate. Those two adapted approaches they encountered in the database, learning to draw on their own writing histories as resources for responding with authority.