Elementary Teachers Negotiating Discourses in Writing Instruction

http://wcx.sagepub.com/Communication

Written

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0741088313510888

2013 2014 31: 58 originally published online 21 NovemberWritten Communication

Sarah J. McCarthey, Rebecca Woodard and Grace KangElementary Teachers Negotiating Discourses in Writing Instruction

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

can be found at:Written CommunicationAdditional services and information for

http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://wcx.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58.refs.htmlCitations:

at National Dong Hwa University on April 7, 2014wcx.sagepub.comDownloaded from at National Dong Hwa University on April 7, 2014wcx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://wcx.sagepub.com/


http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58



http://annenberg.usc.edu/

http://annenberg.usc.edu/

http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://wcx.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://wcx.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58.refs.html

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58.refs.html





What is This?

- Nov 21, 2013OnlineFirst Version of Record

- Jan 29, 2014Version of Record >>

at National Dong Hwa University on April 7, 2014wcx.sagepub.comDownloaded from at National Dong Hwa University on April 7, 2014wcx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58.full.pdf

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/31/1/58.full.pdf

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/20/0741088313510888.full.pdf

http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/20/0741088313510888.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml





Written Communication2014, Vol. 31(1) 58 –90

© 2013 SAGE PublicationsReprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0741088313510888

wcx.sagepub.com

Article

Elementary Teachers Negotiating Discourses in Writing Instruction

Sarah J. McCarthey1, Rebecca Woodard2, and Grace Kang1

AbstractUsing Ivanic’s (2004) framework, the study of 20 elementary teachers examines the relationships among teachers’ beliefs about writing, their instructional practices, and contextual factors. While the district-adopted curriculum reflected specific discourses, teachers’ beliefs and practices reflected a combination of discourses. The nature of the professional development tended to reinforce particular discourses, but occasionally offered an alternative. The three cases revealed how teachers negotiated the tensions among various discourses. Beth exemplified a skills discourse, but demonstrated beliefs about writing as communication; however, she did not articulate tensions between the discourses and followed the district, skills-infused curriculum. Amber borrowed from skills, traits, process, and genre discourses without resolving potential contradictions, resulting in instructional practices that had little coherence. Jackson, who brought in his own writing as a hip-hop artist, illustrated the social practices discourse as well as creativity and genre discourses to create an enhanced version of a district-adopted curriculum. Implications for practice include raising teacher’s awareness of the contradictory discourses that surround them.

Keywordsbeliefs, practices, curriculum, professional development, approaches

1University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA2University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:Sarah J. McCarthey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 308 College of Education, 1310 S Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. Email: [email protected]

510888WCX31110.1177/0741088313510888Written CommunicationMcCarthey et al.research-article2013

at National Dong Hwa University on April 7, 2014wcx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

mailto:[email protected]



McCarthey et al. 59

In the 10 years since the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges (2003) identified writing as the “Neglected “R,” the Common Core Standards have sought to make writing more central in schools (Common Core State Standards, 2010). Considerations of the Common Core Standards have highlighted the challenges teachers face as they implement writing instruction in schools that value high-stakes testing and mandated curriculum (McCarthey, 2008; Stillman & Anderson, 2011). Yet research has shown that teachers do not simply follow mandates (Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson, 2002); instead, a multitude of factors influence their practices, including teachers’ histories and beliefs and pro-fessional development (Alsup, 2006; Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Fink, 2002; Troia, Lin, Cohen, & Monroe, 2011). The juxtaposition of teachers’ beliefs and histories onto mandates at the school and classroom levels can create tensions that have an impact on their approaches to instruction. Yet, we do not understand how elementary teachers negotiate these tensions, especially in their writing instruction. Examining how teachers negotiate these tensions is crucial to understanding their instruction, and ultimately students learning to write.

In addition, we have lacked a comprehensive framework to account for elementary teachers’ values, beliefs, and approaches to writing instruction. While Ivanič’s (2004) conceptual framework of discourses in writing instruc-tion has been used for the examination of curricular documents (Stagg Peterson, 2012), it has not been applied to elementary teachers’ classroom practices or professional development opportunities. This study examines the factors that influence teachers’ writing instruction as well as how they negoti-ate these tensions through an overview of 20 teachers and illustrative case studies using Ivanič’s framework.

Multiple Factors Influencing Writing Instruction

In this era of standardization teachers are often required to implement scripted literacy curricula, which leaves little room for individualizing instruction (Handsfield, Crumpler, & Dean, 2010; Stillman & Anderson, 2011). Furthermore, teachers in low-income schools have less choice in curricular materials and are more likely to provide skills-based instruction than teachers in high-income schools as the result of increased pressures from No Child Left Behind (McCarthey, 2008; McCarthey & Mkhize, 2013). As teachers are translating the curriculum, they are also negotiating a variety of past and present professional development experiences (Borko, 2004; Hargreaves, 1995; McCarthey, Woodard, & Kang, 2012). These professional develop-ment experiences, especially if they have a particular framework such as




60 Written Communication 31(1)

Writer’s Workshop, can have a powerful effect on teachers’ epistemologies and instructional practices (Troia et al., 2011; Whitney, 2008). Teachers are also sifting through their beliefs about writing as well as their personal histo-ries and experiences of learning to write, and these beliefs influence their instruction (Brooks, 2007; Robbins, 1996). These multiple influences create tensions and contradictions that teachers must negotiate in their daily work.

Studies of preservice teachers highlight the contradictions between the ideals espoused in their university classes and the realities of their school placements. Alsup’s (2006) study of six preservice teachers’ identities found they articulated three major tensions—between their student and teacher selves, their personal beliefs and professional expectations, and their univer-sity ideologies and practical ones. Their narratives about how they negotiated the space between conflicting discourses were the most transformative in their identity development, whereas unresolved tensions between their dis-cordant subjectivities and associated ideologies lessened their chance of developing satisfying professional identities.

Britzman’s (1991) description of teaching from a dialogic perspective similarly claims that student teachers struggle between two kinds of ideo-logical practice—concrete practice and symbolic practice; learning to teach is a process of negotiation among past experiences, current challenges, and what one hopes to accomplish. In Grossman, Smagorinsky, and Valencia’s (1999) longitudinal study of teacher learning across different settings, they found that both the social contexts for learning (e.g., the culture of the school, the culture of the preservice program) and individual characteristics of the learner (e.g., apprenticeship of observation, personal goals and expectations, knowledge and beliefs about content) affected the tools teach-ers appropriated across contexts. Newell, Gingrich, and Beumer Johnson (2001) explored the tensions nine student teachers faced applying theory to practice; the activity settings of their undergraduate experiences, prior beliefs about English as a school subject, preservice methods courses, field work, and classroom contexts for student teaching shaped their appropria-tions. They also found that the more aligned their activity settings were, the easier appropriation was. Some of the tensions students experience among their university, student teaching, and first-year teaching settings resulted in productive tensions, while others remain unresolved (Bickmore, Smagorinsky, & O’Donnell-Allen, 2005). For example, a new teacher, Sharon, was able to resolve tensions in her new school setting with the help of a supportive principal and mentor teacher (Smagorinsky, Cook, Jackson, Moore, & Fry, 2004). However, Natalie’s implementation of a “writer’s workshop” in her middle school setting focused on form and mechanics rather than the student-centered, meaning-based approach learned at the




McCarthey et al. 61

university, highlighting unresolved tensions (Smagorinsky, Gibson, Moore, Bickmore, & Cook, 2004). These studies point out the importance of teach-ers’ recognizing and resolving tensions, but also demonstrate the need for understanding how practicing elementary teachers negotiate the current policy, curricular, and school contexts.

In his theory describing the relationships among language, identity, and con-text, Gee (2008) defines discourses as “ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing, that are accepted as instantiations of particular identities . . . by particular groups” (p. 3). Ivanič (2004) drew from Gee to propose a framework for configuring beliefs about writing, learning to write, and approaches to the teaching and assessment of writing affiliated with those beliefs. This comprehensive framework is useful for understanding teachers’ values, beliefs, and practices at the same time it can be applied to examine the discourses of curriculum and professional development.

Ivanič’s Discourses of Writing

Ivanič (2004) outlines six discourses of writing and instruction. In a skills discourse, writing is focused on sound–symbol relationships, learning to write involves learning those relationships, and teaching is explicit. In a cre-ativity discourse, writing is the product of the writer’s creativity, learning to write occurs by writing about topics of interest, and implicit teaching is the focus of instruction. Writing is about the composing processes in the writer’s mind, and learning to write involves mental and practical processes with some explicit teaching in the process discourse. The genre discourse under-stands writing as a set of text types shaped by the social context; learning to write involves learning the characteristics of those text types through explicit teaching. In the social practices discourse, writing is purpose-driven in a social context and learning to write involves real-life contexts and purposes for writing. A sociopolitical discourse goes beyond the social practices to focus on consequences for identity; using a critical literacy approach to teach-ing writing is essential.

Ivanič (2004) recognized that a teacher attempting to integrate all six dis-courses would “inevitably face some tensions and contradictions” (p. 241), yet her model did not anticipate the changing political landscape nor consider how conflicting discourses from curriculum, professional development, and teachers’ personal experiences might have an impact on writing instruction. Stagg Peterson (2012) used Ivanič’s framework to analyze sixth grade writ-ing curricular documents across Canada; however, few studies have applied the framework to understand teachers’ writing instruction in elementary classrooms. Thus, more attention is needed to specify the kinds of discourses





elementary teachers are encountering and how they negotiate them within current curricular contexts using the framework. The research questions that guided the study were the following: (a) What discourses do teachers employ in instructional approaches and beliefs about writing? (b) What factors influ-ence teachers’ discourses about writing? and (c) How do writing teachers negotiate tensions among their various discourses?

Method

The qualitative study focused on 20 teachers from four districts: two districts from small urban communities located near a large state university and two schools from rural districts in a Midwestern U.S. state. Case study methodol-ogy (Yin, 2009) was selected for the analysis of three focal teachers to gain in-depth understanding of particular teachers within their sociocultural contexts.

Participants and Selection

Participating schools were nominated by educators involved in a university–school partnership, leaders at the local National Writing Project (NWP) site, and colleagues familiar with the rural school settings. Once school principals were contacted, all K-6 teachers at the schools were invited to participate and offered a small stipend.

Context

District 1, located in a small urban community, has a diverse student popula-tion: 45.7% White, 37.3% Black, 6.8% Hispanic, 9.8% Asian, 0.3% Native American, and 0.1% multiracial, and 47.1% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The mandated writing curriculum for all elementary teachers was Units of Study (Calkins, 2003, 2006), which combines a writer’s workshop with genre and includes two series, one for Grades K to 2 and the other for Grades 3 to 5. The units range from writing practices and habits (e.g., revision, authors as mentors) to genres (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, poetry). Each unit is a separate book in the series and includes between 15 and 17 les-sons across a month of instruction.

Three types of professional development in partnership with the local univer-sity were available to teachers in District 1: (a) University Curriculum Specialists (UCS), (b) the Summer Academy (SA), and (c) the local site of the NWP. A UCS met with teachers at individual schools about their literacy curriculum in 4- to 6-week cycles with a combination of coteaching, modeling, planning, and




McCarthey et al. 63

debriefing. The weeklong SA focused on assessment and differentiated instruc-tion. The monthlong Summer Institute (SI) of the NWP included individual writ-ing time, peer writing groups, demonstrations of teaching lessons, literature discussion groups, and a focus on technology to create digital portfolios. The schools had a literacy coach who split the day between working with students and working with teachers, but teachers’ access to coaches varied by school.

District 2, also located in a small urban community, has the following demographics: 42.8% White, 33.8% Black, 8.2% Hispanic, 6.1% Asian, 0.2% Native American, and 8.9% multiracial, and 63% of students are from families with a low income. The adopted curriculum was Write Traits (Spandel & Hicks, 2004), consisting of a series of workbooks focused on six traits of writing (ideas, organization, sentence fluency, word choice, voice, and conventions). The professional development opportunities were similar to those in District 1 except that not all schools were invited to the SA or did not have consistent access to a UCS. In addition, district teachers were invited to participate in grade-level teams to discuss the writing curriculum.

District 3 is a rural district with the following demographics: 97.6% White, 0% Black, 0.4% Hispanic, 0.8% Asian, 0% Native American, and 1.2% mul-tiracial, and 16% of students are from families with a low income. District 3 used a Houghton Mifflin basal reading series with weekly writing assign-ments, then a larger genre project per theme (e.g., personal narratives, descriptive essays, persuasive essays).

District 4 is a rural district with the following demographics: 95.1% White, 1.3% Black, 0.4% Hispanic, 0.1% Asian, 0.1% Native American, and 3.0% mul-tiracial, and 32% of students are from families with a low income. The Trophies Writer’s Companion (Strickland, 2005) was used to accompany the Harcourt basal reading curriculum for second to sixth grades, and a McGraw-Hill basic language arts curriculum was implemented in kindergarten and first grades. The Trophies Writer’s Companion has six mini-units that focus on the writer’s craft (voice, organization, ideas, sentence fluency, organization, and word choice), accompanied by two short sections on conventions and writers’ resources.

Districts 3 and 4 were not part of university–school partnerships; little professional development in these rural districts focused on writing. The pri-mary focus of the in-service days was Response to Intervention (RTI; Response to Intervention Action Network, 2011) for District 3; they did not have literacy coaches. While District 4 had a literacy coach, teachers had limited access to her.

Data Collection

We, three authors (focusing on 5 to 8 teachers each), conducted three obser-vations and interviews of each teacher over the course of one school year





(September/October, January/February, April/May) to understand instruc-tional practices over time. We took detailed field notes during the 45-minute observations of teachers’ writing instruction. Field notes were then summa-rized to focus on the room environment (e.g., posters supporting writing, rug for meeting with students), use of materials (e.g., textbooks, worksheets, children’s books), teacher–student interaction (e.g., modeling, conferring, small- and large-group structures), and tasks and genres (e.g., drafting per-sonal narrative, revising expository text).

The semistructured interviews had several components focusing on the cur-riculum, philosophy of writing, professional development, and student work. In each interview, teachers were asked about the observed lessons and how they fit in with their yearlong goals as well as their rationale for use of curricu-lar materials. Teachers discussed writing samples from three students, com-menting on their development over the course of the year in each interview. Teachers discussed and evaluated the types of professional development they had been involved in over the past 3 years in each interview. In Interview 2, we also asked about teachers’ personal experiences learning to write. In Interview 3, we asked teachers an open-ended question about their philosophies of teach-ing writing, followed by a chart with specific prompts asking them to rate the importance of elements of writing instruction (e.g., conferences, modeling, genres).

We conducted interviews with key providers of professional development including two UCSs and relevant personnel from each district about the nature of professional development and adoption of writing curricula. We observed several professional development activities such as a UCS working with teachers, and all authors were familiar with the NWP site, with McCarthey being a codirector.

Data Analysis

To begin data analysis of teachers’ instructional approaches, we summarized each teacher’s observational data and the interview data contextualizing the instruction observed into a summary document. Next, each of us transcribed verbatim the three interviews, then used the interview protocol as a guide to summarize each section (e.g., materials, philosophy, professional develop-ment, students’ texts). We developed a five-page profile of each of the teachers we had followed by combining the observational and interview data with the following categories: (a) observations with accompanying explanations from interviews, (b) curricular materials and views of the materials, (c) philosophy of writing, (d) professional development, and (e) views of students’ texts.




McCarthey et al. 65

We applied Ivanič’s framework to the curriculum, professional develop-ment opportunities, and each teacher to identify the dominant and secondary discourses (i.e., skills, creativity, process, genre, social practices, sociopo-litical). Using inductive analysis, we first examined the discourses of the four districts’ writing curricula. We analyzed materials and procedures (including lesson sequence and assignments) and determined underlying assumptions (e.g., skills orientation, writing workshop or process orienta-tion) for each of the curricula. Like Stagg Peterson (2012), we identified key words in the curricular documents and compared them to major concepts in Ivanič’s framework. We then assigned primary and secondary discourses to each curriculum. In examining the Write Traits curriculum, we found that it did not fit clearly into one of Ivanič’s categories; instead, it drew on the work of Spandel (2005) in developing the six traits of ideas, organization, conven-tions, and so on, but was also organized by genre. Thus, we assigned it its own discourse of “traits.”

To assign discourses to professional development opportunities, we ana-lyzed teachers’ descriptions of the activities, interviews with the two of the UCSs, and firsthand observations of professional development sessions. To apply Ivanič’s framework to each teacher, we used both the interview data, focusing on their descriptions of materials used, philosophy section, and evaluation of students’ writing samples, as well as observational data from the profiles. Each of us read the profiles independently, then applied the framework to the teachers for whom we were primarily responsible. Finally, we used collaborative discussion of each teacher to ensure consistency in designation of discourses (Smagorinsky, 2008).

An analysis of the influences on teachers’ beliefs and approaches began with the interview data summarized in the profiles. We developed three cat-egories—curricular materials, professional development, and personal expe-riences with writing—from the protocols and Troia et al.’s (2011) work, and used them to look at patterns across teachers. We selected three cases for in-depth analysis by considering representation from each type of district (rural, small urban) with a specific curricular focus (basal, traits, Units of Study), gender and racial diversity, and the unique ways in which the teachers negoti-ated (or not) multiple discourses in their writing instruction.

Findings

The findings are organized to first overview the curriculum, professional devel-opment, beliefs, and instructional practices across the 20 participating teachers in four districts, followed by three case studies organized using (a) approaches to the teaching of writing, (b) beliefs about writing and learning to write




66

Tab

le 1

. D

isco

urse

s of

Wri

ting.

Dis

tric

tT

each

er, g

rade

leve

l, ex

peri

ence

Scho

olC

urri

culu

mT

each

er p

rofe

ssio

nal d

evel

opm

ent

Tea

cher

bel

iefs

and

pe

rson

al h

isto

ryT

each

er in

stru

ctio

nal

prac

tices

1 (s

mal

l urb

an)

Tam

ara,

sec

ond

grad

e, 3

yea

rsLo

ngfe

llow

Proc

ess

Gen

reC

reat

ivity

(U

nits

of

Stud

y K

-2)

Gen

re/P

roce

ssC

reat

ivity

(U

nits

of

Stud

y 3-

5)

Cre

ativ

ity/P

roce

ss (

Nat

iona

l Wri

ting

Proj

ect)

Proc

ess/

Gen

re (

liter

acy

coac

h)

Skill

sG

enre

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ityG

enre

Proc

ess

Man

dy, f

ourt

h gr

ade,

21

yea

rsPr

oces

s/G

enre

(lite

racy

coa

ch)

Proc

ess

Gen

reC

reat

ivity

Proc

ess

Gen

reSk

ills

Joce

lyn,

four

th g

rade

, 3

year

sPr

oces

s/G

enre

(lit

erac

y co

ach,

col

leag

ues)

Gen

re/P

roce

ss (

Sum

mer

Aca

dem

y)Pr

oces

sG

enre

Cre

ativ

ity

Proc

ess

Gen

reC

reat

ivity

Vic

ky, f

ifth

grad

e, 1

5 ye

ars

Wes

t El

mPr

oces

s/C

reat

ivity

(U

nive

rsity

Cur

ricu

lum

Sp

ecia

list

1, li

tera

cy c

oach

)G

enre

/Pro

cess

(Su

mm

er A

cade

my)

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ityG

enre

Proc

ess

Gen

reC

reat

ivity

Dan

a, k

inde

rgar

ten,

21

yea

rsC

rest

view

Proc

ess/

Cre

ativ

ity (

Uni

vers

ity C

urri

culu

m

Spec

ialis

t 1,

mas

ter’

s pr

ogra

m)

Cre

ativ

ity/P

roce

ss (

Nat

iona

l Wri

ting

Proj

ect)

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ityPr

oces

sC

reat

ivity

Elle

n, fo

urth

gra

de,

18 y

ears

Proc

ess/

Cre

ativ

ity(U

nive

rsity

Cur

ricu

lum

Spe

cial

ist

1)

Proc

ess

(lite

racy

coa

ch)

Gen

re/P

roce

ss (S

umm

er A

cade

my)

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ityPr

oces

sG

enre

Tra

itsSk

ills

Wan

da, s

econ

d gr

ade,

2 y

ears

Tw

in L

akes

Proc

ess/

Cre

ativ

ity (

Uni

vers

ity C

urri

culu

m

Spec

ialis

t 1)

Gen

re/P

roce

ss (

Sum

mer

Aca

dem

y)

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ityG

enre

Skill

s

Proc

ess

Gen

reC

reat

ivity

Mik

e, fo

urth

gra

de,

11 y

ears

Proc

ess/

Cre

ativ

ity (

Uni

vers

ity C

urri

culu

m

Spec

ialis

t 1)

Proc

ess

Gen

reC

reat

ivity

Skill

s

Gen

rePr

oces

sC

reat

ivity

Tar

a, fo

urth

gra

de,

7 ye

ars

Mel

zer

Proc

ess/

Cre

ativ

ity/S

ocia

l Pra

ctic

esa

(Uni

vers

ity C

urri

culu

m S

peci

alis

t 1)

Gen

rePr

oces

sG

enre

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ity

(con

tinue

d)




67

Dis

tric

tT

each

er, g

rade

leve

l, ex

peri

ence

Scho

olC

urri

culu

mT

each

er p

rofe

ssio

nal d

evel

opm

ent

Tea

cher

bel

iefs

and

pe

rson

al h

isto

ryT

each

er in

stru

ctio

nal

prac

tices

Jack

son,

fift

h gr

ade,

4

year

sPr

oces

s/C

reat

ivity

/Soc

ial P

ract

ices

a (U

nive

rsity

Cur

ricu

lum

Spe

cial

ist

1)

Proc

ess/

Gen

re (

liter

acy

coac

h)

Soci

al P

ract

ices

Cre

ativ

ityG

enre

Soci

al P

ract

ices

Cre

ativ

ityPr

oces

sG

enre

2 (s

mal

l urb

an)

Elan

a, k

inde

rgar

ten,

33

yea

rsG

rove

Tra

its (

Writ

e Tr

aits

+

Har

cour

t ba

sal

read

er)

Proc

ess/

Cre

ativ

ity (

Uni

vers

ity C

urri

culu

m

Spec

ialis

t 1)

Cre

ativ

ity/P

roce

ss (

Nat

iona

l Wri

ting

Proj

ect)

Tra

its/S

kills

(di

stri

ct w

orks

hops

)

Gen

reT

raits

Proc

ess

Gen

reT

raits

Skill

s

Nat

asha

, ki

nder

gart

en, 2

ye

ars

Tra

its/S

kills

(di

stri

ct w

orks

hops

)T

raits

Skill

sT

raits

Skill

s

Mel

anie

, thi

rd g

rade

, 7

year

sPr

oces

s/T

raits

(U

nive

rsity

Cur

ricu

lum

Sp

ecia

list

3)T

raits

(lit

erac

y co

ach,

thi

rd g

rade

tea

m)

Gen

re/P

roce

ss (

Sum

mer

Aca

dem

y)

Tra

itsSk

ills

Gen

re

Tra

itsSk

ills

Gen

re

Am

ber,

fift

h gr

ade,

3

year

sPl

easa

nt H

ill?b

(U

nive

rsity

Cur

ricu

lum

Spe

cial

ist

2)G

enre

/Pro

cess

(Su

mm

er A

cade

my)

Proc

ess

Skill

sG

enre

Cre

ativ

ity

Skill

sC

reat

ivity

Gen

re

3 (r

ural

)K

erry

, sec

ond

grad

e,

21 y

ears

Mea

dow

lane

Gen

reSk

ills

Proc

ess

(Hou

ghto

n M

ifflin

ba

sal r

eade

r)

n/a

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

ityG

enre

Gen

rePr

oces

sC

reat

ivity

Reb

ecca

, fou

rth

grad

e, 3

yea

rsn/

aSk

ills

Gen

rePr

oces

s

Gen

rePr

oces

sSk

ills

Tab

le 1

. (c

ont

inue

d)

(con

tinue

d)




68

Dis

tric

tT

each

er, g

rade

leve

l, ex

peri

ence

Scho

olC

urri

culu

mT

each

er p

rofe

ssio

nal d

evel

opm

ent

Tea

cher

bel

iefs

and

pe

rson

al h

isto

ryT

each

er in

stru

ctio

nal

prac

tices

4 (r

ural

)Be

th, f

irst

gra

de, 2

7 ye

ars

Park

Skill

s (M

cGra

w-

Hill

bas

ic

lang

uage

art

s fo

r K

-1)

Skill

s (d

aylo

ng w

orks

hop)

Skill

sSo

cial

pra

ctic

esSk

ills

Cor

a, s

econ

d gr

ade,

4

year

sT

raits

Skill

s (T

roph

ies

Writ

er’s

Com

pani

on +

Har

cour

t ba

sal r

eade

r fo

r 2-

6)

Skill

s (d

aylo

ng w

orks

hop)

Tra

its (

dayl

ong

wor

ksho

p)Sk

ills

Proc

ess

Skill

sG

enre

Kat

ie, f

ourt

h gr

ade,

11

yea

rsT

raits

(da

ylon

g w

orks

hop)

Proc

ess

Gen

reSk

ills

Proc

ess

Gen

reSk

ills

Ken

dra,

six

th g

rade

, 9

year

sT

raits

(da

ylon

g w

orks

hop)

Proc

ess

Cre

ativ

itySk

ills

Cre

ativ

ityG

enre

Not

e: F

our

colu

mns

are

use

d to

iden

tify

the

mul

tiple

dis

cour

ses

teac

hers

neg

otia

ted

in t

heir

cur

ricu

lum

, pro

fess

iona

l dev

elop

men

t, be

liefs

and

per

sona

l his

tori

es, a

nd

inst

ruct

iona

l pra

ctic

es. B

oth

dom

inan

t an

d se

cond

ary

disc

ours

es w

ere

iden

tifie

d th

roug

h ar

tifac

t re

view

, obs

erva

tions

, and

inte

rvie

ws.

The

dom

inan

t di

scou

rses

are

in a

la

rger

font

tha

n th

e se

cond

ary

disc

ours

es. F

or e

xam

ple,

the

firs

t te

ache

r lis

ted

(Tam

ara)

neg

otia

ted

the

follo

win

g do

min

ant

disc

ours

es b

y ul

timat

ely

focu

sing

on

crea

tiv-

ity in

her

inst

ruct

iona

l pra

ctic

es: a

pro

cess

-bas

ed c

urri

culu

m, b

oth

crea

tivity

/pro

cess

- an

d ge

nre-

base

d pr

ofes

sion

al d

evel

opm

ent,

and

skill

s-ba

sed

belie

fs. W

hile

som

e te

ache

rs h

ad a

hig

h al

ignm

ent

of d

isco

urse

s ac

ross

the

se a

reas

(e.

g., V

icky

in D

istr

ict

1 an

d Be

th in

Dis

tric

t 4)

, oth

ers

(e.g

., T

amar

a) h

ad t

o ne

gotia

te m

ultip

le, c

ompe

ting

disc

ours

es.

a. T

he u

niqu

e so

cial

pra

ctic

es d

isco

urse

was

est

ablis

hed

only

bet

wee

n th

e U

nive

rsity

Cur

ricu

lum

Spe

cial

ist

1 an

d th

e M

elze

r te

ache

rs b

ecau

se o

f the

ir u

niqu

e lo

ng-t

erm

re

latio

nshi

ps.

b. T

here

was

not

eno

ugh

info

rmat

ion

to d

eter

min

e di

scou

rses

due

to

infr

eque

ncy

of c

onta

ct.

Tab

le 1

. (c

ont

inue

d)




McCarthey et al. 69

including teachers’ reflections on student work, and (c) influences on writing including curriculum, professional development, and personal experiences.

Table 1 illustrates that district-adopted curricula tended to embrace one (or two) particular discourses similar to Stagg Peterson’s (2012) analyses. For example, the basal curriculum adopted by Districts 3 and 4 focuses on skills, while the Write Traits curriculum of District 2 attends to genre, but uses the six traits as an organizational structure. The Units of Study curriculum used in District 1 has an overarching view of writing as process, but is organized by genre in the units for third to fifth grade.

The professional development opportunities varied to a large extent by district. District 1 had opportunities including the NWP and the SA that had primarily process- and creativity-oriented discourses. In addition, the UCS who worked in classrooms with teachers had process and creativity dis-courses; literacy coaches also echoed the process discourses. Some teachers in District 2 had the NWP, SA, and UCS opportunities as well; however, the district efforts focused on six traits with a genre discourse. These were ongo-ing, sustained professional development offerings (Desimone, 2009), in con-trast to the one-day workshops focused on traits and skills offered by District 4. Notably, District 3 offered no professional development in writing.

Table 1 also shows that most teachers’ beliefs and practices reflected a combi-nation of Ivanič’s discourses, usually a primary discourse and a secondary dis-course. Teachers in District 1 primarily used a process discourse with an emphasis on genre and creativity; their discourses were consistent with the district-adopted Units of Study discourses. Teachers in District 2 reflected the combined dis-courses of genre, traits, and skills consistent with the Write Traits curriculum. Teachers in the rural districts, 3 and 4, showed more influences of skills and genre discourses, consistent with the basal curriculum. Like Stagg Peterson (2012), who found no evidence of a sociopolitical discourse in curricular documents, we did not find any teacher, curriculum, or professional development that reflected a sociopolitical discourse. These findings across teachers suggest that most teach-ers were influenced by the discourses of the district-adopted curricula. Access to high-quality professional development also influenced teachers’ discourses. At times, the nature of the professional development reinforced a particular dis-course (e.g., the skills-based workshops of District 4), while other times it miti-gated a dominant discourse. For example, the UCS, Claire, introduced a social practices discourse focused on talking about students’ writing for an audience into process discourse at Meltzer, a school where she had a 3-year relationship. She supported their implementation of the curriculum, yet also encouraged them to go beyond the curriculum to meet the needs of their students.

The three cases below provide exemplars of teachers’ hybrid discourses and the ways in which they negotiated and resolved (or not) the tensions among





them. Beth primarily reveals a skills discourse, but her case reveals some beliefs about writing as communication that did not show up in her practices. She did not articulate potential contradictions between discourses and followed the district, skills-infused curriculum. Amber borrowed from skills, traits, genre, and process discourses without resolving any potential contradictions, resulting in instructional practices that had little consistency or underlying coherence. Jackson, who brought in his own hip-hop experiences, illustrates aspects of the social practices as well as the creativity and genre discourses to create an enhanced version of the Units of Study; his understanding of the dif-ferences among discourses contributed to his ability to navigate among them.

Beth: A Primary Skills Discourse

Beth, a White first grade teacher with over 20 years of experiences in rural District 4, is a teacher whose curriculum and professional development con-tributed to a primary skills approach in her writing instruction—she tended to focus on surface features of language, including grammar, correctness, hand-writing, spelling, and punctuation. However, some of her beliefs about writ-ing aligned with a very different social practices discourse that views writing as purpose-driven within a context. Beth’s limited experiences and lack of confidence teaching writing contributed to the ways she foregrounded the discourse of her curriculum and professional development, placing in the background her socially oriented beliefs about language and writing develop-ment in her instruction.

School and Classroom Contexts

Beth’s school, located in rural District 4, did not make adequate yearly prog-ress the year before the study and was focused on their school improvement plan to improve reading test scores. Of the 22 first graders in Beth’s class-room, 1 was African American, 1 was multiracial, and the rest were White. Along with the other first grade teachers, Beth used a McGraw-Hill basal language arts curriculum for kindergarten and first grades and a Saxon pho-nics and spelling curriculum to teach writing. The curriculum exemplified a skills discourse, with lessons and worksheets focused on grammar, punctua-tion, and complete sentences.

The primary focus of the in-service professional development days at Beth’s school was RTI, “a multi-tiered approach to helping struggling read-ers” (Response to Intervention Action Network, 2011), and teachers had lim-ited opportunities to engage in sustained professional development. Over the course of the school year, Beth attended one daylong workshop focused on




McCarthey et al. 71

teaching skill-based writing (e.g., writing complete sentences, using punctua-tion, etc.). There was a literacy coach in the building who primarily helped the teachers access materials, but did not model lessons or offer writing-spe-cific support.

Instructional Approaches

Beth’s writing instruction primarily focused on skill mastery; she described her instruction as “capital letters, periods, spacing between, how to write a sentence. That’s constantly what we’ll be doing this year—just reinforcing those basic skills.” In the September observation of her writing instruction, students—who sat in rows—told Beth how to correct punctuation and capi-talization in sentences on the board. Then, they completed a worksheet with similar examples. Beth explained, “I follow the basic curriculum in the English book, plus I add to it. I do daily [oral language] on a half [work]sheet.” She also met with students daily to go over their previous day’s jour-nal entries, focusing on what errors they made.

In the January observation, students again edited sentences on the board by telling Beth which verbs to change to make them match the subject. Then she reviewed contractions and apostrophes with students, and they completed apostrophe worksheets. Finally, Beth described the differences between the words “were” and “was” and “is” and “are.” Her idea for this lesson, as usual, came from the curriculum textbook and followed a typical format. “What I usually do is my lesson from the English book. Then I give them journals . . . they can go at their own speed then to do the journals.” Beth had just recently added journal writing, per the suggestion of her literacy coach, “because they [the administration] want to do more writing this year to help raise those [test scores].”

In the third observation, students engaged in a prompted task to compare two objects. Although the curriculum suggested the focus on comparisons, Beth added a worksheet because students struggled with comparisons when she taught them last year. When students worked independently, filling out similarity/differences worksheets, Beth met with students about their writing. Some interactions focused on topic selection, others on relevant details, and others on spelling/mechanics. At the end of the lesson, students wrote prompted responses in their journals about a book they read together that morning.

Although Beth did add a journal feature to her instruction, overall her practices were consistent with the skills approach discourse that emphasized mechanics and grammar. In the lessons observed, she followed the curricu-lum and sometimes added supplemental worksheets.





Beliefs About Writing and Learning to Write

Many aspects of Beth’s underlying philosophy about teaching writing were consistent with a skills approach, focusing on explicit instruction and gram-mar and deemphasizing feedback and interaction. Although she did believe that students learn to write through oral communication and reading, a view-point that is more consistent with a social practices approach, these did not translate into her instruction:

Well the first thing I think they learn to write is by people speaking . . . at home . . . [where] they hear words and phrases that they pick up on. The second way that I think they learn to write is by reading. . . . Third [they learn in] school. But when I went to college they didn’t teach us . . . how to teach writing. So that’s been hard . . . I’ve struggled with that.

For her first graders, she believed that good writing occurred when her stu-dents “could give me a complete thought, give me a capital letter at the begin-ning, and a period. I would like them to be able to write a paragraph, at least three or four sentences. I would be thrilled.” She thought that teacher-student conferences were important for struggling writers, but did not believe that peer talk about writing was important “at this age.” She believed that a focus on grammar and mechanics in her instruction was very important, and men-tioned that she tried hard but her students “still don’t get it,” giving an exam-ple: “Oh it’s the me thing. When they say me—me and Sandy. And I’m going ‘no, no.’ And I know that’s what they hear at home . . . it’s what gets picked up on, and it’s so common.” Beth, then, believed that students learned lan-guage and grammar in interaction, but she focused her own instruction on skill mastery.

Beth’s talk about students’ writing provided insight into her beliefs about learning to write. Specifically, she tended to focus on surface-level features of writing, students’ effort, and their home lives. For example, she focused on Shana’s handwriting as a primary instructional focus: “Probably the only weakness that Shana has is her handwriting. Sometimes it gets a little messy.” When Beth talked about Sam, whom she deemed a struggling writer, she focused on his effort:

He is still struggling just to copy it from the board. . . . And sometimes he doesn’t want to do the work. But we are getting better with some of our handwriting and we’re doing more. . . . But, he’s still one of my lower students. A lot of it is because he doesn’t want to work at it.




McCarthey et al. 73

However, somewhat inconsistent with a skills discourse, Beth also valued creativity in differentiating between good and excellent writers, as exempli-fied by her discussion of Shana: “Now, Ms. Shana, she is one step above Ryan in writing. Because she’s a little bit more creative, you know. Ryan will do wonderful [with] what you ask him, but we haven’t got that little bit of creativeness yet, where she has it.” While she mentioned creativity, she did not elaborate on what she meant by it, nor was it a clear theme across her interviews.

Influences

Beth’s assessment and instructional focus on skills reflected the skills orien-tation of her curriculum, a school context that focused on an intervention program with few opportunities for professional development in writing, and her own experiences with writing focused on conventions. There was little support for some of her beliefs that reflected writing as a social practice.

Curriculum. In all observed lessons, Beth used materials directly from the K-1 curriculum and/or daily oral language worksheets. She wished that the cur-riculum was more structured, but liked it. She said,

I just wish they’d say in the material—Day 1 do this, Day 2 do this, Day 3 do this [laughing]. . . . It’s not that structured . . . [but] the English book keeps me on track. I have at least something to follow and they give us a lot of ideas—even journal writing. . . . It’s a starting point and we can expand on it, so at least I have something to go with.

Overall, Beth believed the curriculum matched her philosophy. “It is not really a bad English book. I think they expect a lot at the beginning [that] they’re not ready for mentally. . . . But later on they can handle it much better.”

Professional Development. Beth did not have any professional development specifically focused on writing during the school year. The school’s desire to get off the federal school improvement list resulted in their concentration on improving test scores in reading and math. However, Beth felt that her writ-ing instruction improved over the past 3 years, saying,

I think I feel more comfortable than I used to. I wish I had more training but at least I feel like I can get them to write a sentence on their own. And I realize that I really have to do the daily writing, and really just go over and over and make the corrections, but you have to do that.





She thought that a significant influence on her writing instruction was a half-day district workshop she attended the year before, where she got practi-cal ideas, like color-coding her assessments to focus separately on punctua-tion and capitalization. Although she usually went to a statewide literacy conference every year, due to severe budget cuts, no teachers in the school were attending conferences. She thought the professional development she had participated in helped her realize how gradual growth is at the first grade level and to recognize the need for repetition in instruction.

Overall, Beth did not have access to high-quality, ongoing professional development in writing, so it was not as significant of an influence on her instruction as her curriculum. The few opportunities she did have for profes-sional development tended to reinforce a skills discourse.

Personal. Beth had negative experiences learning to write in school, and few experiences learning to teach writing. She shared that the way she learned to write in school was “completely different. The way I was taught writing was here—here’s your assignment. Write. No one told you how to write. You just did it. And some children had that natural talent [to write]. And some children didn’t.” She recalled diagramming sentences in school, but preferred today’s instruction focused on actual writing rather than sentence diagramming. She said,

I think the reason I’m not a writer is because I can’t spell very well. When I was in college I would worry too much about the spelling of the words so what I had to develop was [a strategy]—write my thoughts, circle misspelled words, and then come back and look them up. . . . I know their frustrations, and I don’t want them to constantly worry about the spelling, I want them to worry about the writing.

She claimed that she rarely wrote outside of school “because of the spelling, it goes back to the spelling. And I think that’s why a lot of kids are leery of writing is because of spelling.”

Although Beth’s interviews showed some beliefs supporting the social, communicative nature of writing, she did not instantiate Ivanič’s social prac-tices discourse in her instruction. Rather, a focus on skills permeated her discourse about curriculum, student assessments, and instruction. Her school context supported this primary focus on a skills discourse. The curriculum she used was skills based, reinforcing some of her beliefs about writing, and she experienced no professional development (except for the coach who gave her the idea of adding journals) to provide a counternarrative about writing. The school’s focus on RTI and improving test scores along with her own experiences with writing further supported a skills discourse. Thus, there was an alignment of discourses from curriculum through professional




McCarthey et al. 75

development that reinforced the skills discourse (Newell et al., 2001). Beth did not articulate any potential tensions between her predominant skills ori-entation and the references to more social practices, and there was little sup-port in the school context to investigate a more social approach.

Unlike Beth, who aligned her practices with the adopted basal curriculum, Amber was dissatisfied with the Write Traits curriculum, and experienced dis-crepancies between the discourse it supported and her own complex beliefs.

Amber: Many Discourses, Little Coherence

Amber was a fifth grade teacher whose discourses reflected skills, genre, process, and traits without cohering around any central principles. She repre-sents a case in which a teacher is somewhat aware of the tensions within discourses, but has few tools to resolve them. Without a clearly articulated view of writing or a set of coherent materials or professional development opportunities, Amber’s instruction and beliefs about writing did not align with a particular discourse.


Amber’s school is located in District 2 in a small urban community, and her classroom demographics reflected those of the school, with 59% African American, 27% White, 3% Hispanic, and 11% multiracial students. While the district-adopted curriculum was Write Traits (Spandel & Hicks, 2004), teach-ers at the school were not required to use it. Professional development oppor-tunities included attending the SA, having a UCS drop in occasionally, and having limited access to a literacy coach.


Amber’s instructional approaches reflected tensions among genre, process, skills, and creativity discourses. In the first observation, Amber provided spe-cific directions about how to use senses to describe “chocolate” (without naming it) as an object found by an alien. Students used adjectives about each sense elicited on graphic organizers to complete a descriptive piece from the alien’s point of view. The whole-group lesson was devoted to giving direc-tions and prompting students to provide descriptive words. As students wrote individually, Amber walked around the room and helped them come up with ideas.





During the second observation, she focused on adding transition words to their rough drafts for a “what is unique about me” project. Amber led a whole-group lesson about transitions using a prompt for student to orally put in transition words. After adding to their drafts, students lined up for her to check their work. Then, Amber took a small group to work more on the sec-ond prompt.

In the third observation, the task was for students to write fictional stories based on posters from the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (Van Allsburg, 1984). She introduced the lesson by showing the posters (students had not read the book). Students wrote quietly at their desks while Amber walked around, talking very briefly with them. Then, several students read their stories aloud and she commented on them.

Each of Amber’s lessons showed different discourses without reflecting underlying coherence. While each lesson was part of a different genre focus, Amber did not explicitly teach aspects of the genre. She talked to students briefly about their drafts in conferences, seeming to reflect a process dis-course, but she did not establish a writer’s workshop format. Her whole-group and small-group lessons focused on specific skills such as using transition words, yet she did not emphasize only skills. Amber’s instruction did not seem to be guided by any particular philosophy or set of materials—she seemed to be drawing from different discourses without connecting them, and this cre-ated unresolved tensions in her practices.


Amber’s beliefs about writing reflected the tensions in her practice. Her com-ments showed the influence of numerous, but somewhat incompatible dis-courses from skills (e.g., “‘We ain’t got no—’ doesn’t get very far in the business world”) to genre (e.g., “Different genres of writing and we have to hit all of those. We primarily focus on expository writing, but I feel it is important to hit those others so that children know that there is not just one style of writing, there are a lot of different audiences to write for”). She also said that traits were important (despite her dislike of the Traits adopted cur-riculum): “Actually, I think that’s why some of these kids really came together all of a sudden—is because they were able to put those little pieces together like a puzzle—grammar, the structure of the piece, organization, definitely—so those writing traits.” She also valued some strategies connected to process discourses, saying, “Teacher student conferences I think are very important for that immediate feedback that I always talk about, because then they know what to fix right then and there, and they don’t continue making the same




McCarthey et al. 77

mistake,” but the focus was on correcting mistakes not giving feedback for revision.

When talking about students’ writing, Amber brought in a number of dis-courses as well. She said about Jana, “This student tried to include a lot of detail and I see her taking risks. This object smells likes a creamy kind of candy, the sentence structure is off but she is trying to get the description.” Amber elaborated, “She is famous for run-on sentences so we are focusing on [them]; she has great ideas but it is hard to say them all in one big breath when it is really 20 sentences.” About Antonia, she said, “She is one of my top writ-ers. Her paper flows, her ideas, her organization, her sentence structure, every-thing is well above fifth grade. . . . She is very creative and sentence structure, grammar and punctuation.” She attributed Antonia’s strength as a writer to her natural talent, saying, “She has it and it comes naturally to her.”

In contrast, she focused on skills and conventions with her struggling stu-dents saying, “I have a lot of students who did not use punctuation at the beginning of the year. We spent 2 or 3 weeks just on complete sentences.” Thus, her talk about students’ writing reflected a variety of discourses—dif-ferent ones for different students. While it is possible to see the value of focusing on different aspects of writing according to students’ needs, her overall talk did not reflect a coherent set of principles or ideas—they seemed to contradict one another.

Influences

The curriculum, professional development, and Amber’s personal experi-ences also reflected different philosophies of writing. Her discourses high-light the unresolved tensions among the various ideas about writing she encountered.

Curriculum. Amber did not feel that the Write Traits was a writing program and resisted using it with her students, saying, “I didn’t feel that it is a pro-gram. . . . Honestly not all kids need to focus on organization or ideas.” She also was dissatisfied with the basal stating, “Harcourt, it has some piece of writing in it, but this is the problem with it—we don’t have all the pieces for our series.” She noted that there were missing books and transparencies, and added a grammar book “that looked good.” Since she did not like the district curriculum, she developed her own:

I check out the web a lot to get ideas. The one thing that I do not like is that we do not have a program and I am trying to develop my own. A lot of my ideas, I know what I have to teach my kids so I pull in things that are relevant to my students.





While Amber appeared to be guided by addressing the needs of her students, she was frustrated: “It is a lot of work. I am overwhelmed; I know what I have to teach. I wish there was more guidance. . . . I wish there was an adopted program or I could find one and they would fund it for me.” She also wished there was more uniformity among teachers saying, “I think that is the biggest struggle is the teachers do not do it the same way.” Since she did not use the district-adopted curriculum, Amber tried many different les-sons she found on the web. Thus, there was not a clear influence of a particu-lar curriculum on her, and she attempted to juggle various assumptions about writing.

Professional Development. Amber took part in the SA two years in a row, where she learned about differentiated instruction (DI). However, there was not a literacy focus, and she felt the first year was valuable but the second was not:

This year I did not feel it was as worthwhile as the previous year. The reason being, in 2008 they had phenomenal speakers and got you excited about DI. This year it was more do what you want to do, there was a lot of free time. It was supposed to be dedicated to lesson plans with a backwards design. There was not enough instruction given again to explain exactly what to do. We knew what we had to do but not how.

She had mixed experiences with the UCS in her district as well: The first year, the UCS, Claire, “was phenomenal and the kids responded to her.” However, in the second year, she had a different UCS who “came in a little bit. She gave my kids a test over something for ISAT.” At the district level, she found the profes-sional development insufficient: “We talked about the Write Traits and how to teach each one to the class. We looked at student work and talked about it. That was it.” Amber’s experiences with professional development did not seem to have an impact on her practice or provide a foundation for developing a coherent writing program. However, she was eager to have more support in writing: “Anything I could get my hands on for writing, I would be happy.”

Personal. Amber’s writing experiences as a student were mixed. Her most negative experiences were with a male a teacher: “He made us write a hun-dred-page report. . . . And I remember I copied it out of the encyclopedia, verbatim. I got a hundred percent. It was a hundred pages. That’s what he wanted.” In contrast, she had a sixth grade teacher who was “a really good teacher that was really big on the publishing thing. And actually, we created our own books—those little, white books you write in—that was something I was really proud of.” Her personal experiences, then, showed contradictory




McCarthey et al. 79

discourses from copying from an encyclopedia to a more process-oriented discourse of writing that valued sharing student work.

Amber’s instructional approaches and beliefs about writing did not reflect a particular discourse, but rather had echoes of many discourses from skills to traits to genre. By drawing from the web and a variety of materials, she took an eclectic approach that did not cohere around particular principles. Amber took a some-what critical approach to Write Traits, but was searching for a more cohesive program to follow. In the absence of substantive professional development about writing and with mixed personal experiences with writing, Amber seemed to be juggling multiple discourses. However, they were unresolved and she seemed dissatisfied with the results, continuing to be on her own in her building.

In contrast, Jackson had support for navigating multiple discourses and managed to come to more productive resolutions in his instructional prac-tices, offering his students writing that had meaningful social purposes.

Jackson: Writing as a Purpose-Driven Event Within Sociocultural Contexts

Jackson, an African American fifth grade teacher, embraced a philosophy consistent with a social practices discourse approach to writing instruction. Although aspects of process discourses were apparent in his instruction, he primarily used a social practice discourse as he provided opportunities for writing in meaningful contexts and allocated time for students to share their writing in the classroom. Jackson’s rich personal writing and professional development experiences contributed to his confidence in teaching writing, comfort in making curricular decisions, and ability to draw from more than one discourse to deviate from and enhance the Units of Study curriculum.


The students at Jackson’s school are 56.1% White, 30.5% Black, 1.8% Hispanic, 3.2% Asian, 0.7% Native American, and 7.7% multiracial, and 41.8% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In his fifth grade classroom of 24 students, Jackson had 8 African American and 16 White students. The teachers in the school were encouraged to use the Units of Study (2006) cur-riculum, but also to supplement it based on students’ needs and interests. The school had a heavy emphasis on professional development on the teaching of writing, and the UCS, Claire, had worked with teachers for 3 years—model-ing lessons, creating extensions to the curriculum, holding debriefing ses-sions after writing instruction with the teachers, and examining students’





texts together. There was also a building literacy coach who worked with teachers including Jackson.


Jackson loosely followed the Units of Study using a workshop approach. In the September observation he started off with a PowerPoint of the main ideas of the lesson. He emphasized the slide with the teaching point “Writing allows us to slow down and find ‘treasures’ among the everyday events of our lives.” He shared his own writing and provided students with strategies including reread-ing and picking their favorite stories to develop. Throughout the lesson, he dia-logued with the class, and students had opportunities to interject their ideas about sifting through their writers’ notebooks. Jackson related that the lesson was getting them to understand that there is a “long-term goal” to write a “bigger story.” In the social practices discourse students learn implicitly by participating in socially situated literacy events to fulfill social goals that are meaningful to them. Jackson’s objective for the students to look back at their writing and then to choose a meaningful story was directed toward future writing; it was not lim-ited to the classroom, but encompassed a larger social purpose.

In the second observation, Jackson shared past students’ poetry and had students investigate the style and features of each poem. The class read aloud, dissected, and discussed the poetry as a class and in small groups. After the discussion, students wrote their own poems. Jackson encouraged them to experiment with different styles and to use the strategies they had been work-ing on throughout the poetry unit.

In the third observation, Jackson’s class focused on editing with a specific lens (e.g., misspelled words, capitalization, punctuation). They edited the paragraph together as a class, then edited each other’s work; finally, partners shared their suggestions with one another.

Jackson and his class developed a “community of practice” (Wenger, 1998) where learning happens implicitly through purposeful participation, not through explicit instruction. In each observation, Jackson was consistent in modeling, providing time for students to interact with one another, and practice/apply the focus of the lesson. All of these components were consis-tent with the discourses of the curriculum (process, genre, and creativity), yet Jackson’s instruction connected to his own beliefs and professional develop-ment experiences. At times, there were tensions among the discourses, yet he exhibited agency to make curricular decisions. For example, he felt that it was essential to include poetry into his writing curriculum, even though it was not a part of the fifth grade Units of Study.




McCarthey et al. 81


When Jackson shared his philosophy of writing, he said, “Children learning to write starts with two things: reading good writing and opportunities to write . . . better writers are the ones that are strong readers and you can see it in their writing because you see the nuances of writing, the unexplained things.” His views of writing were consistent with the social practices dis-course where writing is purpose-driven, as he sought to connect writing to real-life purposes and meaningful events.

When asked about the purpose of writing, Jackson explained, “It’s your audience and that’s the purpose of writing because they’re writing to share with their peers.” He did not categorize students into low, medium, or high writers because he felt that it depended on the type of writing and the end product. For example, talking about Mark’s writing, he focused on the posi-tive qualities and areas where Mark applied the strategies discussed in class:

Mark is one of the higher, very detailed [students], you can tell he is a well read student because his is set up almost like a book. . . . You can tell he’s tried on some of the strategies, great character development . . . uses the internal and external story for his characters, there’s a lot of things that he’s done here.

In an interview about Miranda he discussed how she met all criteria of the assignment:

I would say that she hit the nail right on the head . . . she kept the feel and the rhythm of the original song because she borrowed the idea using a song to inspire her lyrics. But, she changed it to something that’s meaningful to her. . . . Creatively, she did exactly what she was supposed to do.

When he talked about Darius, who might be considered a lower level student by traditional achievement measures, he again focused on the strengths of the poem and the application of strategies. He stated,

The content of the poem . . . and the rhythm of the poem and the line breaks are fantastic. You know, he has a vision . . . and you can see that because . . . single word lines at the end, that’s intentional. . . . That’s a good thing, that he has a vision that he sees and hears it, he portrayed that.

Jackson’s talk about student writing revealed a dynamic view of assessment. He felt that “writing should be assessed very individualized because every student has a different challenge that they’re working with and a different gift that they have, so that’s what you have to recognize as a teacher.”





Influences

Jackson’s social practices discourse was influenced by the Units of Study that he adapted for his own purposes, his varied professional development oppor-tunities, and his personal experiences as a hip-hop artist.

Curriculum. Overall, Jackson supported the use of Units of Study and felt that it was a good match with his philosophy of writing instruction. However, he chose to “skip around” and pick out the more meaningful lessons, and created his own units and genres. He added a poetry unit, supplemented lessons, and revisited topics when he saw the need. Referring to the poetry unit, he added, “Well, I would do it even if the district didn’t just because I think it’s important so students have an opportunity to be exposed to poetry . . . because I think it’s the ultimate opportunity for creative writing.” He was able to adapt the curricu-lum with his current students in mind, as well as insert his knowledge of poetry.

Professional Development. Generally, Jackson had positive and varied profes-sional development experiences. When interviewed about the effects of pro-fessional development on his teaching of writing, he said, “They’re great because they expose me to ideas and strategies that I can use to help in assess-ing students. . . . I’ll try anything on and I’ll love it because that’s what keeps me fresh. . . . So, I value it.” His professional development experiences included district workshops/in-services, courses for a second master’s for his Type 75 certificate, support from the building literacy coach, and collabora-tion with the UCS. He had positive experiences with the building literacy coach, where the relationship was “mutual and trusting,” and found her to be an “invaluable resource.”

He identified his collaboration with Claire, the UCS, to be the most help-ful and meaningful form of professional development because she came into his room to model lessons and to discuss the activities afterward. He said,

When you go to a workshop it sounds so good, or it sounds like it wouldn’t work. But you’re actually in your classroom, when Claire comes in to do things, they are tangible . . . which is how I do everything with teaching, you try it and if it doesn’t work you tweak it.

Overall, Jackson had positive professional development experiences, and he was open to learning new strategies and ideas to see things from varied per-spectives and improve his teaching.




McCarthey et al. 83

Personal. In Jackson’s own experiences with writing, he saw the connection between reading and writing:

The more I read the better I wrote, even I was coming from writing hip-hop. . . . I forced myself to find time to sit down and make sure that I was reading for creative inspiration. . . . I think the same thing goes with these students, I mean what we teach them is not to just look at it from a spectator’s perspective when you’re reading a book, but also look at it from a writer’s eyes. What is the author doing here that I might be able to borrow or steal?

Jackson also saw value in sharing his writing with students as mentor texts for them to observe authors’ writing strategies. Students were supported in learning from their peers as they shared their writing and investigated past students’ writing.

Jackson’s beliefs of writing and instructional practices primarily reflected the social practices discourse, yet he also displayed other discourses because he pulled from varied sources of curriculum, professional development, and personal experiences. This host of experiences and sources contributed to his view that writing instruction was an opportunity to model and share his own experiences with students, but also a time for students to participate and inter-act with one another in writing. The variety of professional development expe-riences shaped his discourses and provided confidence to adapt the curriculum. His own writing as a hip-hop artist for a larger audience provided support for his social practices discourse. Jackson was able to recognize and navigate the multiple layers of conflicts and contradictions within the various discourses at play. Both his personal and professional development experiences provided confidence, knowledge, and resolution to negotiate the curriculum, alter his practices, and reconstruct his instruction in ways that echoed Bickmore et al.’s (2005) teachers who navigated tensions in productive ways.

Discussion

The findings from the study indicate that Ivanič’s (2004) discourses in writ-ing and writing instruction, developed for adult writers and used as a critique for curricular materials, provide a useful framework for understanding ele-mentary teachers’ beliefs about writing and writing instruction. However, our data from the 20 teachers demonstrated that teachers’ discourses do not fall neatly into a particular category, but rather tend to reflect more than one, resulting in hybrid discourses. The cases demonstrate how teachers negoti-ated these discourses within the frames of the district-adopted curricula, and were influenced by professional development opportunities and personal experiences with writing.





Primarily a skills focus permeated Beth’s discourses about curriculum, stu-dents, and instruction. Even though some of her own beliefs about learning to write were more aligned with a social practice perspective, Beth followed the district-adopted, skills-based basal curriculum, and had little professional devel-opment to offset the skills’ influence or to support her desire to further consider a social practice discourse. Teachers like Beth, with very little content knowl-edge and professional development, then, may have a difficult time identifying contradictions and developing alternatives to district-adopted curriculum. In contrast to Beth, Amber did not embrace her district’s Write Traits curriculum and did not value the professional development opportunities she had; her approaches to writing and her beliefs reflected a mixture of genre-based, skills-based, and process-oriented discourses that showed inherent and unresolved tensions. When teachers dislike their curriculum but receive little professional support, they again may have trouble constructing coherent curricular alterna-tives. Jackson navigated discourses more fluidly and resolved conflicting dis-courses, perhaps due to his comfort with writing and writing instruction. His views of writing and approach to writing instruction reflected the social practice discourse of having a purpose for writing in meaningful contexts, but exhibited process, genre, and creativity discourses as well. He was aware of conflicts among the multiple discourses, and drew from his personal experiences as a hip-hop artist and professional development opportunities with a UCS to alter the Units of Study curriculum to fit the needs of his fifth graders.

While Newell et al. (2001) found that the alignment of various settings supported a reflective stance toward teaching and learning for preservice teachers, we did not find this to be the case for practicing teachers. In Beth’s case, the basal curriculum was skills based, reinforcing her primarily skills-based discourse and providing little support to put into practice or fully artic-ulate a more social discourse. Because her settings were so aligned from personal experiences to professional development, Beth did not reflect on the potential tensions between her discourses. Amber, on the other hand, reacted against the Write Traits curriculum when making instructional decisions, but still used some of the traits’ terms in her interviews. The lack of alignment among the discourses of the curriculum, personal experiences, and her instruction and beliefs provided a context for identifying tensions. However, her ongoing search for meaningful materials and professional development along with her frustration and somewhat incoherent writing instruction sug-gested that these were not resolved in a productive way (Smagorinsky, Gibson, et al., 2004). The tensions among the process and genre discourse of the Units of Study (Calkins, 2006) and Jackson’s social practices discourses, influenced by his personal experiences as a hip-hop artist and the UCS,




McCarthey et al. 85

seemed to have led to a productive resolution in which he did not simply fol-low the dominant discourse of his curriculum.

One of the notable features of our analysis was there were no cases of sociopolitical discourse using critical literacy. We surmise that this may be the case because of lack of exposure to sociopolitical discourse through cur-riculum or professional development. Due to greater accountability, testing practices, and compliance with state standards and guidelines (McCarthey, 2008; McCarthey & Ro, 2011), few teachers are likely to contest the dis-courses that are so prevalent in curriculum. As Stagg Peterson (2012) noted, it is important to develop comprehensive writing curricula that will take up more socially and politically oriented approaches to the teaching of writing and foster creativity in students’ writing. In reviewing the curriculum in light of teachers’ discourses, we found that the adopted curricula (Write Traits, Writer’s Companion, Units of Study) all had scripted components that may undermine rather than enhance teachers taking a critical stance. However, some teachers, including Jackson, were able to harness their professional development and personal experiences in a coherent instructional discourse, allowing them to adapt the discourses of their curriculum.

Implications for Practice and Research

First, we agree with Ivanič (2004), who suggests that writing teachers can benefit from knowing about the discourses, knowing pedagogical practices associated with them, and “recognising which discourse(s) of writing they are inhabiting” (p. 242). We argue that it is important for teachers to become aware of the dominant discourses expressed in the adopted curriculum as well as the discourses they employ in their instructional approaches and underlying philosophies. Since some discourses appear to be contradictory (e.g., skills versus social practices), teachers need to be aware of the similari-ties and differences among discourses to actively negotiate the tensions among them. Beth’s lack of awareness of the potential conflicts between her skills discourses and some of her social practices talk prevented her from challenging the skills-based curriculum and professional development, limit-ing her instruction to a skills focus. Amber experienced tensions among the multiple discourses she brought into her instruction, but did not show aware-ness of the underlying conflicts among the district-adopted curriculum, her web searches, and other sources. She also had few opportunities to reflect on her practices within school or district contexts. Jackson demonstrated aware-ness that the Units of Study lacked important components and drew from professional development and personal experiences to supplement these areas, contributing to a social practices discourse in his instruction.





To enhance teachers taking a more critically aware stance toward the cur-riculum and approaches to writing, professional development opportunities need to be provided that will help teachers go beyond scripts and the pre-dominant discourses we identified (McCarthey et al., 2012; Yoon, 2012). Teachers need opportunities to collaborate and delve deeply into discussions about a comprehensive writing pedagogy within their specific school com-munities, including understanding the discourses endorsed by the official curriculum. Inquiry groups or participatory learning communities provide opportunities where teachers can problematize and negotiate the official and unofficial curriculum (Dyson, 1993; Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2001). Such groups could also help teachers develop the content knowledge necessary to give them alternative options to their mandated curriculum. As the Common Core Standards are implemented and monitored, additional research on teachers’ writing practices and curricular negotiations is needed to understand these expectations.

Research on teacher writing also holds promise for understanding how teachers’ own writing practices influence their discourses about writing and writing instruction. Teachers who write take time to reflect on their teaching and writing practices, and have an increased understanding of writing pro-cesses (Dahl, 1992; McKinney & Giorgis, 2009). However, the relationship between teachers’ writing and classroom practices is complicated (Robbins, 1996; Woodard, 2013). Robbins (1996), for example, found that most teach-ers who engaged in personally meaningful writing considered themselves nonwriters, and that teachers’ writing rarely informed their instruction. Further research on how teachers’ histories and experiences with writing affect their beliefs about writing instruction and practices may help teachers better articulate and navigate their instructional discourses.

Finally, while we found Ivanič’s framework useful for identifying elemen-tary teachers’ dominant discourses, we also identified limitations. When examining teachers’ actual instructional approaches and beliefs about writ-ing, we found that teachers are always negotiating multiple discourses includ-ing district-adopted curricula, professional development discourses, and their own personal experiences. Yet these discourses do not fall neatly into any one of Ivanič’s categories. While we agree with her contention that “teachers are to a large extent at the mercy of these forces,” we have complicated her belief that “they have the intellectual freedom to be aware of the way in which these forces privilege one discourse at the expense of others, and to compensate for this” (p. 241). In our overall analysis, we found that the curricular influence was so strong—whether it was Write Traits, Units of Study, or the basal cur-riculum—that it was very difficult for teachers to counteract the dominant discourses. When Amber, for example, did try to counteract the Write Traits curriculum, she had little support to do so. As districts are under increasing




McCarthey et al. 87

pressure to adopt specific curricula to adhere to the Common Core Standards, it will become even more important for educators to identify and challenge dominant discourses to offer diverse students writing instruction that will open up opportunities for them.

Authors’ Note

All names of schools, teachers, and schools are pseudonyms.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded, in part, by the Hardie Strategic Initiatives Faculty Fellows Program” at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

References

Alsup, J. (2006). Teacher identity discourses: Negotiating personal and professional spaces. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Bickmore, S. T., Smagorinsky, P., & O’Donnell-Allen, C. (2005). Tensions between traditions: The role of contexts in learning to teach. English Education, 38, 23-52.

Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the ter-rain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3-15.

Britzman, D. P. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Brooks, G. W. (2007). Teachers as readers and writers and as teachers of reading and writing. Journal of Educational Research, 100(3), 177-191.

Calkins, L. M. (2003). The units of study for primary writing: A yearlong curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L. M. (2006). Units of study for teaching writing, grades 3-5. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Common Core State Standards. (2010). Common Core State Standards Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org

Dahl, K. L. (Ed.). (1992). Teacher as writer: Entering the professional conversation. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional devel-opment: Toward better conceptualizations and measurements. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 181-199.


http://www.corestandards.org




Dyson, A. H. (1993). Social worlds of children learning to write in an urban primary school. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Gee, J. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Graham, S., Harris, K. R., MacArthur, C., & Fink, B. (2002). Primary grade teachers’ theoretical orientations concerning writing instruction: Construct validation and a nationwide survey. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27(2), 147-166.

Grossman, P. L., Smagorinsky, P., & Valencia, S. (1999). Appropriating tools for teaching English: A theoretical framework for research on learning to teach. American Journal of Education, 108, 1-29.

Grossman, P., Wineburg, S., & Woolworth, S. (2001). Toward a theory of teacher community. Teachers College Record, 103(6), 942-1012.

Handsfield, L. J., Crumpler, T. P., & Dean, T. R. (2010). Tactical negotiations and creative adaptations: The discursive production of literacy curriculum and teacher identities across space-times. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(4), 405-431.

Hargreaves, A. (1995). Development and desire: A postmodern perspective. In T. Guskey & M. Huberman (Eds.), Professional development in education: Paradigms and practices (pp. 9-34). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Ivanič, R. (2004). Discourses of writing and learning to write. Language and Education, 18(3), 220-245.

McCarthey, S. J. (2008). The impact of No Child Left Behind on teachers’ writing instruction. Written Communication, 25, 462-505.

McCarthey, S. J., & Mkhize, D. (2013). Teachers’ orientations towards writing instruction. Journal of Writing Research, 4(4), 300-331.

McCarthey, S. J., & Ro, Y. S. (2011). Approaches to writing instruction. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 6(4), 273-295.

McCarthey, S. J., Woodard, R., & Kang, G. (2012). Access and perceptions of pro-fessional development in writing. In C. Bazerman et al. (Eds.), International advances in writing research: Cultures, places, measures (pp. 41-59). Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse.

McKinney, M., & Giorgis, C. (2009). Narrating and performing identity: Literacy specialists’ writing identities. Journal of Literacy Research, 41(1), 104-149.

National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges. (2003). The neglected “R”: The need for a writing revolution. New York, NY: College Board.

Newell, G. E., Gingrich, R., & Beumer Johnson, A. (2001). Considering the contexts for appropriating theoretical and practical tools for teaching middle and second-ary English. Research in the Teaching of English, 35, 302-343.

Response to Intervention Action Network. (2011). RTI Action Network: A program of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Retrieved from www.rtinetwork.org/learn

Robbins, B. W. (1996). Teachers as writers: Tensions between theory and practice. Journal of Teaching Writing, 15(1), 107-128.

Smagorinsky, P. (2008). The method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science reports. Written Communication, 25(3), 389-411.


www.rtinetwork.org/learn

www.rtinetwork.org/learn



McCarthey et al. 89

Smagorinsky, P., Cook, L. S., Jackson, A. Y., Moore, C., & Fry, P. G. (2004). Tensions in learning to teach: Accommodation and the development of a teach-ing identity. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 8-24.

Smagorinsky, P., Gibson, N., Moore, C., Bickmore, S., & Cook, L. S. (2004). Praxis shock: Making the transition from a student-centered university program to the corporate climate of schools. English Education, 36, 214-245.

Smagorinsky, P., Lakly, A., & Johnson, T. S. (2002). Acquiescence, accommoda-tion, and resistance in learning to teach within a prescribed curriculum. English Education, 34(3), 187-213.

Spandel, V. (2005). Creating writers through 6-trait writing assessment and instruc-tion (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Spandel, V., & Hicks, J. (2004). Write traits classroom kit. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Stagg Peterson, S. (2012). An analysis of discourses of writing and writing instruction in curricula across Canada. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 260-284.

Stillman, J., & Anderson, L. (2011). To follow, reject, or flip the script: Managing instructional tension in an era of high-stakes accountability. Language Arts, 89(1), 22-37.

Strickland, D. (2005). Trophies: Writer’s companion: Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Troia, G. A., Lin, C. S., Cohen, S., & Monroe, B. W. (2011). A Year in the writ-

ing workshop: Linking instructional practices and teachers’ epistemologies and beliefs about writing instruction. Elementary School Journal, 112(1), 155-182.

Van Allsburg, C. (1984). The mysteries of Harris Burdick. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Whitney, A. (2008). Teacher transformation in the National Writing Project. Research in the Teaching of English, 43(2), 144-187.

Woodard, R. L. (2013). Complicating “writing teachers must write”: Tensions between teachers’ literate and instructional practices. In P. J. Dunston & S. K. Fullerton (Eds.), 62nd Literacy Research Association yearbook (pp. 377-390). Clemson, SC: Clemson University.

Yin, R. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Yoon, H. (2012). Rewriting writing: Classrooms as the construction site for literacy between teachers, students, and the curriculum. Unpublished doctoral disserta-tion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Author Biographies

Sarah J. McCarthey is Professor of Language and Literacy in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include professional development in writing, peer response in online writing environments, and teachers’ instructional practices. She teaches courses in language arts methods, children’s writing, and qualitative methods and





serves as Associate Head of Graduate Programs. Correspondence: mccarthe@illinois .edu

Rebecca Woodard is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests center on sociocultural processes of teaching writing, including qualitative studies of teachers’ practices beyond school walls and the development of more equitable instructional practices related to students’ written and spoken language use in schools. She taught elementary and middle school in New York City. Correspondence: rwoodard@uic .edu.

Grace Kang is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests focus on teacher professional development, teacher agency, and spaces for collaboration within the context of literacy using qualitative methods. She was a reading specialist and has taught at the elementary and middle school levels. Correspondence: gkang@illinois .edu

Documents

Elementary Teachers Negotiating Discourses in Writing Instruction