the national writing project © 2015 taylor & francis
TRANSCRIPT
The National Writing Project
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
My dream outcomes
Effective site-based professional learning for teachers of writing across the curriculum
Affirmation of the importance of “the writer” in teachers’ professional identity
A range of practices that have been shown to have worked in motivating students to write and succeed as writers in the classroom.
A set of diagnostic, formative and summative assessment procedures that are ecologically valid and helpful to teachers in their feedback to students and reporting to parents.
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
Basic tenets of a NWP (Andrews, 2008)
to teach writing, you need to be able to write; students should respond to each other’s writing; the teacher should act as writer alongside the students, and be
prepared to undertake the same assignments as the students; there is research about the teaching of writing that needs to be
considered and applied, where appropriate, in the classroom; teachers can be their own researchers in the classroom; the best teacher of writing teachers is another writing teacher;
and various stages of the writing process need to be mapped and
practised: these include pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, conferencing (see no 2 above) and publishing.
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
Some Facts about the NWP in the US
• The NWP has for more than 30 years offered professional development summer institutes to K-16 teachers across content areas and grade levels.
• The NWP consists of 190+ college-based sites in 50 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, serving approximately 125,000 teachers a year.
• NC declined from eight sites to two when state funding stopped. Sites seek support from LEAs to raise the matching funds and gain the federal $$.
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
• In its 30 year history, the NWP has served approximately 3.5 million teachers, nearly the same as the total population of teachers in the USA today.
• 770 University faculty annually devote approximately 2,000 person hours in offering over 100,000 professional development hours per year.
• The cost per NWP program is approximately $2.00 per participant, as compared to $30 per participant for the National Science Foundation.
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
Historical Overview
• In 1970s, process model was based on how real writers write (Bay Area Writing Project)• Little teacher direction or intervention• Used mainly for narrative writing• Emphasized process more than product
• Simplistic Pedagogy resulted (Rohman’s model)• Teacher describes three stages (prewrite-write-rewrite) and
students use them to produce a story
• In 1980s, influenced by cognitive research• Embraced a more recursive and reflective model
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
The NWP in New Zealand
established in New Zealand in 1987distinct projects based in four urban centresScanlan and Carruthers’s (1990):
“as the teachers became writers themselves their attitude to the teaching of writing changed”;
“how the teachers taught writing changed”;“student writing improved as a result of these changes”;
and“teachers demonstrated their new skills and knowledge to
other teachers” (p. 14).
© 2015 Taylor & Francis