Increasing Student Achievement in Writing Through Teacher Inquiry: An Evaluation of Professional Development Impact

Download “Increasing Student Achievement in Writing Through Teacher Inquiry: An Evaluation of Professional Development Impact” (PDF)

Excerpt

All of the program and comparison teachers in this study were excellent, experienced teachers, and our observations noted a preponderance of literacy events in both program and comparison teachers’ classrooms. Yet program teachers’ students clearly performed better on multiple measures of their writing. We believe this is due to a purposeful and systemic approach to the teaching of writing. While comparison teachers could articulate facets of process writing (e.g., they could describe a task as “prewriting”), their approach to the teaching of writing was lock-step and linear. Contrarily, program teachers seemed to have a more internalized notion of process writing. Their instruction was recursive; they seemed to understand and embrace the complexity of writing—allowing students choice and time in which to complete writing tasks.