Staging Teachers’ Stories: Performing Understandings of Writing and Teaching Writing

Michelle A Honeyford,Wayne Serebrin

doi:10.20360/g28w2p

Abstract

In response to concerns about declining writing instruction in K-12 classrooms, this qualitative interview study draws on ethnodrama to better understand teachers’ experiences teaching writing in one Canadian province. Through dramaturgical coding of 21 transcripts, we examine teachers’ objectives, conflicts, and tactics in teaching writing, as well as the significant role of educators’ subjectivities as writers and writing teachers, the settings in which they work, the people who influence their thinking and practice, and their engagement in reflexive inquiry. Two dramatic vignettes explore these themes. We then discuss implications for creating a province-wide professional learning network in critical writing pedagogies.

Highlights

ObjectivesInstead of allowing others to identify their teaching and learning objectives, we see in this study the ways teachers are articulating their own objectives for their students
While we shared with our participants an interest in—and concern about—the teaching of writing, we consciously took up a stance of “imaginative engagement”, a positioning that seeks to be in dialogue with those who speak “from some place other than your own” (Appiah, 2006, p. 85)
In the process of coding, we added to the definitions suggested by Saldaña and developed new codes to better reflect the research questions and data. (Note: We found one of Saldaña’s suggested codes (“Attitudes”) to be not as useful for our purposes, as attitudes were often implicitly revealed in participants’ discussion of “Conflicts”, “Objectives”, and “Tactics.” We subsequently deleted it from our code sheet.)

Summary

Objectives

Instead of allowing others to identify their teaching and learning objectives, we see in this study the ways teachers are articulating their own objectives for their students. Reader 2 (RT) talks about the ways she had learned “to look at children”, allowing her writing pedagogy to emerge from her desire to enable her students to tell the stories they want to tell. She articulates how her belief that students can “start their own story” puts her theoretically and pedagogically at odds with her colleagues, who, rather than design story-writing curriculum and pedagogy around their students, initiate storytelling from pre-established story starters. Reader 1 (RT) insists that teachers need to experience the vulnerabilities of being a writer (e.g., “how terrifying a blank page can be”) in order to anticipate what their student writers will face and help them negotiate their own identities as writers

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion