The Design of Writing: Unfolding systems of meaning

This article explores the findings of a small research study that asked writers to describe a meaningful, personal incident using first narrative and then poetic forms. The poetry raised many anxieties about writing, including the revelations of subjectivity and the risks in sharing such work with a group. To understand some of the complexities of these responses, the researchers thought of writing as an ecology with interdependent systems influencing the writing. Rereading the research texts, they traced some of those systems that affect students' writing and understanding of poetry.     

Uneasy writing: The defining moments of high-stakes literacy testing

The authors report on an exploratory study that investigated Grade 10 students’ responses to a large-scale, high-stakes literacy test, the results of which determine high school graduation in Ontario, Canada. Through focus-group and individual interviews, the authors found that students perceived the test as evaluating their English skills rather than their cross-curricular literacy as is the stated purpose by the test administrators. Furthermore, the test contributed to students’ narrow definition of writing. Rather than promoting writing as a powerful tool for thinking and expressing ideas, students understood writing to be a fill-in-the-blanks response to particular genres. The authors conclude by pointing out the power of such tests to define unintended learning in schools.     

Rhythms of knowing: toward an ecological theory of learning in action research

This article describes the culmination of a 2-year research study, where the researchers used writing practices with participants to structure interpretations of gay, lesbian and transgendered teachers' experiences. The researchers were interested in learning how such work might help the teachers interpret the ways in which they negotiated minority identities within public school teaching. For the final aspect of the study, the researchers decided to move the group from an urban setting to a seaside location, and chose to move more definitively into a participatory role by inviting a colleague to lead the group in interpretive research activities through the use of writing techniques and practices. The three-day writing workshop yielded new insights about the nature of writing and human cognition and, more specifically, revealed how events of collaborative research reflect an ecological complexity, where the outcomes of such work co-emerge and are co-specified by a particular group of individuals working in a particular place and time. As such, these research events develop their own patterns and rhythms of insight.     

Becoming a community of researchers1

Poststructural action research highlights the ambiguity and uncertainty for those involved in research with other individuals. This article chronicles how such an action research group with seven young women, 15 – 18 years of age, used personal writing as a basis for exploring identity, and how the researcher and the teacher had to acknowledge and critique their own feminist agendas within such a setting. Relying on reciprocity and dialectical theory-building, the group evolved into a collective of women where new opportunities were created for all the participants.     

Memory tractates: the roar that lies on the other side of silence

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the interactive quality of memories and how they lived on in the dataset of a two-year study conducted several years ago, in which a group of women engaged in close reading and memoir-writing practices, unpacking their personal memories to gain insight into their lived experiences. In the process of analysing the data from the study, the researcher realised that the data resisted reductive interpretation and categorisation. Despite the differences between the researcher and the participants in relation to socio-cultural backgrounds and life experiences, the data from the seemingly distant worlds, was both ‘alive’ and interacted with her across time. The researcher found that she shared memories with the participants which evoked a strong reaction within her. These shared memories set her on a path of becoming.     

The seeing eye of Beatrix Potter

Rebecca Luce-Kapler writes poetry and short fiction. She has been an English teacher for ten years and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Secondary Education, specializing in writing from the perspective of both writers and teachers