Shared understandings: structuring the writing experience through dialogue

When teachers view writing as a social process in which authors write for real audiences and authentic purposes, they change their instruction accordingly to meet the needs of writers with learning disabilities. As more experienced members of a larger community of writers, teachers play a primary role in apprenticing students into the inherently social functions of writing. Through teacher-student dialogues about the complexities of the writing process, students gradually develop and control their own writing "voice" as they use and transform the shared understandings of the group process. Text structure, writing strategies, and metacognitive knowledge of the writing process provide opportunities for teachers and students with learning disabilities to interact and create shared understandings about the composition process. This article reviews some recent attempts to use text structures and the writing process as frameworks to guide the composition dialogue.     

The effectiveness of dialogue journal writing in improving the writing skills of young deaf writers

Various claims have been made for the usefulness of dialogue journal writing for improving the writing of less proficient users of English such as deaf writers of English or speakers of English as a second language. However, the bulk of the research has focussed on either student attitudes towards writing or very limited samples of student writing. In a one year project involving the exchange of dialogue journals between 204 pairs of deaf and hearing students in 10 public school districts, the authors sought to evaluate the utility of dialogue journals for improving the writing skills of the deaf writers. The age of the correspondents ranged from 10 to 18 years old in grades 4 through 12. Among the deaf writers, the average hearing loss was 89 dB in the better ear with a range of from 45 dB to 120 dB. The journal entries of 153 of the deaf students were evaluated for both changes in content and syntactic complexity. When the pair of writers maintained a relationship over time, there was an improvement in the quality of the writing of the deaf student and a change in the nature of the contents of the deaf student's entries. Results suggest that for some young deaf writers an exchange of dialogue journals with hearing peers can both improve the writing skills of the deaf writer and develop a relationship between the correspondents. Suggestions for implementing such a program are included.     

Comparing face-to-face and asynchronous online communication as mechanisms for critical reflective dialogue

Two mechanisms for engaging in critical reflective dialogue are discussed and compared: face-to-face meetings and asynchronous online discussion. The context is an umbrella action research project, with over 20 participants, which aimed to improve practices in online teaching and contribute to the development of graduate attributes. The article compares discussion using the two modes (face-to-face and online) of the nature of and development of problem-solving and other graduate attributes. Face-to-face discussion was wide ranging and quite loosely structured, so divergent aspects of a topic were uncovered. The asynchronous nature of online discussion, however, permitted topics to be explored more thoroughly. The two modes worked well in conjunction with one another, if aspects of face-to-face discussion topics were posted online as discussion threads. The asynchronous online discussions then allowed each thread to be explored in depth, so that collective understanding of a given topic could be enhanced.     

Strong language: the purpose of dialogue in the development of writing

In order to discuss the nature and nurture of authorship in schooled literacy, the author explores what Bakhtin calls ‘responsive understanding’ to text and textual relations (1986). The activity of dialogue is crucial to the condition and form of responsive understanding. This paper considers a renewed interest in dialogical method as a way of strengthening teachers' purposes, particularly in relation to the development of learners' writing.     

Distributed writing as a lens for examining writing as embodied practice

The author argues for a reinvigorated focus on writing “as material, corporeal action” and proposes a framework of “distributed writing” through which to enact this focus. This framework highlights writing’s simultaneously material and embodied nature and can help scholars further examine and understand interactions among tools, artifacts, and writing bodies. Continuing to study writing “as material, corporeal action” is necessary as 21st century tools for writing continue to change.     

Journal writing as a way to know culture: insights from a travel study abroad program

In this work, we explore journal writing as a way to come to know culture, particularly cultural phenomenon, vastly different from one’s own firmly held and enacted beliefs. In this research, we accept the premise that writing is a way of knowing and adopt journal writing as a tool through which students can explore the knowledge they have developed as a result of their academic travel study experiences, all being participants in the China Study Abroad Program. Narrative threads from numerous graduate students’ journals are seamed together through the use of narrative inquiry’s analytical tools. The narrative exemplars that were created reinforce the personal, social, and professional importance of creating a reflective writing space through which many expressions of culture and students’ reflective responses to them can be channeled in productive and potentially transformative ways.     

Validation of a scheme for assessing argumentative writing of middle school students

Two studies tested factors influencing ratings of argumentative essays in order to develop a scheme for assessing essays written by middle school students. Study CLAIM-CLARITY assessed the effect of:

• 1.(a) claim clarity,
• 2.(b) reason strength,
• 3.(c) strength of rebuttals to counterarguments,
• 4.(d) the rater's personal values, and
• 5.(e) the rater's topic knowledge.

These factors explained a third of the variance in holistic scores. There was a significant interaction between raters' topic knowledge and the validity of evidential statements. Raters' values were not significant with respect to the range of topics included in this study. Study DEVELOPMENT assessed the effect of:

• 1.(a) development,
• 2.(b) voice, and
• 3.(c) conventions.

The factors explained 63 percent of the variance in holistic ratings. This result was attributed to an assessment scheme that fostered integrated rather than isolated consideration of argument elements.     

A critical dialogue with ‘Asia as method’: A response from Korean education

Abstract

This article discusses the implications of the idea of Asia as method, a discursive strategy in Asian studies popularised by Kuan-Hsing Chen, in the context of Korean education. Chen has pointed to the one-way flow of knowledge into Asia from the West and has urged using ‘Asia as method’ in the production of post-colonial and anti-imperialist knowledge. The research interests of this article are twofold. First, I analyse ‘Asia as method’ as a strategy to de-universalise the West, particularly given the historical complexity in East Asia. I trace the historical context of the word ‘Asia’, beginning with the traditional Sino-centric period and continuing to the Japanese colonial occupation. Second, I explore the possibility of using ‘Asia as method’ in the sense that Chen proposes, particularly in the context of Korean education. This article examines the ‘East Asian style of education’ as a platform for discussion of the potential for constructing ‘Asia as method’ in educational studies. In conclusion, I argue that for Asia as method to be viable as a strategy for change, Asia itself must be conceived as an ongoing construction based on the inter-referencing of multiple histories and cultural imaginaries.     

Curriculum as colour and curves: a synthesis of Black theory,design and creativity realised as critical curriculum writing

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These documents are often conceived as linear sequences of steps leading to outcomes, and their voices are distanced and ‘neutral’. Drawing on a doctoral study of curriculum design in Australia, this article embraces a different approach by opening up a unit of work on girls’ popular culture to hooks’ invocations to teach to transgress, so that curriculum might be experienced as colour and curves, rather than a monochrome route to a pre-determined end point. Through this, along with hooks, I invite teachers to live pedagogy, rather than to deliver it.     

Collaborative writing as a bridge from peer discourse to individual argumentative writing

Reading and Writing - Converging evidence indicates that argumentative thinking and writing are promoted by peer discourse. Here it is proposed that collaborative writing can serve as a bridge from...     

论高校英语写作教学中传统文化的融入

本文从传统文化入手,对当前高校英语写作教学现状进行了分析,阐述了传统文化融入英语写作教学的目的和意义,并且探讨了英语写作教学融入传统文化的四个方法。     

Post-critical writing praxis as a qualitative researcher

The intention of this paper is to unsettle our habits of scholarly writing and reading, from within the grids of intelligibility of Western, rationalist materiality, so as to make visible what we/I no longer often see: the academic writing and publishing constraints that discipline our assemblages of knowledge. Taking poststructuralist articulations of the ‘critical’ and ‘ethical’ as heuristics for developing a praxis of critical deconstructive authoring, where agency is coterminous with, not external to, the event of writing, it puts to work Foucault’s perspective that the subject is a form, not a substance, (Foucault, 1984 Foucault, M. (1984). The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), (2000) Essential works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984 – Vol. 1 ethics, subjectivity and truth (pp. 281–302). London: Penguin [Google Scholar], p. 290) to explore one way of crafting ‘an academic subject yet to come’ (Ball, 2016 Ball, S. (2016). Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education, 14(8), 1046–1059.10.1177/1478210316664259[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 2). Beginning with a brief consideration of the normative mechanisms that govern scholarly writing, it then uses some of the conceptual tools of Foucault, Derrida and Spivak to unfold and vindicate spaces in the grids of governance for reforming the subject.     

Validating a computerized scoring system for assessing writing and placing students in composition courses

How do scores from writing samples generated by computerized essay scorers compare to those generated by “untrained” human scorers and what combination of scores, if any, is more accurate at placing students in composition courses? This study endeavored to answer this two-part question by evaluating the correspondence between writing sample scores generated by the IntelliMetric™ automated scoring system and scores generated by University Preparation English faculty, as well as examining the predictive validity of both the automated and human scores. The results revealed significant correlations between the faculty scores and the IntelliMetric™ scores of the ACCUPLACER™ OnLine WritePlacer Plus test. Moreover, logistic regression models that utilized the IntelliMetric™ scores and average faculty scores were more accurate at placing students (77% overall correct placement rate) than were models incorporating only the average faculty score or the IntelliMetric™ scores.     

Religion as a basis for dialogue in peace education programs

Religion could play a positive role in intergroup relations. However, this potential is usually overlooked and religion is often perceived as divisive and polarizing, perhaps even a source of intergroup conflict. This study examined religion as a possible tool for achieving positive intergroup encounters. A randomized control trial research design was used to study the contribution of religion to the enhancement of positive relations between Jewish and Arab high school students in Israel. The 255 eleventh‐grade students were randomly assigned into three groups: encounters based on religious content, encounters based on social content, and a control group. Findings revealed that the religion‐based intervention was more effective than the social‐based one, which merely slowed down the deteriorating relationships between the groups. The results suggest that religion can serve as a common denominator for different national and social groups and be used for enhancing tolerance and understanding between conflict groups.