Writing Techniques and Contextual Elements of Teachers in Grades 7–12 of Chilean Public Schools

Abstract

Since the year 2010, the country of Chile has been operating programs with the goals of fostering the development of students' writing abilities and encouraging them to engage in more frequent writing practice. These programs are intended to improve the educational experiences of students in order to better prepare them for active participation as contributing citizens of today's society. However, to affect future changes in the educational levels covered by grades 7 through 12, further understanding the present ways to teach writing at these grade levels is necessary. These levels of education span middle school, high school, and college. These grade levels encompass those of high school and college as well as middle school and college. In addition, there is a seventh grade up to a twelfth grade included in the educational levels. By focusing on the environments in which the various models of writing instruction are implemented, we attempted to construct a picture of the many paradigms of writing instruction that are now being employed in Chilean public schools for students who are enrolled in grades 7 through 12. This was done to gain a deeper comprehension of Chile's current writing teaching condition. In addition, this was done to illustrate the myriad of meanings derived from these paradigms through examples. In order to do this, we surveyed a total sample size of 182 Spanish language instructors from various locations around Chile. The findings indicated that writing teachers, on the whole, had a positive attitude toward the linguistic, cultural, and procedural paradigms that underpin writing instruction.
 On the other hand, it was revealed that the communicative paradigm was not as cohesive and did not have as strong of a support base as the other two paradigms. We recommend that in the future, government programs place a greater emphasis on reducing the number of work teachers are required to complete and providing them with the assistance they require in the classroom, particularly for those teachers who are in charge of educating students in grades 9 through 12. By detailing the most up-to-date practices of Chilean educators and how those practices connect to the setting in which they are applied, this research can serve as a source of guidance for the international community of literacy scholars. In a nutshell, the study will explain how the practices connect to the environment in which they are implemented. Consequently, this may help to create a more in-depth understanding of the criteria for a high-quality writing education worldwide.