Towards a Pedagogy of Short Story Writing

The article reports on a small‐scale short story writing project. It details the development of the project and shares the emerging findings. The aim of the project was to enhance the quality of students' writing while developing teachers' practice in the teaching of short story writing. The project team comprised the author and four secondary teachers of English. The approach to story writing outlined here was influenced by the example of gaming, where players immerse themselves in a secondary world, confront situations which demand problem‐solving skills, progress through a number of stages, and find satisfaction in completing the game. The project explored the link between talking and thinking and the value given to putting forward tentative ideas, raising questions and solving problems in a collective manner, in a whole‐class teaching situation. The teachers used guided classroom talk to explore each stage in the composition of a story. They challenged students into better ways of thinking or more elaborate forms of explanation. The teachers asked ‘what if’ questions to open up possibilities for the young writers. The teachers also had to judge when best to seize the moment and move the students towards writing. A key issue for the project was to explore the extent to which the structured approach helped to liberate the imagination of the students and improve the quality of their writing.     

Literacy Engagement Through Online and Offline Communities Outside School: English Language Learners' Development as Readers and Writers

How do second-language learners become successful readers and writers? This article examines the importance of social networks to English language learners' reading and writing development. It describes different family, peer, and virtual social networks that ELLs can utilize to engage in online and offline reading and writing (especially related to youth popular culture, such as fan fiction) outside school. The article highlights the importance of fostering a participatory culture in classrooms and schools to help ELLs form communities of learners and supporters and facilitate their second-language literacy development.     

Becoming a teacher of writing: Primary student teachers reviewing their relationship with writing

This article investigates the extent to which Year One B.Ed student teachers arrived at university already possessing self‐confidence as writers. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were used to identify students' self perceptions and confidence as writers and their understanding of processes of written composition. The article argues that to consciously engage student teachers in the writing process and to require them to reflect on that process can lead to their self efficacy as writers. Evidence from this study suggests one's self‐confidence, as a writer, is enhanced by explicitly engaging in self reflection of one's own approaches to writing. The findings have implications for course design of literacy components in teacher education internationally.     

Who gets to be a writer? Exploring identity and learning issues in becoming a fiction author

Drawing upon a research study on lifelong learning, citizenship, and fiction writing, this paper explores issues around identity and learning in becoming a fiction author. Five main thematic areas are discussed: (1) envisioning a writing career, (2) compelled to write, (3) learning the craft, (4) getting published, and (5) online identity. The challenges, hurdles, and motivational factors in pursuing a career in a field as tenuous as fiction writing are explored. The paper argues that fiction writers, like many people who work in the creative sector, have a strong desire to engage in work that they consider to be meaningful. Those who succeed demonstrate great perseverance. As the impact of new technologies and social media shape and change the publishing sector, there are new challenges as well as opportunities that writers will need to learn about and address as they develop their career trajectories.     

Portrait of the student as a young writer: some student survey findings about attitudes to writing and self‐efficacy as writers

This New Zealand‐based article reports on an analysis of data gathered over two years from upper primary school students on their attitudes to writing and writing instruction and their beliefs about their self‐efficacy as developing writers. Responses from 449 students in five diverse schools are included. Through an online survey administered at the beginning and end of each of the two years, students responded to a range of mostly closed questions. Conclusions (including student comments) were made about students' likes, dislikes and preferences as developing writers. Levels of association between their attitudes and gender and between their attitudes and proficiency levels were explored. Conclusions were also made about how student attitudes affect teacher practice.     

On the Narrative Art in The French Lieutenant‘s Woman

The French Lieutenant‘s Woman, written by John Fowles, is one of the most successful postmodern novels in contemporary English literature. This article is attempted to focus on its special narrative art and make a deeper penetration into its theme. In the novel, the master storyteller uses old writing tricks along with his own new ones originally and effectively. By criticizing and reshaping the conventions of earlier fiction, Fowles creates a new old story and a postmodern Victorian woman, which no Victorian writers can ever bring out.     

Exploring teachers' perceptions of children's imaginative writing at home

This study explores an area of writing that has been largely neglected – children’s imaginative writing at home. In an educational climate dominated by the standards agenda and top‐down directive discourses, this study draws inspiration from children who are creating opportunities for writing themselves and are developing agency through their writing at home. The positive approach to reading advocated in Margaret Clark’s (1976) seminal work on ‘young fluent readers’ has been very influential. Rather than reporting what children are unable to do, Clark explored the early experiences and home setting of competent pre‐school readers, posing the question: what can they teach us? Taking this lead, one of the premises of this study is that we should similarly seek to understand the experiences of young competent writers so that we can learn more about children who choose to write of their own volition outside of school. This paper presents the findings of the preliminary phase of an ongoing doctoral study. Drawing on questionnaire data, it specifically focuses upon Year 5 and 6 teachers’ views of children’s imaginative home writing, exploring problems of identification and teachers’ perceptions of their pupils as imaginative writers at home.     

Hidden 'Treasure': New Genres, New Media and the Teaching of Writing

One young adolescent writer's fantasy narrative is used as an example of writings that blend genres and borrow conventions across media in contemporary student and professional fiction. Such writing raises issues for teachers, three of which are discussed: development of students' writing, assessment of writing, and awareness of copyright and ownership issues.     

Learning to teach writing through tutoring and journal writing

Structured reflection on practical teaching experiences may help pre‐service teachers to integrate their learning and analyze their actions to become more effective learners and teachers. This study reports on 12 pre‐service English as a second language (ESL) teachers’ individual tutoring of learners of English language writing. The data of the study are the writing journal entries that the pre‐service ESL teachers maintained during their tutoring experience. These journals had common elements: all were used by the pre‐service teachers to consider what funds of knowledge they bring to their teaching of ESL learners, to evaluate their roles as writers, learners and teachers and to reflect on the educational, social and cultural implications of teaching writing in English to speakers of other languages. This article describes ways in which both native and non‐native English speaking pre‐service teachers adapted their instruction to meet the particular needs of individual ESL writers and what they learned in the process. It provides insight regarding the value of using tutoring and reflection generally in teacher education and specifically in the preparation of teachers of ESL.     

Whose writing is it anyway? Issues of control in the teaching of writing

In the UK, teachers have moved from a process approach to the teaching of writing to a more didactic and objectives led programme. This has given rise to concerns about the suppression of creativity and enjoyment. Writing is a convention bound activity where spelling, punctuation and expectations about different text types imply a right and wrong way of writing. On the other hand, the best writers are able to use and subvert conventions in creative and individual ways. Teachers of young writers are faced with the difficulty of teaching the correct conventions at the same time as encouraging individual responses. This paper considers evidence from a small‐scale study that may shed some light on how teachers cope with these potentially opposing demands. Evidence points to teachers giving very clear guidance to pupils about what is expected of them and carefully scaffolding pupils' learning. However, scaffolding implies a stage where control is handed over to the learners and in this study there was little evidence of these teachers handing over the control. It is argued that for children to learn the conventions at the same time as developing confidence to use these conventions in individual and creative ways, this handover of control is essential.     

The best forms in the best order? Current poetry writing pedagogy at KS2

This article considers the pedagogic assumptions of four writers in the post‐war period who have contributed significantly in the UK to the teaching of poetry writing to children (Hughes, 1967; Brownjohn, 1980, 1982 and 1990, collected in 1994; Pirrie, 1987, republished in 1994; Rosen, 1989). This article critiques the approaches of these writers, and the assumptions underlying their practice, in the light of recent writing theory (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987; Sharples, 1999), which introduces the concepts of ‘content’ and ‘rhetorical’ space in writing. I argue that current recommendations (DfEE, 1998) are also flawed in that they provide teachers with a limited view of what poetry is, taking little account of the interrelationship between form and content in creating meaning. The article takes the form of an analysis of the intersection of these recommendations and the core literature described above arguing that their differing emphases place teachers at a disadvantage when thinking about pedagogy in this area.     

小说时间的文化蒙太奇

本文从叙事学和文化学角度考察了小说中时间的重要意义。小说作为比较典型的时间艺术 ,时序、时值、时速和时差是小说情节发展和主题开掘的基本手段。循环论时间观、进化论时间观和后现代主义时间观影响了小说的深层结构和文化精神。当代小说创作呈现出反时间和追求空间化时间的趋势。     

‘But sir,I lied’ – the value of autobiographical discourse in the classroom

This article aims to examine the benefits of teachers using their own autobiographical writing in the classroom. It explores the blurring of truth and fiction in autobiographical writing and argues that teachers can help students if they provide students with the cloak of fiction when writing about their own lives. Furthermore, it puts forward the case that when teachers share pertinent autobiographical episodes then pupils are more willing to respond in an engaged and passionate fashion. In developing my argument, I suggest that autobiographical writing can be therapeutic in certain classroom contexts. The data sources for this article are the author's own life and two case studies: an 11‐year‐old boy, George, and a 15‐year‐old girl, Eloise, both of whom were pupils of the author and wrote autobiographically for him. The methodological approach is that of bricolage: chiefly, the article combines ethnographical observation with interviews and discourse analysis. I also examine quantitative studies which look at the therapeutic dimensions of autobiographical writing. Theoretically I draw on Friere's concept of ‘conscientization’ (Friere 1985: 49) in order to critique the ‘banking’ concept of education, which would close down opportunities for pupils to write freely about their own lives.     

英美哥特小说与中国

哥特小说作为小说创作流派．曾在18世纪末至19世纪初风靡全欧．并进而形成了一种创作传统．成为小说类型之一。近、现代的许多英美小说家都深受它的影响。鉴于我国哥特小说研究领域的相对滞后．以及目前本土恐怖小说创作的盲目跟风状态，有必要对我国英美哥特小说的接受史、研究史进行一次认真的梳理，以便为我们今后进一步的理论研究和创作提供借鉴。     

Immigrant teachers: stories of self and place

Teachers’ lives have been the focus of much recent research on teaching, and we now have rich, detailed understandings of how teachers develop a ‘teaching self,’ in the context of concrete details of biography, school settings, relationships and educational systems within which teachers work. What we lack is a sense of the teacher in a place—a specific location that holds meaning, that matters to those who inhabit it. The concept of ‘place’ has been neglected in contemporary education, yet it seems to be an important one for postmodern times. This article will examine the stories of immigrant teachers in Israel, people who have undertaken to teach in a culture different from the one in which they themselves were educated. Teachers who have made a transition from one cultural setting to another are likely to have developed an awareness of teaching and schooling in the new culture that other teachers may not have. Their stories reveal what it means in the chosen culture to tell one’s story and give an account of one’s career and work as a teacher. The stories of seven immigrant teachers, in dialogue with the researcher’s story, highlight losses and gains in the journey toward a new teaching self, and reveal something of what the process of finding or making a place for oneself—both in the new culture and as a teacher—is like.     

Understanding food processing and systems: Pilot testing a standards‐aligned middle school curriculum

Consumer confidence and trust, as it relates to the food system, is one of the most sensitive areas within consumers’ understanding of food. Surveys have shown that a large majority of people would like to learn more about agriculture and food manufacturing, with young people being among those most eager for more information about where their food comes from. Food‐focused educational resources often go unused due to teachers’ lack of familiarity with the subject area, the pressures of standardized testing, and lack of alignment to state content standards. Building on the success of the Hands On Classrooms platform that developed and validated curricula with high adoption rates by teachers and a demonstrated impact on student knowledge and self‐efficacy, a new curriculum on food system and food processing was developed and pilot tested. Two teachers from rural Virginia and Tennessee participated in the study. Both teachers received online professional development prior to implementation. Students were given pretests and posttests to measure (a) what impact does the curriculum have on students’ knowledge of food systems and processing and (b) to what extent does the curriculum have an impact on student's self‐reported skills related to these topics? A total of 87 students completed the assessments and showed significant improvements from pretest to posttest on both knowledge (p < .001) and skills (p < .001) related specifically to where food comes from and how it is processed, content that is typically not covered in middle school curriculum. Further research can be undertaken to measure the impact on others in different geographic and socioeconomic areas to provide additional data to validate the program.     

‘Baddies’ in the classroom: media education and narrative writing

When teachers allow students to write stories that include elements of popular media, we must ask what to do with these media elements once they have entered the classroom. This article relates findings from a classroom study focusing on children's media‐based story writing. The study looks at children as producers of new media texts and describes their activities as a form of ‘media education’. The data show that through their production of media‐based stories, the children are reflecting on their consumption of media. Furthermore, the children's media‐based stories make explicit some of their implicit knowledge of new media forms. Lastly, the children's stories provide ample opportunities for teachers to engage in important discussions about media within the framework of existing writing programmes.     

Learning to Teach Creative Writing

Is it possible to teach people to write fiction? A more important and helpful question is: how do we teach creative writing? And who are the teachers? A published writer is not necessarily qualified to teach creative writing. To helpfully share their declarative knowledge with students, a writer must embrace the art and craft of teaching, consider how different students learn and create the optimum setting to enable learning. There is a parallel challenge for the writer with the student, as each is faced with challenges around their previously held assumptions about ways of learning.