The Case For A National Writing Project by Ian Usher

perspective

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers Richard Andrews

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Welcome to CfBT Education Trust CfBT Education Trust is a leading charity providing education services for public benefit in the UK and internationally. Established 40 years ago, CfBT Education Trust now has an annual turnover exceeding £100 million and employs more than 2,000 staff worldwide who support educational reform, teach, advise, research and train. Since we were founded, we have worked in more than 40 countries around the world. Our work involves teacher and leadership training, curriculum design and school improvement services. The majority of staff provide services direct to learners in schools or through projects for excluded pupils, in young offender institutions and in advice and guidance for young people. We have worked successfully to implement reform programmes for governments throughout the world. Current examples

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The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Contents Acknowledgements

Executive summary

Introduction

1. Review of existing research

Background Basic tenets of the National Writing Project approach A chronological ‘expert review’ approach The review: early studies (up to 1999) The review: recent research (2000 onwards) 2. Interviews

Introduction The problem Is a National Writing Project for teachers one of the solutions to the problem? Some practical considerations Can such a scheme cover both primary and secondary sectors? Accreditation issues Evaluation A pilot What formats are best for the UK context? Other issues 3. How could a National Writing Project work in the UK? Background The National Writing Project (England, 1985–88) The UK context An initial model for a National Writing Project in the UK What would constitute the professional development experience? The role of higher education institutions The next phase: the proposed pilot study Moving from a pilot study to a National Writing Project 4. How is the National Writing Project funded? Introduction How could a National Writing Project be funded in the UK?

13 13 13 14 14 14 15 15 15 15 17 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 21 22 22 22

References

Appendices

1. Search strategy for the review 2. Interview with John Yandell 3. Interview with Liz Francis 4. Interview with Richard Sterling

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8 8 8 9 11

26 27 31 35

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

About the Author Richard Andrews is Professor in English at the Institute of Education, University of London. He has written and edited numerous books on argumentation, e-learning and literacy development. Richard is one of the co-editors for a newly commissioned international Handbook of English, Language

and Literacy Education, to be published by Routledge. He is working on two books for Routledge (New York): Argumentation in Higher Education: improving practice through theory and research and Re-framing Literacy: teaching and learning in English and the language arts.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to CfBT for funding the present study, and especially to Tony McAleavy, David Hagan, Lindsay Blamires and Rebecca Osborne for assistance with the development of the project; to Sarah Stephens of the General Teaching Council for England; Liz Francis of the Training and Development Agency; to Sue Hackman, Chief Adviser on School Standards for the Secretary of State;

to John Stannard; John Yandell of the Institute of Education, University of London; Teresa Cremin, Professor of Education at the Open University; and Richard Sterling, Emeritus Director of the National Writing Project, USA. Special thanks go to Alison Robinson for her help in designing the search strategy for the literature review, for transcribing the interviews and for her general assistance on the project.

CfBT Education Trust Further Research Publications Through the Evidence for Education programme, CfBT Education Trust is proud to reinvest its surpluses in research and development both in the UK and overseas. Our aim is to provide direct impact on beneficiaries, via educational practitioners and policy makers. We provide a range of publications from practice-based intervention studies to policy forming perspective papers, literature reviews and guidance materials. In addition to this publication the following research may also be of interest: • Still waiting for ‘big ideas’ on adult skills, Mark Corney • Raising the leaving age to 18: symbol or substance? Mick Fletcher, Mark Corney, Geoff Stanton

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• By accident or design: Is our system of post16 provision fit for purpose? Mick Fletcher, Adrian Perry • Adult skills and higher education: separation or union? Mark Corney and Mick Fletcher • School effectiveness and equity: making connections, Pamela Sammons • Effective and inclusive practices in family literacy, language and numeracy Family learning: FLLN handbook, David Mallows, NRDC, IoE • Practitioners and evidence, developing research and development to influence practice, Andrew Morris, Mark Rickinson, Janie Percy-Smith For further information or for copies of the above research please visit our website at www.cfbt.com/evidenceforeducation or contact our Research and Development team at research@cfbt.com.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Executive summary The problem

The core elements

It is generally agreed, on both sides of the Atlantic, that there is a problem with the teaching of writing and with writing performance by school-age pupils. Writing performance lags behind reading performance in the UK and in the USA; in the USA, it has not even been tested and reported until recently. Though advances have been made, in particular through the UK’s literacy strategies over the last ten years, there is more work to be done.

The keys to a National Writing Project approach are:

Part of the solution?

• optional accreditation of writing portfolios for use in salary review, career advancement and towards academic qualifications

Part of the problem is that teachers of all subjects, and at primary and secondary level, are less confident at writing and at the teaching of writing than they are at reading. In order to address this part of the problem, a National Writing Project is proposed to give teachers more practice, more confidence and more pedagogic expertise in the teaching of writing.

• intensive summer institutes where teachers write, share their experiences, and discuss research and pedagogic approaches to the teaching of writing • emphasis on writing to learn; on the quality of writing; and on its accuracy • support at local, regional and national levels

• an annual conference to disseminate the work of the project • co-direction of each regional/local project by a HEI lecturer and a teacher • national coordination.

A literature review

Research and evaluation

The literature review undertaken for the present project is a selective expert review. It suggests that the research to date has been of two main kinds: research into the teacher experience, which shows an overwhelmingly positive response to the US-based National Writing Project’s work since its inception in 1974; and more recent research, which points toward improved performance for pupils who work with teachers who are trained in the National Writing Project approach.

From the start, a National Writing Project will build in research and evaluation. This will range from teachers researching their own and others’ practices to an independent evaluation of the pilot study for a National Writing Project in the UK. We will draw on research to inform our own practices in designing writing pedagogy, and ensure a concentration on not only teacher development, but its relationship to pupils’ achievement and development in writing.

Interviews with key stakeholders In-depth interviews were held with five key stakeholders and experts in the field. These express a range of views, but all are supportive of the idea of a National Writing Project in the UK, as long as the following factors are borne in mind and addressed: teacher time; the importance of considering the function and possibilities of writing in the digital age; alignment with national strategies and priorities; evidence of impact on pupils as well as teachers; and feasibility.

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• developing teachers’ own writing

Funding The USA-based National Writing Project grew from a small start in the Bay Area Writing Project in 1974 to a national scheme covering 200 sites in all states of the USA. From 1992 it has received federal funding from the US government. It is a non-profit-making initiative with a turnover rising from $2 million in 1994 to $24 million in 2008. Funding is received locally, regionally and nationally from self-help, sponsors, local education authorities and school boards, funding bodies and the government.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Although ideally funded from a single source in the UK, such a range of funding sources is a necessity for the piloting, sustaining, development and evaluation of the project in the UK. The next step: a pilot study A three-year pilot study is proposed in four pairs of schools in four different locations and contexts in the UK: an inner-city area in London; a similar one in Belfast, Cardiff,

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Glasgow or Edinburgh; a rural location; and a suburban location. Each pair of schools would consist of one primary and one secondary, with two teachers from each school. The pilot would consist of a summer institute of ten daysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; duration, two annual conferences and professional development days in schools. There would be an interim report half way through the study, and a full report at the end.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Introduction The aim of this paper is to examine the case for a National Writing Project for teachers in the UK. The problem is that there is a concern about the quality and accuracy of writing by pupils in the school system. Performance continues to lag behind that for reading, despite some recent advances. One way to address the problem is to build up confidence, expertise and practical knowledge of the processes of writing among all teachers: not just teachers of English in secondary schools, but teachers of all subjects at both primary and secondary levels. The National Writing Project in the USA has been in existence since 1974 and has a proven record of developing teachers in these ways. The present report looks at research into the National Writing Project and its effects in the USA, and argues for a pilot study to trial similar approaches in the UK.

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While the approaches might not be exactly the same as those that have been tried in the USA, and will certainly need to be adapted to the UK contexts, this is a chance to make a difference to teachers’ capabilities and to the writing abilities and life chances of pupils. The structure of the report is as follows: • Section 1 undertakes a review of existing research from 1974 to the present • Section 2 synthesises interviews with key stakeholders in the field • Section 3 looks at how a National Writing project might work in the UK • Section 4 addresses the issue of how such a project might be funded • An extensive list of references • Appendices include the search strategy for the literature review, plus transcripts of the interviews.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

1. Review of existing research

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Background

Writing is extolled, worried over, cited as a national priority, but seldom practised. The problem with writing is not poor spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting. The problem with writing is no writing. Reading has been over-stressed, often at the expense of writing.

Much – though not all – of the research published to date on continuing professional development for teachers as writers refers to the National Writing Project (NWP)1 in the U.S.A. The NWP emerged from the founding of the Bay Area Writing Project in 1974, and quickly grew to national scale. Early research was often descriptive; moving then to evaluative, small-scale studies; and more recently, in a sharper, more demanding research climate, to large-scale, multi-method approaches. The NWP itself grew from a concern in the late 1970s that writing was not well taught in schools. Notions of a ‘nation at risk’ in the USA, and a key article in Newsweek called ‘Why Johnny can’t write’ prompted the creation of the Bay Area Writing Project at the University of California at Berkeley. Central to the concern was that writing was not practised by teachers. Characteristic of this concern is this quotation from Graves: Writing is extolled, worried over, cited as a national priority, but seldom practised. The problem with writing is not poor spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting. The problem with writing is no writing. Reading has been over-stressed, often at the expense of writing. (1978, p636)

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Such a concern has been echoed more recently in England, in the light of a continued lagging behind of writing performances for 7, 11 and 14 year olds, in relation to reading (Stannard and Huxford 2007, Andrews 2008b). Writing continues to be a problem, and not only in England (see Graham and Perin 2007a, b; National Commission on Writing 20082); and it is also a site of rapid development in a digital age (see Pew Internet Resources 2008).

Basic tenets of the National Writing Project approach The basic tenets of the National Writing Project are that: 1. to teach writing, you need to be able to write 2. students should respond to each other’s writing 3. the teacher should act as writer alongside the students, and be prepared to undertake the same assignments as the students 4. there is research about the teaching of writing that needs to be considered and applied, where appropriate, in the classroom 5. teachers can be their own researchers in the classroom 6. the best teacher of writing teachers is another writing teacher 7. various stages of the writing process need to be mapped and practised: these include pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, conferencing (see no 2 above) and publishing. A fuller account of the way in which the National Writing Project works to support teachers is contained in Wood and Lieberman (2000), cited below. A chronological, ‘expert review’ approach to the research The present report takes a broadly chronological approach to reviewing the research. The rationale for such an approach is that there appears to be cumulative evidence within the National Writing Project. There is also a relatively small amount of published research on continuing professional development for teachers and writers, so it will be helpful to gain an initial picture of the history of the topic.

The National Writing Project (USA) is not to be confused with the rather different National Writing Project (England) which ran from 1985–88, with a year’s dissemination from 1988–89.

The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools and Colleges was established by the College Board in 2002. The decision to set up such a commission was prompted by the Board’s plans to offer a writing assessment in 2005 as part of a new SAT (thus adding to the conventional testing of reading and mathematics); but, more broadly, in response to the growing concern about the quality of writing within the education, business and policy-making communities.

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The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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The focus of the review is on teachers writing in schools as part of their own continuing professional development.

The present report is not the result of a systematic research review (see Torgerson, 2004). Rather, it constitutes an ‘expert review’. The search strategy was mapped out in consultation with Alison Robinson, an information scientist and expert systematic reviews manager. That strategy is appended to the report, and makes the process transparent and replicable. Clear criteria were devised to enable selection of papers. The focus of the review is on teachers writing in schools as part of their own continuing professional development. These are teachers who have responsibility for 5–18 year olds, and whose principal language of operation is English. Research published between 1975 and 2008 is included. Schemes like ‘Writers in Schools’ in which the agent of change is not the teacher, are excluded.

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The papers, once selected, were read in their entirety and synthesised in narrative fashion. Although the overall report has the title of ‘The case for a National Writing Project…’, the evidence is weighed even-handedly to ensure that if it supports the case against such a project, that evidence is presented for consideration. All expert interviews were transcribed in full and checked with the interviewees for accuracy. A draft of the full report was seen by these interviewees, and their comments were addressed. Three of the five interviews are included in full in the appendices (in two cases the interviewees preferred not to have the interview presented in full). The review: early studies (up to 1999) Early studies tend to be in the form of an impassioned credo, and/or to be a descriptive account of the work of one of the regional or sub-regional writing projects. Dunham and Mills (1981) and Perez (1983) fall into the first category. Perez’s argument, like that of several similar advocates, can be boiled down to the following: teachers should be able to practise what they preach. By being writers, they will know the processes of writing in depth, and thus be able to better educate their students. They will serve as role models for their students, being able to enthuse the students as well as to teach them the techniques of

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writing in a range of genres. A further example of such a credo is by Clifton (1990); there are yet more in a recent Freire-inspired collection, Writing for a Change (National Writing Project, 2006), which provides descriptions of the integration of out-of-school activities with in-school writing activities. Barton and Zehm (1983), in one of the best articles from the initial period of development, provide a telling account of work with teachers across the disciplines, as well as with school administrators. The results of their study show that sustained professional development in this field requires administrative support as well as academic and professional leadership and commitment. The article also provides a clear account of the model of progression for such a project. Phase I is ‘participant as writer’, Phase II is ‘participant as teacher and researcher of writing’ and Phase III is ‘participant as in-service consultant’. The progression can be depicted graphically in Figure 1 on page 10. What the model shows is that the bulk of participants are likely to be writers, with a smaller group going on to be teachers and researchers of writing, and a yet smaller group going on to act as in-service consultants. Yet it is these in-service consultants who embed the writing project approach and keep it alive at local levels. These early studies also realised the importance of building in formative evaluation from the inception of the projects. Later, in the 2000s, summative evaluation also became necessary to justify the investment of teacher time in the writing project approach. Goldberg (1984) provides a descriptive account of the first ten years of the NWP. In it, he outlines the main principles of the project. These are, again, that teachers must practise what they teach. Such teachers are excellent mentors to other teachers; they are also excellent learners about writing. Teachers must engage in professional in-service activities if they are to grow professionally. Anecdotal supporting evidence from Goldberg’s research included endorsements from the Council for Basic Education, from the director of the Evaluation Institute at the University of San Francisco and from the conservative Educational Testing Service.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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FIGURE 1: Washington State University writing project model

Participant as in-service consultant

Participant as teacher and researcher of writing

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Participant as writer

Marsh et al. (1987) is a paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, emphasising the pre-writing, writing and re-writing aspects of the NWP approach and reciting the basic tenets of the model. In staff developments terms, it notes that the summer institutes are ‘far less a training model…than a structured experience where sets of learners teach each other facilitated by acknowledged leaders’ (p22). Short-term practical in-service training programmes were found to be insufficient for changing practice; rather, it was important to have time for theory, modelling, practice and feedback. Results from this study show statistically significant improvements in both elementary/primary and secondary teachers across a range of subjects, as well as qualitative data confirming advances in confidence, knowledge about writing processes and technical skill. In another high quality study, Pritchard (1987), using a quasi-experimental design, showed that a writing project approach had a positive effect on children’s writing: more so at elementary level than at secondary.

Encouraging teachers to take on research into writing, and putting them in leadership roles in in-service development and in roles with wider responsibility within a National Writing Project is an important move. Rawlings et al. (1990) argue the case for such teacher scholarship and for a better balance between higher education institutions and schools in this respect. Blau (1993) argues the case for follow-up and continuity (sustainability) with writing project work. Capper et al. (1987) emphasise the need for the involvement of school administrators in a writing project to embed the initiative more deeply into the school culture; for changes in the school professional development year and structures to allow teachers the full range of activities allowed for in the writing project approach; and the establishment of teachers as consultants or peripatetic ‘coaches’ – rather like Her Majesty’s Inspectors of schools and the subject advisers of the 1980s, the advisory teachers of the 1990s or the ‘field force’ implementing the national strategies of the early 2000s in England.

Other studies from the 1980s, all of which show positive outcomes or advocate the adoption of a National Writing Project approach, are Haugen (1982), Spitler et al. (1984), Turner et al. (1984), Stander (1985), and Wilson (1988); as do Anderson (1992) and Kelly (1999).

Florio-Ruane and Lensmire (1990), in a study of writing approaches in the classroom, advocate a relationship between pupil and teacher, and indeed between writing project tutor and tutee, that is more like that of people working alongside each other than facing each

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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Students in writing project classrooms were better not only in terms of the development of ideas and organisation of writing, but also in terms of their command of the conventions: spelling, sentencestructure, punctuation.

other across a desk. Such an approach is in accordance with the Graves (1982) technique of ‘conferencing’ that is one of the key elements of the writing project approach.

organisation and coherence, and command of the conventions of writing; and students showed statistically significant gains in comparison to control groups.

Independent evaluations of the impact of the NWP on teachers’ and children’s writing research include a study by Inverness Research Associates of California, who conclude:

As part of the introduction of the No Child Left Behind policies in the USA (see Andrews 2008a), a National Research Council (2002) set of principles for scientific research in Education was established. These principles required that funded research in education should ask that research studies be set up in an experimental or quasi-experimental fashion, with control groups; extensive pilot work on the research instruments intended for the study; and rigorous pre-test, in-test and post-test procedures to ensure the reliability of results.

Our evaluation has shown that the NWP model, implemented faithfully, produces a professional development system that meets the important criteria for any investment in educational reform: it serves a large quantity of teachers; it produces quality events; it operates on a very costeffective basis; its activities are available to all teachers and students; and, most importantly, its work has educational significance for teachers and students across the country. (quoted in Goldberg 1998)

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The review: recent research (2000 onwards) The National Writing Project has continued to receive academic and professional teacher support in the period from 2000 to the present. Typical of this is the statement by Wood and Lieberman (2000) that the project develops voice, ownership and agency in professional lives. They state: In the end [after research investigation] we came away convinced that affiliation with the NWP changes how teachers think about their professional identities, responsibilities and, therefore, how they go about their work. (p257) The Academy for Educational Development undertook an independent, three-year national evaluation of the work of the NWP (2002). The findings are simple: NWP provided teachers with intense, ongoing continuing professional development experiences; it helped foster a professional community; teachers reported changes in their beliefs about teaching as a result of NWP; they reported an increase in exemplary teaching practices as a result of NWP; a majority of students’ work showed evidence of construction of knowledge,

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The National Writing Project has addressed the request for more ‘scientific’ research by setting up pilot schemes called Local Site Research Initiatives (LSRIs). The first cohort of such schemes involved four regional writing project schemes, and sought to find control groups to compare the impact of writing project initiatives with those who were not receiving such interventions (Friedrich and LeMahieu 2005, Buchanan et al. 2005). Initial results showed that more methodological work needed to be done to make the results both valid and reliable; but that early results indicated moderate gains for NWP approaches when compared to non-NWP approaches. Results, however, were uneven, suggesting the need for further development of the LSRI initiative. The second cohort study (Buchanan et al. 2006) made advances on the first by reporting the quasi-experimental nature of the studies conducted, with the advantage of a longer run-in time to the experimental period so that baseline assessments could be fully undertaken. There was also refinement of the writing outcome measures, and a fuller understanding of the challenges with regard to finding appropriate control groups. In terms of results, every regional or local writing project shows gains in the results of students’ writing over the control groups. Students in writing project classrooms were better not only in terms of the development of ideas and organisation of writing, but also in terms of their command of the conventions: spelling, sentence-structure, punctuation. A further

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

advantage of involvement in LSRIs was that teachers who took part gained research methodology experience, thus building the infrastructure for research and evaluation in the testing of writing performance. One of the main recommendations from both clusters of regional studies is for a national study of the impact of NWP approaches. Other recent large-scale research includes that by Olson and Land (2007) who undertook an eight-year study of English language learners in Californian high schools. They found that cognitive toolkit strategies helped raise expectations for such learners, especially when supported by high quality sustained continuing professional development for teachers. Significantly, they state in their conclusion: The success of this particular intervention owes much to the teachers-teachingteachers model of the National Writing Project, with its inherent respect for the capacity of practitioners to generate and use knowledge to improve their practice. (p298) Another recent study by Scott and Mouza (2007) indicates the increasing quality of research into the impact or not of continuing professional development on teacher writing and its subsequent influence on pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; writing. The article suggests that there is not much research on the impact of continuing professional development, other than personal testimonies of teachers and some illustrative examples of pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work. Most of the research cited in the present report and published before 2000 tends to polarize between descriptive teacher accounts on the one hand, and positivist researcher accounts on the other (with by far the largest proportion being in the first category). What is impressive about more recent studies is that they combine a range of methods, work with larger samples on the whole, are theorised, supported by a literature review and provide an explicit methodology. Scott and Mouza, for example, use such a wide range of methods (with, albeit, a relatively small sample). Their principal conclusion, in terms of relevance to the present report, is that change in teacher practice is a result of a complex interaction of belief systems, practices, habits

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and past conceptions of how writing should be taught. Working from such a basis, and understanding such complexity, in a sine qua non of making progress. Langer (2000) looks at the characteristics of successful teachers and schools in terms of supporting writing and finds that continuing professional development is an important part of that success. Christie (2007) offers an insight into reflective practice in general, and its importance in embedding change in individual teachers. Finally, Cremin (2006) reports on a UK-based study of a two-year research and development project on creativity and writing. Sixteen primary school teachers wrote regularly at home and at school; they reflected critically on the process. Working in the interpretiveconstructivist tradition, Cremin describes, via case studies, how three of the teachers experienced ambiguity, risk-taking and some emotional discomfort during the process of writing, sharing writing and publishing. All, however, felt the process worthwhile â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and one that made them more confident in encouraging and developing children as writers. Cremin concludes: Based upon this study, it is suggested that the learning entitlement of teachers, both pre- and post-initial training, should encompass sustained opportunities to take part in extended literacy activities and in particular should involve written composition at their own level. (p429)

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

2. Interviews

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Introduction

I’d see the fundamental problem as not one of proficiency but in terms of a lack of conception of writing as something that might be a valuable part of a shared intellectual enterprise, productive and useful in its own right.

Five in-depth interviews were conducted with key potential players in the field: an experienced teacher educator at the Institute of Education, London; the head of the teachers’ programme at the Training and Development Agency for schools; the chief adviser on school standards for the Secretary of State in the Department for Children, Schools and Families; the head of policy at the General Teaching Council for England; and the Emeritus Director of the National Writing Project in the USA (Director from 1994 to 2008). Three of the five transcripts are included as appendices, and should be read as a substantial part of the present report. With such experienced and senior figures in the field of teacher development, views were bound to be distinctive and hard to synthesise. However, rather than account for each interview in turn, the data has been synthesised and arranged in topic sections in order to give an overall response to the question in hand: the case for a National Writing Project for teachers.

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The problem The problem with writing is differently conceived. For one respondent, it was a matter of writing having become a ritual in the classroom, often unconnected to writing in the real world or to writing in the digital age: I’d see the fundamental problem as not one of proficiency but in terms of a lack of conception of writing as something that might be a valuable part of a shared intellectual enterprise, productive and useful in its own right. Here, it is as if the set of ‘school genres’ are different from the set of real world writing genres, with de-motivation setting in if the school genres get too far away from those in the real world. Another saw an undue emphasis on drafting and re-drafting, which is now part of the orthodoxy in the teaching of writing in schools;

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with not enough focus on composition and the early stages of the writing process, like marshalling ideas and arranging them. There also seemed to be almost an obsession with the testing of reading as opposed to writing, as if ‘literacy’ consisted only of reading competence. In general, all felt the demands in learning to write were greater than those of learning to read. One respondent in particular felt that advances had been made in the pedagogy of writing, but that further progress needed to be made. Is a National Writing Project for teachers one of the solutions to the problem? All but one thought the idea of a National Writing Project for teachers, with activities of the kind set out in the previous section, was a good idea. The advantages seemed to be that: • teachers could write alongside the pupils, thus understanding the problems of writing from the inside and modelling solutions to the problems for the pupils • teachers would thus create a community of enquiry and practice in the classroom with regard to writing • reflective writing could be encouraged, thus bringing to the surface not only cognitive reflection on professional practice and development, but also a kind of writing that is lost to teachers as they leave higher education • teachers of various subjects and specialities could come together to share their experiences of writing and learn from each other. Overall, there were no reservations except in terms of time commitment, where one interviewee felt strongly that teachers could be over-burdened. It was felt that such an approach could be one of several to improving the teaching and learning of writing in schools, with an emphasis on a theory of writing pedagogy being one of the most important to develop:

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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…of giving teachers the idea that writing matters. [It] is partly a job about what writing can achieve, so it’s about the kind of cognitive gain from the representational work that’s involved in the act of writing.

I’d put developing a theorised pedagogy of writing above teachers’ experience of writing because I know so many people who write but still don’t teach it well. It’s logical though that somebody who has the experience of composition and publication is more likely to teach it well because they are drawing on some notion of what it is to compose. It was felt important that teachers’ selfawareness of themselves as first teachers, then as subject specialists, then as writers, would need to be considered; not all would necessarily see writing per se as their main focus of professional attention. Furthermore, the main focus had to be on pupils’ progress in writing, not on teachers’, so there was a need for an evidence base showing that there was a direct effect on pupils’ writing. It was also felt that not all teachers would necessarily need to be teachers of writing: there is a degree of specialisation in the curriculum, and while it was not felt that a National Writing Project should confine itself to literacy or English teachers, it did appear to be generally felt that other forms of communication, like designing visually or creating in mathematics, needed to be acknowledged and supported.

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Some practical considerations A new emphasis on writing in professional development would have a number of practical implications. It would be important to understand and meet the challenge of giving teachers the idea that writing matters. [It] is partly a job about what writing can achieve, so it’s about the kind of cognitive gain from the representational work that’s involved in the act of writing. It would also be important to make sure that writing was seen as fundamental to learning and cognitive development across a range of subjects, and not just in English. To effect such a transformation, teachers and their pupils would need to connect writing in the real world to school writing. There would need to be an embracing of the practices and potential of writing in the digital age. Teachers would need intrinsic motivation to make such a scheme successful, as well

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as the more obvious extrinsic motivations of measurable improvement in pupils’ writing, career progression, and even salary enhancement or incentives. But the intrinsic motivations are likely to be the most powerful and feasible. Certainly all respondents felt that the altruistic motivation of teachers to help their pupils would be the major driving force behind such a scheme. Throughout the interviews, the importance of seeing how changes in teachers’ competence and confidence changed pupils’ confidence and competence as writers was seen as essential. Here there is a difference between the early stages of the National Writing Project in the USA and the last few years. At the start, teachers’ own enjoyment in developing as writers was a significant factor in their motivation to take part in the regional projects. More latterly, it is the effect on pupils’ performance that is the major concern on both sides of the Atlantic. Can such a scheme cover both primary and secondary sectors? Overwhelmingly, respondents felt that it could – and one or two that it should. There were considerable advantages in primary and secondary teachers talking to each other, sharing good pedagogic practice in writing, and moving forward together in terms of their professional skills and competences. Although there might have to be specific programmes for primary and secondary teachers, the advantages of joint programmes seemed to outweigh those of a separate approach. Accreditation issues Although the quality of the experience and its effects were seen as most important, there was a view that accreditation of achievement, at Masters level, would be in accord with the vision of a Masters level profession within ten years. Care would have to be taken in terms of workload, as there was some resistance to a portfolio of work. Different perspectives seemed to suggest that a portfolio of writing, if planned as part of the scheme, would need to be economical in terms of teachers’ time. Interestingly an existing scheme, the Teacher Learning Academy, had already piloted work with professional development portfolios

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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A key element of the USA-based scheme is the ‘summer institute’, a three-week intensive course in which teachers are selected and recommended for participation.

and found that it was teachers’ writing and criticality that was often a key differentiating factor in quality. Clearly, though, the possibility of accreditation would give kudos and professional capital to teachers; and could fit in well with moves towards the further professionalisation of teaching. Evaluation Such a programme would need to be evaluated from the start, in the way that the National Writing Project in the USA was not (though, again, latterly it has been independently evaluated as well as setting up its own research and evaluation programme). In particular, it would be important to undertake before-and-after studies of pupils’ progress. The exact nature of these would need to be worked out during a pilot phase.

‘‘

A pilot It was suggested that a decision needs to be made on what kind of pilot to undertake: a pathfinder project, in which those pioneers in the field push forward the boundaries of practice and demonstrate what is possible; a pilot in areas where there is a real need for such development because of poor performance; or a mixed mode, with elements of both approaches. In the present case, it would appear that the mixed mode is the best, especially over a period of time, in order to see the gains and problems of the approach. Advice from the USA is that the pilot needs to be preferably three years in duration, in order to be able to measure progress in teachers, pupils, and in the system as a whole. If the last three years of primary and the first three years of secondary schooling were chosen as the population for the study, coordinated by a higher education institution, there would be the opportunity for evaluation of progress by teachers, and of pupils at ages 11 and 14.

In summary, a pilot project needs to be an extensive one, both geographically and in time. See section 3 for a more detailed proposal regarding a pilot phase. What formats are best for the UK context? A key element of the USA-based scheme is the ‘summer institute’, a three-week intensive course in which teachers are selected and recommended for participation. These teachers become the leaders of regional writing projects (e.g. the Bay Area Writing Project, the New York City Writing Project) in partnership with an academic/teacher educator who is committed to the programme. The consensus among the interviewees was that the shorter British summer, in school holiday terms, meant that any intensive summer institute would have to be a maximum of two weeks in length. As in the USA, it would need to be followed up by evaluative, ‘taking stock’ sessions at points throughout the year. Weekends seem the least favoured in the British context, so possibly one- or two-day events at half-terms or at the beginning or end of the Easter vacation seemed best. Training days within particular schools would be good opportunities for trained teachers who had attended the summer institute to disseminate the practices and approaches with colleagues. However, the cascade model, as one of the interviewees said, has a ‘chequered’ history in the UK, so the cascading would need to be followed up and/ or supported by the central organising body for the National Writing Project, with further opportunities for involvement. One suggestion was made that the five training days that are available each year to schools could be taken en bloc as part of an intensive week of professional development. Other issues Other issues that arose in the interviews were:

Ideally, it would work in a range of settings: inner-city, suburban and rural. In order to qualify as a national writing project, there should be coverage of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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• the importance of seeing writing from a multi-modal perspective, so that the affordances of different modes (speech, writing, visual imagery, sound) were understood and exploited

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

• ‘the most relevant existing priorities and the most high profile are progression, personalisation, the new frameworks and the National Strategies, Every Child a Writer working in Key Stage 2, and then there’s the GCSE syllabuses and the new curriculum to consider. If you offer something, however wonderful, outside of those things they appear like add-ons. I think it’s good if you can to ‘chime in’ where current priorities are because people are much more likely to approve a project that purports to deliver on the agenda that’s the priority agenda.’

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• the relevance of the first degree, or subject specialism, to the act of writing • the importance of seeing creativity as not just the province of personal, imaginative writing, but as a force infusing all kinds of writing • ‘the current context and a real assessment of the environment that teachers are working in, and their own views on how and why they’d like to be developed.’

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

3. How could a National Writing Project work in the UK?

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Background

…the National Writing Project in the USA, which began in 1974 and still runs, is not to be confused with the National Writing Project that ran in England as a government-funded short term project between 1985 and 1988. The project as a whole was neither theorised nor evaluated, so it is hard to gauge its contribution or the difference it made to teachers and/or children.

In the US version, the key modus operandi is via a three-week summer writing institute. These, in effect, are summer schools for teachers in which writing and writing pedagogies are practised, discussed and explored. There is then follow-up throughout the year at weekends or other times. In effect, those attending the summer institutes become ambassadors and trainers for work within their own schools, school districts and local authorities/regions. They tend to be the key people to set up further localised writing projects. The National Writing Project (England, 1985–88) It is important not to repeat what has taken place before, and to learn from any shortcomings of previous initiatives. As noted earlier, the National Writing Project in the USA, which began in 1974 and still runs, is not to be confused with the National Writing Project that ran in England as a governmentfunded short term project between 1985 and 1988. The project as a whole was neither theorised nor evaluated, so it is hard to gauge its contribution or the difference it made to teachers and/or children. Raban (1990), however, gives one of the best accounts and evaluations of the project in its Berkshire context; and provides some useful insights for the present case for a National Writing Project for teachers.

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The 1980s initiative was government-sponsored and based in local educational authorities rather than in higher education institutions or schools. The model adopted for this initiative was ‘bottom-up, teacher-led, needs-based and classroom-focused’ (p59), rooted in the belief that ‘teachers are themselves intelligent professionals who are capable of generating, elaborating and developing ideas as well as practical outcomes’ (ibid.). It is interesting to note that the timing of the project in England, against a background of an increasing sense

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that the vocational needed more prominence in education (manifested, for example, the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative) and the introduction of the General Certificate in Secondary Education in 1986, gave new prominence to a grassroots approach to writing. The project was supported by a network of co-ordinators on a regional basis. These were generally seconded teachers. Most of the focus was on primary school English, though in a second round there was a little more involvement from secondary school teachers, though almost none from subjects outside English. The lack of theoretical underpinning and rationale, plus a general lack of theory underpinning the teaching of writing, made for frustrations in the early stages in particular. Teachers seemed to need more direction and less of an emerging sense that focusing on writing was a good thing in itself. There also seemed to be less national cohesion that might have been assumed in a national writing project; for the directors at national level, the work seemed to be more a case of pulling together themes, strands and practices from the various regional projects than setting goals and providing a national lead. Guiding principles underlying practice did emerge, however, during the course of the project, though the abiding legacy of the National Writing Project in the 1980s was the sharing of innovative practice between teacher and teacher. One of the important gains was an understanding that real audiences were important to emergent writers and that a range of types of writing could be enjoyed and experimented with. In this latter case, the initiative meshed well with the wider base for genres and styles of writing that was established in the first version of the National Curriculum for English, in the late 1980s, as well as with the early coursework-based requirements of GCSE. Any sense of the

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

impact on pupils or of a sustained change in teacher professional development, however, could not be captured in such an exclusively bottom-up approach.

diploma, certificate or Masters level qualification at most British higher education institutions) on the basis of a portfolio of original work and accompanying critical commentary.

Raban concludes (p72) that specific gains in understanding and shared practice were made, which included the importance of opportunities for reflection and evaluation; control over the processes of writing; active re-shaping of past experience; confidence and time to be tentative and to learn from mistakes; and the importance of collaboration with others.

Such in-depth courses could be complemented by an annual conference in the winter to showcase the work of the project and reach a wider audience.

The lessons to be learnt from such an initiative overall seem to be that: (a) bottomup approaches are essential if changes in practice and ownership are to be achieved, but that (b) it is also important to have the scope of a project theorised and (c) informed by top-down curriculum goals and aims so that (d) progress for teachers and children can be at least gauged, if not measured. The UK context In the UK context, a different model is proposed from that of the US-based National Writing Project. It is unlikely that a three-week summer school or institute model would work in the UK. Summer breaks are too short. It is proposed to avoid weekends, the Christmas and Easter holidays, which are too short and are a much-needed break to teachers. In order to generate esprit de corps and an in-depth concentration on the art and pedagogies of writing, it is proposed that intensive two-week (in effect, ten-day) courses are offered during the summer break. These could be run over ten consecutive days. From the start, it makes sense that the UK model is national and that courses take place in urban and rural settings that allow for maximum impact. A similar model (using only rural settings) has been used by the Arvon Foundation, where participants write with each other for a five-day period. In effect, the five-day course runs from Monday lunchtime to Friday lunchtime, allowing time for travel to and from the course. Such courses would carry academic credit (e.g. 30 credits, to be used, if required, towards a

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More localised dissemination and training could take place on professional development days (one suggestion was that the five statutory days per annum could be taken consecutively rather than throughout the year), via the annual winter conference, and in the classroom, with suitably supporting materials. An initial model for a National Writing Project in the UK Given the results of the research review and interview with some key potential stakeholders in the field, what would a model for a National Writing Project in the UK look like? In steady state – says five to ten years from now – there would be a coordinating centre for the National Writing Project, probably at a HEI or in an executive office located outside the immediate educational sector. The function of the national office would be to liaise with government, to seek funding for the NWP as a whole, and to maintain international connections with the NWP in the USA and other similar bodies elsewhere, both on a teacher development front and in terms of research and evaluation. It would always be the case that there would be at least one teacher seconded to the centre. There would be a number of ‘writing projects’, most probably based within the local education authorities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These would be co-directed by someone from a local higher education institution and someone from a local school. They would receive funding from the centre, but would also look to raise funding from the local authority, local businesses and other sources. At school level, in both primary and secondary schools, there would be at least two teachers who had undertaken training at national

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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The advantage of having two champions per school is that they would provide support for each other, can cover for each other, and can take forward thinking at national, regional and local levels together.

and/or regional level, and who would champion the NWP approaches among colleagues across the curriculum, both through professional development days and on other occasions and in other ways; for example, co-mentoring of classroom assistants. The advantage of having two champions per school is that they would provide support for each other, can cover for each other, and can take forward thinking at national, regional and local levels together. In governance terms, there would be a national steering committee (possibly with some international membership) that would keep the NWP focused on its goals: the improvement of pupils’ writing through the further development of teachers’ competence, capabilities and sense of possibility in this field. The steering committee would meet at least twice-yearly and be represented by a wide range of membership with direct interests in the development of writing in the nation: DCSF, TDA, GTC, industry, the National Association of Writers in Education, The National Literacy Trust etc.

What would constitute the professional development experience? A teacher embarking on a course of development in writing would follow a path similar to that set out in the Washington University State University model (Figure 1, above). Such a professional development route is set out here as a table (see Table 1). The role of higher education institutions Mention has been made in the previous sections of the involvement of higher education institutions in the writing projects. What forms, exactly, might such involvement take? First, participation should be voluntary. No collaboration between teachers in primary and secondary schools on the one hand, and lecturers in higher education institutions on the other, is going to work without a willingness and motivation to do so.

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TABLE 1: Potential routes of professional development

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Level

Nature of activity

Time commitment and support

Credits (transferable) gained

Cumulative credit and qualification

Fifth level

Dissertation or project report for publication

Individual supervision by HEI and teacher mentor

60 credits

180 – exit with Masters

Fourth level course

Training as in-service consultant

10 x 2 hour sessions; plus online support

30 credits

120

Third level course

Teaching writing – the research evidence. Participant as researcher and writer

10 x 2 hour sessions; plus online support

30 credits

90 – possible exit with diploma

Second level course

Advanced writing – for publication

10 x 2 hour sessions; plus online support

30 credits

60 – possible exit with certificate

Registration on first creditbearing course

Experience in a range of writing genres

10 x 2 hour sessions; plus online support

30 credits

Initial engagement

Taster courses

2–3 hour inservice sessions

0 credits

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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Pilot studies can take various forms: pathfinder studies where a group of innovators tries out a scheme that is later rolled out to a wider constituency; pilots in areas/schools where there is a strong need for development because they are not coming up to national or regional expectations; and a mixed mode which includes both elements and more.

Second, which departments or programmes within HEIs are likely to show interest? In the USA, the departments vary according to the particular strengths and capacities of the HEIs involved. In some, it is the English departments who show most interest; in others, it is cross-disciplinary writing centres; in yet others, it is the teacher education department or programme within a university that comes to the fore. In the UK we do not have as high a proportion of writing centres within HEIs as in the USA, where ‘rhetoric and composition’ programmes for undergraduate and postgraduate students are common. There are notable exceptions, like the Writing in the Disciplines centre at Queen Mary, University of London; and schemes at UCL and at the Open University. It is more likely that existing partnerships between schools and universities for initial and continuing teacher education will be the main source of interest and engagement. Third, the proposal to link professional development in writing to accreditation is going to be an important element, particularly as the teaching profession works towards Masters level status over the next few years. In this respect, HEIs will want to work in close collaboration with the Training and Development Agency and with schools to ensure that such development in writing is seen as central to teachers’ professional and academic development.

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The next phase: the proposed pilot study Pilot studies can take various forms: pathfinder studies where a group of innovators tries out a scheme that is later rolled out to a wider constituency; pilots in areas/schools where there is a strong need for development because they are not coming up to national or regional expectations; and a mixed mode which includes both elements and more. It is proposed that a three-year pilot for the National Writing Project chooses the third of these options, with rigorous evaluation. Such a pilot might be termed Model A. Accordingly, a Model A pilot study would: • operate with four regional/local writing projects, each of which would have a primary school and secondary school involved and working together

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• include four regions – one from inner-city London; one from another city in the UK (e.g. Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff); one rural pair of schools; and one suburban pair • include in total, eight schools, with two teachers from each school = 16 teachers • include four HEIs, one for each location/ region. We would identify partners in Schools of Education/teacher education and/or writing centres within these HEIs. Apart from the Institute of Education, London, examples might include: The University of York, The University of Exeter, The University of Edinburgh/or Glasgow or Cardiff University; Queen Mary; the Open University • hold an initial planning meeting, then a summer institute. The first of these would be experimental. It would be followed up by support, research and evaluation in each of the schools in the pilot. Over the three-year period of the pilot, two such institutes would be held in order to ensure the model and timing were best suited for purpose • hold two annual winter conferences – one in the second year and one in the third – for wider dissemination and showcasing of the work of the project • provide an interim report and evaluation after 18 months, in time for the first annual conference; and a final report plus evaluation at the end of the three-year pilot. It would make sense to follow the three-year pilot with a ‘fallow year’ to allow for writing up of the project, the preparation of new materials, the formulation of plans for scaling up to a national project and the seeking for further funding for the next phase. Schools involved in the pilot would be at liberty to continue the work they had initiated over the pilot. A small amount of bridging funding would be necessary to keep the central team in post and to ensure that the research and evaluation were properly completed and disseminated. However, such a protracted time-scale for a relatively small-scale pilot is not likely to scale up quickly enough, nor have sufficient presence to make significant impact on teachers and their students. Such an approach might be better in research and evaluation terms, but in terms of policy and

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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Whichever model is used to pilot the project, there needs to be a strategy for scaling up the pilot to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and pupils, many of whom might be reluctant writers.

practice a faster development period might be preferred. Accordingly, an alternative proposal would see a much larger pilot run over two years. In such a model (Model B) the scale could reach ten regions/clusters with a larger number of schools per centre (say ten). There would need to be rigorous evaluation before, during and after the project to ensure that results were evident, processes were logged, and that the strengths and weaknesses of the pilot schemes were well evaluated. Such a model would tend towards the ‘pathfinder’ type, with an expectation that the National Writing Project would be rolled out nationally within a three-year time period from the start of the pilot. Moving from a pilot study to a National Writing Project Whichever model is used to pilot the project, there needs to be a strategy for scaling up the pilot to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and pupils, many of whom might be reluctant writers.

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Such national implementation will require: • the support of MPs in the Westminster, Scottish and Stormont parliaments, and in the Welsh Assembly

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• recognition in the teaching and higher education communities that there is a serious problem in underachievement in writing • recognition among policy-makers, government departments and other bodies that action to improve the quality of writing in schools has to start with teacher engagement • concerted and coordinated effort to ensure regional and national infrastructure for the writing projects • a willingness on the part of regional writing projects to work toward self-sustaining financial status • the investment of industry, commerce and the service and voluntary sectors in the improvement writing abilities in young people and those leaving the education system • coordination with the National Strategies, with the newly proposed GCSEs in English, English Language and English Literature (as well as other subjects) and especially with the functional skills initiatives at GCSE and during the 14–19 education phase.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

4. How is the National Writing Project funded?

‘‘

Introduction

The National Writing Project in the USA is a non-profit making organisation. In its early years it was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Carnegie Foundation. The aim initially was for a mix of private and public funding. Now, each local writing project raises its own funds and is self-sustaining, while supported centrally from the National Writing Project’s federal funding. When it was first set up in 1974, funding was sought from not only the Carnegie Foundation but also from state and local sources. It has to be remembered that in the USA at that time, only 7% of funding for such enterprises was from federal government funding (Washington) and that the remaining 93% was from local and state (e.g. California) initiatives. The National Writing Project survived on such local and state funding until 1992 when federal funding was added. The project remains largely funded from a range of sources: core support now comes from federal resources, enabling the sustaining of the management, administration and crucially the research and evaluation

dimension of the project’s infrastructure; as well as an annual amount sent to the individual writing projects. But the bulk of funding continues to come from independent sponsorship, the individual states and school boards themselves, and self-help. As a non-profit making organisation, the assets of the National Writing Project have risen from $2 million in the early 1990s to $24 million in 2008, most of which is ploughed back into the project nationally for further development. How could a National Writing Project be funded in the UK? Detailed costs and their justification for running an extensive pilot will be set out in due course, but to run such a pilot – say for three years in a number of sites with a coordinating higher education institution, as in Model A above – will be substantial. It is also essential that a UK-based project has its focus not only on teachers, but on the impact on the pupils and their writing performance; and that the project is formally evaluated from the start. Model B, as set out above, would require a larger amount for a shorter period.

In the first instance, based on a rough estimate3 per annum of:

per annum

Co-director from HEI, seconded for two days a week

40,000

Co-director from a school, seconded for two days a week

40,000

‘‘

Two project officers, full time @ 50,000

100,000

Administrative support, full time

30,000

Teacher supply costs and payments to schools

20,000

Travel UK

5,000

Subsistence UK

5,000

Travel international

6,000

Paper, phones etc

1,000

Computers – three laptops plus software

3,000

Evaluation costs

10,000

Total

£260,000

These estimates include full economic costing and on costs, but not overheads to cover office space etc.

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The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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Ideally, the funding for such a pilot over two or three years would be from a single research funding body/ charity.

Ideally, the funding for such a pilot over two or three years would be from a single research funding body/charity. But if such an ideal is not feasible, a partnership between the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and funders (and possibly sponsors) may be the way forward for getting the pilot project off the ground. It is also possible that the evaluation, though essential to the project, could be funded separately. Justification for such an indicative budget is as follows: although the initial costs are relatively high, with a figure in the region of £15,000 per teacher per annum being proposed, the collateral benefits are high:

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• impact on pupil performance would be measured and would be expected to rise

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• coherent professional development, involving HEIs, schools and the TDA (if it chose to participate) would ensue, providing a model for future collaboration • academic credit would be gained for the teachers involved • participating schools would find that the benefits reached beyond those particular teachers who were directly involved • partnerships between schools and HEIs would be strengthened • a national scheme would be launched, with sound piloting, to benefit teachers and learners on a large scale.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

References Academy for Educational Development (2002) National Writing Project: final evaluation report New York: Academy for Educational Development. Anderson, S.A. et al. (1992) Implementation and Evaluation of a Writing Process Program, Yale Public Schools, Michigan.

Florio-Ruane, S. and Lensmire, T.J. (1990) ‘Transforming future teachers’ ideas about writing instruction’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22:3, 277–89

Andrews, R. (2008a) ‘No Child Left Behind: the US government’s flagship education policy’, presentation at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, January 2008.

Friedrich, L. and Mahieu, P. (2005) ‘The Local Site Research Initiative: Learning Important Lessons and Setting Future Direction’, The Voice, 10:3.

Andrews, R. (2008b) ‘Shifting Writing Practice: focusing on the productive skills to improve quality and standards’ in Getting Going: generating, shaping and developing ideas in writing, London: Department for Children, Schools and Families, 4–21. Also available via www.teachernet.gov.uk/publications (May 2008).

Goldberg, M.F. (1984) ‘An Update on the National Writing Project’, Phi Delta Kappan, 65:5, 356–57.

Barton, T.L. and Zehm, S.J. (1983) ‘Beyond the Bay Area: a description of the Washington State University Writing Project’, English Education, 15:1, 36–44. Blau, S. (1993) ‘Constructing knowledge in a professional community: the writing project as a model for classrooms’, The Quarterly, 16–19. Buchanan, J. et al. (2005) National Writing Project: Local Site Research Initiative, 2003–4, Berkeley CA: National Writing Project. Buchanan, J. et al. (2006) National Writing Project: Local Site Research Initiative, 2004–5, Berkeley CA: National Writing Project. Capper, C. et al. (1987) Improving the Second ‘R’: writing projects as staff development Triangle Park, NC: Southeastern Education Improvement Lab. Christie, E.N. (2007) ‘Notes from the field: teachers using reflection to transform classroom practice and themselves as practitioners’, Reflective Practice, 8:4, 483–95. Clifton, L.J. (1990) ‘Notes Toward a Paper’, Journal of Teaching Writing, 9:1, 59–64. Cremin, T. (2006) ‘Creativity, uncertainty and discomfort: teachers as writers’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 36:3, 415–33.

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Dunham, F. and Mills, M. (1981) ‘The National Writing Project: design, development and evaluation’, Journal of Thought, 16:2, 25–38.

Goldberg, M.F. (1998) ‘The National Writing Project – it’s about the intellectual integrity of teachers (interview with Richard Sterling)’, Phi Delta Kappan, January 1998, 394–6. Graham, S. and Perin. D. (2007a) Writing Next: effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high school, Washington DC: Alliance for Excellence in Education. Graham, S. and Perin. D. (2007b) ‘What we know, what we still need to know: teaching adolescents to write’, Scientific Studies of Reading, 11:4, 313–35. Graves, D. (1978) ‘We won’t let them write’, Language Arts, 55, 635–640. Graves, D. (1982) Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Haugen, N.S. (1982) ‘An Investigation of the Impact of the Wisconsin Writing Project on Student Composition’, paper presented at AERA, March 19–23, 1982, New York City. Kelly, J.M. (1999) ‘Free to teach, free to learn: a model of collaborative professional development that empowers teachers to reach diverse student populations’, Journal of Negro Education, 68:3, 426–32. Langer, J.A. (2000) ‘Excellence in English in middle and high school: how teachers’ professional lives support student achievement’, American Education Research Journal, 37:2, 397–439.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Marsh, D.D. et al. (1987) ‘Factors Influencing the Transfer of Bay Area Writing Workshop Experiences to Classrooms’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington DC, April 20–24, 1987. [ERIC Report: ED282219, 27p].

Stander, A.C. (1985) ‘Evaluating the Effects of the Oakland Writing Project on Teacher Behaviours and Attitudes: a preliminary study’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Minneapolis.

National Commission on Writing (2008) accessed via: http://writingcommission.org/ (May 2008).

Stannard, J. and Huxford, L. (2007) The Literacy Game: the story of the National Literacy Strategy Abingdon: Routledge

National Writing Project. (2006) Writing for a Change: boosting literacy and learning through social action San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Torgerson, C. (2004) Systematic Reviews, London: Continuum.

National Research Council (2002) Scientific Research in Education Washington DC: National Academy Press. Olson, C.B. and Land, R. (2007) ‘A cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction for English language learners in secondary school’, Research in the Teaching of English, 41:3, 269–303. Perez, S.A. (1983) ‘Teaching Writing from the Inside: Teachers as Writers’, Language Arts, 60:7, 847–50. Pew Internet Releases (2008) Writing Technology and Teens Report, accessed via: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/247/ report_display.asp. Pritchard, R.J. (1987) ‘Effects on Student Writing of Teacher Training in the National Writing Project Model’, Written Communication, 4:1, 51–67. Raban, B. (1990) ‘Using the ‘craft’ knowledge of the teacher as a basis for curriculum development: a review of the National Writing Project in Berkshire’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 20:1, 57–72. Rawlings, D. et al. (1990) ‘Teachers or Scholars? A Better Balance: High SchoolUniversity Collaboration’, Journal of Teaching Writing, 9:2, 239–46. Scott, P. and Mouza, C. (2007) ‘The impact of professional development on teacher learning, practice and leadership skills: a study of the integration of technology in the teaching of writing’, Journal of Educational Computing Research, 37:3, 229–66. Spitler, D. et al. (1984) Initial Report of the Evaluation of the Elementary Writing Program, Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia: Department of Instructional Services.

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Turner, S.D. et al. (1984) Developmental Writing Program: annual evaluation report, Tampa, FL: Hillsborough County Board of Public Instruction. Wilson, D.E. (1988) ‘Writing Projects and Writing Instruction: a study of teacher change’, paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, St Louis, Missouri Wood, D.R. and Lieberman, A. (2000) ‘Teachers as authors: the National Writing Project’s approach to professional development’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 3:3, 255–73

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Appendix 1: Search strategy for the review Electronic resources

Search terms

In order to identify relevant literature, the following education databases were searched:

Keywords and search terms were developed to cover the broad headings of (1) writing, (2) teacher professional development, and (3) target learners. The keywords and search terms used to search the electronic databases are shown in Table 1.

• Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) Contains over one million bibliographic records of journals articles, books and book chapters, research reports, conference papers, theses and other education-related materials from 1996 onwards. Includes online thesaurus. • Australian Education Index (AEI) Indexes over 200 Australian journals and contains books and book chapters, conference papers, reports and theses from 1978 to date. More than 150,000 entries and abstracts covering trends and practices in teaching, learning and educational management.

Use of the asterisk denotes expansion of the search term to include all forms of the root word. Word proximity indicators determine that the words must appear within a given radius of one another. All of the search terms were used in free text searching. The searches were limited to journal articles, book chapters, research reports, conference papers and theses published in English between 1975 and 2008.

• British Education Index (BEI) Indexes over 300 education and training journals published in the British Isles from 1976 to date. Also contains reports and conference literature. In addition to the above databases, the web pages of the National Writing Project (http://www.nwp.org) were searched for potentially relevant publications. Table 1: Search terms (used in combination as indicated)

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Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

writing (within 2) instruction or practice or improvement or performance or teach* (within 2) writing or writing project*

teacher* (within 5) professional development or cpd or teacher* (and) education or effectiveness or competence* or development

student* or pupil* or adolescent* or child*

AND

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Appendix 2 Interview with John Yandell, Lecturer in Education and Subject Leader PGCE for English and English with Drama, Department of Learning, Curriculum & Communication, Institute of Education, University of London. 17 April 2008 RA: If you accept there’s a problem do you think helping teachers to become more confident as writers will help matters? JY: Yes, there’s a problem to the extent that writing could be better/more meaningful and students could become better writers than they are currently. Directing attention to teachers as writers could contribute to that improvement. In my travels around classrooms I’d see the fundamental problem as not one of proficiency but in terms of a lack of conception of writing as something that might be a valuable part of a shared intellectual enterprise, productive and useful in its own right. I see it as far too often an activity that is undertaken without any clear rationale other than its part of a set of classroom routines. RA: Almost ritualistic, done for its own sake? JY: Yes, almost from the first lessons the teacher produces the learning objective and students copy it, which sets the tone for the way that writing is conducted as an activity and conceptualised by teachers and students. So what the prospect of a writing project opens up is the possibility of teachers and therefore their students being encouraged to see writing as meaningful. RA: So what you’re saying is that writing is often tightly boxed/framed so as to make it meaningless and that if teachers wrote more, they’d be sending out a strong signal to kids that the action of writing is something they were engaged in too and hopefully there would be more function/purpose/meaning/pleasure? JY: Yes, I think part of the problem of writing as it currently exists is that writing in the classroom is not sufficiently connected with writing beyond

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the classroom, for example, there is now a school genre of newspaper reports which has I think become increasingly fossilised. The genre of school newspaper report as it exists most of the time in both secondary and primary schools and in various parts of humanities classes is a masthead, usually in red and often ‘The Sun’ and there will be either two or three columns and in the top right hand corner a box with an image; and then there will be a headline that isn’t a headline as such, more a title in a school exercise book: it doesn’t have any of the features of a headline in a real newspaper; it tends to tell you the title of the piece of writing, not to be something that alludes in more subtle, emphatic ways that might encourage you to read. What follows will then be a chronological account, miles apart from a real newspaper news story. Very rarely I’ve encountered teachers who have known a thing or two about how journalists produce newspaper stories, who thereby make a connection between the genre of the school newspaper report and the real writing practice of journalists but that’s terribly unusual. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the school newspaper report existing as a genre if it fulfilled any useful/meaningful function. What it largely seems to be is a kind of thin, watered down version of the school essay dressed up in a rather drab design format. That’s one particular instance of the problem of writing. If teachers were engaged in a more productive meaningful way as writers themselves I think they’d be less likely to encourage/insist on their students producing rather artificial school genres that are not intrinsically meaningful or connected with writing in the real world. RA: I suppose a National Writing Project could have teachers working with journalists? JY: Yes RA: We identified two issues then; one is ‘real world’ writing, writing with a function, and also teachers as writers related to that. You can imagine real world writing without teachers as writers doing it but acting as facilitators. How do you think teachers would respond to such

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

a scheme, given the chance to undertake some writing? JY: Fairly obviously, different teachers will respond in different ways. I would suggest there is a significant, though small, subcategory of English teachers/ PGCE students who have had creative writing as part of their degree courses. What is interesting about this small but significant group is that they do tend to have a sense of themselves as writers and an attachment to writing that they carry forward into their practice as teachers. Sometimes they bemoan the relative lack of opportunity to use what they think they know about writing in the classroom but it does make a difference to their sense of themselves and to the kinds of writing that they would like to encourage. I think that’s a positive development; the introduction of creative writing as a module. If my impression is valid then that’s a good thing for English teaching. Secondly, something I used to do with GCSE classes was to attempt the same writing task that I’d set the kids. That’s something I found hugely informative for my own practice; it enabled me to see more clearly the complexities of what I was asking the kids to do, but also it was a different kind of modelling in that kids were aware of me as a writer in a way that helped them to cope with the challenge of writing themselves. It also changes the relationship between teacher and student if all are seen as part of a community of writers. That’s a practice that I have encouraged. Getting humanities teachers to engage in that kind of writing is also interesting. There are different levels of resistance to writing amongst different groups of teachers. Returning to my first point, maybe one does need to break down the category of teachers into subcategories. The question of how easy it will be to get teachers to engage with such a writing project depends to some extent on what kinds of writing are envisaged. One thing that should be encouraged and could be quite powerful is the extension beyond PGCE of forms of reflective writing for practising teachers. I think the possible benefits of that are not simply in terms of the aims of a writing project but in terms of wider pedagogic games. The kinds of critical reflection encouraged in PGCE are a good thing and have an impact on practice.

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Generally speaking though at the end of PGCE it stops, but the existence of a project that encourages teachers to write at all could be a space in which such reflective writing could find a place. There are lots of other kinds of writing of course. One of the current PGCE debates is amongst colleagues from different curricular areas, and the debate is that ‘it’s all right for you lot in social sciences/English because you’re dealing with a cohort of students who are competent, fluent writers so they can cope with the demands of an ‘M’ level assignment. Here however in [let’s say] science, our students don’t see themselves as writers and aren’t competent as writers. I have a measure of sympathy with that but I also think it’s wrong, because that comes from an inadequate model of what writing is and what a writer is. It comes from a model that privileges ‘secretarial’ writing over shaping at the level of discourse or over the difference between a writer who has found a position from which to write and writer who hasn’t. So I think it’s not primarily a problem with the different educational histories of Science and English graduates, it’s equally a pedagogic difference within the PGCE [about how writing is perceived] and I think the debate here would tend to exist also in schools [in the secondary context] in that it would be easier to convince teachers in humanities subjects that seeing themselves as writers might be an interesting move or a good thing. There would be amongst technology, some science teachers, possibly greater resistance, but I think also possibly more immediate benefits. My impression is that primary colleagues would be more receptive because of the extent to which all primary teachers are language arts teachers/teachers of writing. Because there is much more of a solid history of primary teachers as writers even if only as fairly minimal writers, I think that the spaces to explore would be easier to find. RA: The next set of questions is more pragmatic. What specific incentives might attract teachers to such courses? JY: The problem will come if engagement in writing is seen as a one-off/peripheral. The aim has to be to change teachers’ conception of themselves in a fundamental way, to see writing as not something that one grows out of or as

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

restricted to some narrowly-defined occupation but as part of their professional identities. That means that specific incentives need to be couched within a very clear and strong overall ‘sell’ of the importance of writing, the centrality of writing. The job of giving teachers the idea that writing matters is partly a job about what writing can achieve, so it’s about the kind of cognitive gain from the representational work that’s involved in the act of writing. One of the remarkable things that has happened in a short period of time with the development of new technologies particularly around Web 2.0 is the extent to which school students are writers. They write hugely beyond the classroom. They participate in social networking, they email and text each other, they are engaged in second order, semiotic work in a way that no previous generation of people has been. There is a context then in which writing in schools could draw not only on school students’ experience of writing with real purposes but the extent to which that exists in society, so the question about teachers as writers possibly needs to be slightly differently framed to take account of this activity in the world outside which includes presumably teachers on social networking sites and doing all of these thing but not making the connection with their day job. So part of what might be involved in such a project is to see what possible and productive connections could be made between that semiotic work that is already being undertaken and the development of teachers as writers in different ways. I like intrinsic rewards so I think if teachers can see that this makes a difference to themselves, to their sense of professional identity, and if they can see that this makes a difference to their practice, to the way that writing is then framed for their students, then they’ll take it seriously. If it becomes just an add-on, it won’t. RA: In fact if it also means something to them personally there’s even more incentive. Forget about them as teachers, but as people. They might get more drive and motivation if they see something in it for themselves. Continuing in the pragmatic theme, do you think there’s a potential problem in that the scheme is intended to cover primary and secondary, and maybe 14–19, as well as a range of subjects?

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JY: No, I think that’s a huge advantage, and what I’ve already talked about in terms of possible different responses to it doesn’t in any way mean it should be restricted to those who would most easily see themselves as writers. The impetus behind those moves was the right impetus. If we could encourage teachers of technology to see themselves as writers and to see how that could have an impact on what kids did in their classes that would be a very, very positive move. There are too few opportunities for primary and secondary teachers to see connections between what they do, the two worlds are still far too separate, and the idea of the project could produce very interesting dialogue across phases. RA: How could the scheme be assessed and accredited? JY: You’ve framed the project in terms of writing. I wonder if somewhere there is a need for greater specificity in terms of what kinds of writing. This goes back to my reference to society and Web 2.0 and the engagement in writing, which I think is true, but it would be possible to advance an argument that these things exist but have no connection with the forms of writing that we might want to promote, that these are trivial examples and that the writing project should focus on forms and genres of writing that are ‘high status’ or difficult or contain an intellectual challenge that posting something on Facebook doesn’t. I’m not saying I support that argument but to promote writing might beg the question of what kinds of writing for what purposes. RA: And that has implications for whether it’s assessable and whether it can lead to accreditation, and so on. JY: Yes. RA: Specifically are there schools where such a scheme might be piloted? JY: Yes. Again, I think if it were possible to come up with clusters of schools involving one or more secondaries and their feeder primaries that would be interesting and productive. There are schools that in various forms, e.g. in forms of mini education action zones,

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

developed closer connections/articulation between feeder primaries and secondaries, often focused at the moment of transition, but some of the work in relation to such projects has opened up the possibility of the kind of collaboration that would be mentally productive in relation to the writing project. RA: It would be a terrific research project as well as development project. The pilot might need to be quite a long one in order to do it properly. What do you think would be the best elements for the UK? Intensive two- or threeweek residential summer schools? JY: I’m sure it would work for some; my worry would be about take up. I suppose underlying my earlier responses has been that one would want to generalise this across large groups of teachers. What would worry me about that is that some people would sign up to it and they would be the writing teachers, and what about the others? So I have concerns about that as a model. RA: The other thing of course is that the American summer is twice as long as the English summer and Americans traditionally go on courses. JY: Also the change with Easter meaning summer holidays here may become only five and a bit weeks. RA: Weekend intensives? JY: Yes, much better, much more in line with UK teachers’ expectations and experiences in that having weekend INSET has become much more common. It would fit in with an existing paradigm. RA: Easter break week? JY: Again, I think that’s a real possibility.

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RA: Do you think that teachers’ training other teachers and being empowered in this way is a possibility? JY: The cascade model has had a really chequered history in this country. How it played out in practice was that the person responsible for literacy teaching in the primary school becomes the writing teacher which is cascaded a little but it’s not actually doing what needs to be done which is altering the professional culture across teaching. There will always be some for whom it makes a bigger difference than others but there are problems with that kind of model of dissemination. RA: Do you think that widening the definition of creative to embrace all kinds of writing is a good idea? JY: Yes, of course. I’m never sure of the distinction between creative and uncreative writing. RA: What other issues do you think the case for such a scheme should consider? JY: One of the big issues that’s hard to avoid is the relationship between an increased focus on writing and writing in a multimodal world. Would the intention be only to focus on the mode of language as script, language as print, would it be encompassing ideas of design? In a way, that goes back to my example of the genre of the school newspaper report. One way of attacking that problem is to look at the real processes involved in the construction of a real newspaper front page, where writing happens in a very different order to the schools genre. But also involved in that is what is that image doing? The danger of introducing a multimodal aspect is that it becomes too diffuse. Some attention needs to be paid to the medium in which the writing is envisaged. Writing on screen is a different process to writing with pen in hand.

RA: Moving on to conferencing as part of the process. What do you feel about teachers reading each other’s work, being an editorial ear?

RA: Writing in a multimodal context poses all sorts of questions about the function and nature of writing.

JY: That would be immensely productive, yes, absolutely.

JY: Also about the sense of a ‘physical frame’ into which the writing is inserted.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Appendix 3 Interview with Liz Francis, Director, Teachers Directorate, Training and Development Agency for Schools 23 April 2008 RA: Do you perceive a problem with the teaching of writing for 5 to 19 year olds? LF: I do as an individual because I was a local authority adviser before I had this role, so I’m well aware of differences in gender attainment and concerns particularly about boys’ writing, but I happen to know that because of my previous role. Working for TDA I’m not sure I would have been aware of it because our role is very much looking at, from a CPD point of view, frameworks and national standards. One doesn’t necessarily get engaged in that level of detail. If you’re asking somebody else who did my job, they could do my job very effectively and not know that there was a particular problem with writing.

I suppose I’m not convinced that helping teachers to become more confident writers themselves is going to help matters unless it’s part of a much bigger piece of work which is: why is that young people seem to struggle with their writing standards? Looking at society, why is it as well that the assessment of all subjects is dominated by writing? To turn it on its head, part of the problem is: why are we always measuring writing? In Design and Technology GCSE, you are primarily rewarded through recall of content and writing, but why? Design and Technology is about your creative skills. My husband is a designer: he doesn’t write about it, he does it, so I think there’s a fundamental problem with what we’re rewarding and measuring as important in society. If the function of writing is to communicate well then perhaps we should be looking more closely at mobile phones and communicating through texting!

But I think there is a problem, yes. RA: If you accept that there is a problem do you think that helping teachers to become more confident as writers themselves is going to help matters. LF: I find that a really difficult question to answer because I’d want to find some evidence before I felt I could make a judgement. Intuitively, I’m not sure, and I’m not sure teachers have got the time to develop their own writing skills given that there are so many other draws on their time. I’m not sure that would be the right approach. One thing I’d like to see done would be to look at students’ perceptions themselves of why they think writing is a problem. I think that would open up lots of questions of how communication has changed. I do worry that standards of grammar and spelling are being so reduced by these modes of communication; that what we are seeing is a split between how young people communicate for important purposes in their mind, through texting, Facebook, etc., and then ‘writing’ as you and I would perceive it.

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I would want to look at the evidence base. I don’t have the knowledge to know that if one learns to write better oneself then one teaches it better. Intuitively, one feels that would be the case in that enhanced subject knowledge makes you a better teacher, but on its own that won’t improve the performance of children and young people. Unless one has the right assessment methodology, and the children themselves see it as important and therefore are motivated to improve, what we could end up with is lots of teachers who are so much better at writing, but the children’s attainment is no better. RA: The evidence in the US is that it does help the quality of pupils’ writing, but the point you’re making is a very important one. How do you think teachers would respond to such a scheme, let’s say writing within a multimodal perspective? LF: We’re very much amending our own CPD strategy to look far more closely at how the teacher voice should be responded to,

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

because what we know is that unless people feel engaged in the process of change you’ll never change their practice. There are some helpful positives, like QCA’s new, more flexible curriculum; that the government is looking more positively at trusting the profession if you like, but I suspect any scheme would need to show clearly it would have an impact on children and young people. It’s got to be proven I think to attract the teachers to think ‘that sounds good’. More importantly, it would need to be presented in such a way that it’s teachers selling it – or children and young people – but not a new government initiative: ‘The Teacher Writing Scheme’. I can just imagine that going down like a lead balloon! RA: Taking it as a given now that when we talk about writing we talk about writing within a multimodal context, a real-world context, what specific incentives might attract teachers to such courses? LF: First of all there needs to be some sort of evidence base that this will make a difference, and link it to the quality of life that the teachers themselves will appreciate. So, this is proven: the children will improve their own writing skills and because of that you’re going to find it better as a job. Your teaching life will be easier, not just because of you, but because writing is the mode of communication for all subjects in school. It’s got a really good selling point here. I think it would need incentives about effectiveness and, to be honest, financial incentives might make a difference. We are piloting at the moment a CPD diploma for maths and science teachers aimed at teachers who don’t have a degree or specialism in that area. The Government announced that teachers who completed this programme would get a £5,000 incentive. Having this incentive does seem to work; it’s not just the money, it’s symbolic of value. In many private sector organisations, for something that’s going to take up more of you time, you’d expect some sort of financial incentive and so instead of just relying on the moral purpose, we need to remember that teachers also are salaried professionals. So I think you’d need to look at the incentivisation in the round: better for children and young people, better for you as a teacher

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professional, and actually there’s a financial incentive here as well. RA: Do you think there’s a potential problem in that the scheme is intended to cover primary and secondary teachers as well as a range of subjects, not just English? It’s cross-phase and cross-disciplinary. LF: I think there is at the moment. If QCA’s revised curriculum makes a big impact and we’ve got far more cross-curricular work going on in secondary schools and teams of teachers are planning together across subject disciplines then theoretically this sort of work could fit very well into that. But we’re not there yet; the new curriculum has only recently been launched. It seems to me the way schools are structured now gives you a bigger challenge because you’re trying to introduce something where the structures would seem to mitigate against it. Having said that, it could be that this would help to break down subject barriers. RA: How do you think the scheme could be assessed and/or accredited? LF: I think it’s really difficult to answer that without knowing what the scheme is because the assessment has got to be fit for purpose. I guess if it’s about writing there has to be a written element in it. RA: A portfolio perhaps? LF: I think we’d need to be very conscious of workload here. Are you familiar with the Social Partnership as a concept? It’s all of the teacher unions (but not the NUT) that work in partnership with Government help to take forward educational policy. It’s a very powerful group. They are anxious about workload and if you mention a portfolio they normally have concerns. Their thinking I guess is dominated by their members [and] what they are very concerned about is managers, headteachers and others insisting on big portfolios of evidence for example to go through threshold. I think the scheme could be assessed in a variety of ways depending on what the content is but it would be great to come up with something innovative, rather than saying it’s a portfolio. If it’s accredited I think it should be M level. The Children’s Plan

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

made a recommendation that teaching should become a Masters level profession. It’s a TDA recommendation and a ten-year vision. We’re working on the design of the MTL now and colleagues have been talking to Chris Husbands [Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy at the Institute of Education], for example, who’s given many hours of his time. Given that we are working on teaching becoming an M level profession it would make sense that this was M level, but I think you’d have to pilot whatever it was that you were going to do. Our knowledge tells us that what teachers care about is whether it’s quality, rather than whether it’s M level. RA: A pilot would be the next stage of the project; what I’m doing now is a desk-based, initial feasibility study, but piloting is a very important next phase. Are there schools where such a scheme might be piloted? LF: I think it would be useful to have a range of schools in terms of their attainment levels. Obviously, you’d have to go rural/urban/ whatever, but I think it would be good to have a cross-section of schools facing challenging circumstances as well as high-achieving schools just to get the variety. We’re working currently with 650 schools under a project called Effective Practices in CPD, so we’ve got plenty of links with schools. RA: Which elements of the NWP do you think are best suited to implementation in the UK? LF: First of all just to flag up that part of our work has been to define what makes effective CPD: we know that for it to be effective it needs to be sustained, it needs to be over a period of time, impact needs to be planned for at the beginning, it’s best undertaken in groups of teachers working together, so as a model I would hope you’d look on our website as to what makes effective CPD. We don’t have any mention of residential summer schools because we are very conscious of promoting models that would seem to be adding to workload. Having said that, are you familiar with Teach First? Outstanding Ofsted evaluation. One of the

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features is a six-week residential before these people start teaching. So I remember thinking there’s nothing like a period of immersion and intensiveness to really learn something new. So in principle I think a residential is a good idea but I think it would be really difficult to work in practice. Of course people are preparing and planning but the culture is that the holidays are protected, so I think it would be a great thing to try and implement. You’d really get to grips with the problem. Weekend intensives I would be less positive about, particularly if it’s during term-time. The thought of teaching Monday to Friday and then spending your weekend… well, it’s not a runner. But a weekend intensive in a school holiday period, maybe. But as a principle I like the idea of something residential for a period of time. Easter break as above; I don’t think there’s anything to add. RA: One particular model that has worked successfully is via the Arvon Foundation, set up by Ted Hughes, to invite anyone to spend five days with writers (and many teachers have been on these) in a farmhouse, or wherever. You turn up Monday morning leave Friday. So that’s a week long model, which still runs very successfully. LF: In a different context, it’s a great model, but I don’t think we’ve got the environment here for that to work. You’d get a few real enthusiasts, but you want something here that’s going to be systemic to really make a difference. Conferencing as part of a process model? Well, yes, if that does mean teachers working together and developing their thinking together; that would build on what we think is effective CPD. Similarly, I’d avoid the use of ‘training’ as that has a narrow connotation, but teachers developing other teachers then yes, absolutely. RA: What happens in the US is that those who go to these summer residentials become the developers. There’s a sort of cascade, but it’s more bottom up than cascade sounds and I take your point about the need for that.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Writing needs to be seen as wider than creative writing. Do you think that widening the definition to embrace all kinds of writing is a better way to see writing? LF: Personally I think that anything can be creative depending on how you approach it, so I don’t see why not, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea in this context. If you’re trying the improve the writing skills of children and young people and to do that you’re developing teachers own skills in writing, I think I’d say, ‘well you tell me, what’s the evidence base?’. If you broaden out this definition of creative, does it help?’ I think it depends what you are trying to achieve. RA: I think in many ways one wants to get away from that term because it’s perceived to be a sort of narrow, particular kind of writing. LF: I’m not sure how relevant that question is to what you’re trying to achieve but that might be my lack of understanding. RA: What other issues do you think the case for such a scheme should consider? LF: There are so many, but primarily, the current context and a real assessment of the environment that teachers are working in, and their own views on how and why they’d like to be developed. And I think that environment scan needs to look closely at how currently teachers are developed and particularly looking at the five training days that every school has at its disposal. Our view is that there’s significant

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potential in these five days. Earlier I was saying a week’s residential – impossible. There are five training and development days. They are used to varying effect depending on the school, the headteacher, the teachers themselves, but teachers have got those five days. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if for some schools the head agreed that the five days would be a residential? You don’t have to take them split. So I think the issues are an environment scan; what’s the current environment for learning and development of teachers; a bit of customer insight; market research; into what’s driving teachers; or what’s not driving them and I think a good assessment of what the National Strategies have achieved, because improving writing has been one of their key aims. Is it realistic in the current environment to develop teachers’ own writing? Where would the time come from? Where would the demand come from? It’s worked in America. Let’s really analyse what made it successful. If we can use the five training days and offer a financial incentive and get a group of teachers saying this is really making a difference, then I think those put together would maybe make the environment right. But at the moment I’m partly thinking this could be very unsuccessful because teachers might just think ‘another thing’. RA: It’s got to start small, if there’s a pilot for the next phase. You’re absolutely right: all these things have to be looked at.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

Appendix 4 Interview with Richard Sterling, Adjunct Professor at The University of California, Berkeley; Emeritus Director of the National Writing Project, USA (Director 1994–2008), San Francisco Interviewed 21 May 2008, New York RA: Is there a problem with writing in the USA? RS: There is indeed a problem. It was first identified some 20 years ago in an important report called ‘A Nation at Risk’ in which there was a famous quotation about ‘a rising tide of mediocrity’ in our public schools, which galvanised a lot of activity and there were a great many worried people trying to figure out what to do about it. That was followed up by a significant report a few years later in Newsweek magazine, in which the lead article was: ‘Why Johnny can’t write’. That had been preceded by ‘Why Johnny can’t read’ and a general anxiety about levels of literacy. So that galvanised a lot of people into action and a number of groups were formed in order to try and address it. The writing problem wasn’t seen as so severe as the reading problem for a long time and in the last 10 or 15 years there’s been more attention paid to a more nuanced description of the writing problem; it’s not that people can’t write at all but as you went through to higher education the quality of the writing was a problem. It could be done in a perfunctory kind of way but often lacked depth; it was superficial, it still contained error, and there was a lot of worry about that. The National Writing Project started in 1974 in response to the ‘Why Johnny can’t write’ report (so I guess it started longer ago than I said earlier) and that project began at the University of California, Berkeley. Its initial success caused foundations to invest in it. That led to some state funding; most education funding in the US is from the states. The amount of federal funding is about seven cents on the dollar, so 93 cents come from state and local revenues. That’s important to understand in the American context. That spread and finally in 1992 federal money was appropriated for the first time to be distributed

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to the National Writing Project across the country and to set up sites. So, yes, there has been recognition that there’s a problem. Five years ago the College Board started the Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools and Colleges and the idea here was to raise the consciousness of the new importance of writing. A lot of people thought that writing might not be so important in the digital age. It turns out to be the opposite. They commissioned a series of reports, the first of which is called ‘The Neglected R’. Again reading and maths seem to be the thing that everybody’s concentrating on and most recently science has been added but again writing is not on the agenda in any serious kind of way. They did a series of reports studying businesses and what they require for writing at entry level positions; they also went to state governments to find out what their employees were doing. The consensus overwhelmingly was that students are not prepared well enough to write and that if they did not know how to write well they were going to be stuck pretty well at entry positions. That report only came out two years ago. So that has helped us in our work to try and raise the consciousness of a range a people from parents right through to state governments that they must start to insist that writing be on the agenda in schools. RA: The actual assessment within government still seems to be in terms of reading and maths scores, and not focusing on writing. Is it a continual battle to keep writing on the agenda? RS: Yes, there’s a reason that’s really important to mention here: writing assessment is problematic. It’s complex and difficult to do and very often grammar exercises have been substituted for writing assessment. We do know how to do it, but it’s often expensive, and reading is easier to test. So reading has been a proxy for writing as well, even though it clearly isn’t. The College Board two or three years ago instituted for the first time a compulsory writing section to the SAT and

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

that has got a lot of attention. It’s part of their policy to bring writing into discussion and implementation and to have more writing going on. But you’re right; maths and reading were the only things of interest. RA: Just to be clear, does the College Board operate at a federal level across the nation? RS: The College Board is an independent, not-for-profit organisation. They essentially sell their tests across the country and they’ve been fairly successful. There are two groups that do it; one is the SAT and the other is the ACT (different organisation) but they have become the leading test producers. They claim with some justification that scores on the SAT and the ACT are some of the best predictors of success in the first year of college. So the primary use of the SAT is for entrance to university. It’s independent; it’s not federal, it’s not government. Regarding No Child Left Behind, what you get in the papers is so reductive that it’s really hard to know how to address it. The bill is hundreds of pages in length and in fact the National Writing Project is in the No Child Left Behind bill and if you were to read the professional development suggestions/ requirements listed, you’d be amazed at how progressive it is. The trouble is in the implementation; so little of that has come down – it’s all been reduced to reading and maths testing. Although I’m not an advocate for many parts of it, it did raise one issue that has been crucial to moving forward. It insisted for the first time that schools disaggregate data on who is failing within the school, and all of a sudden minority failure became visible, as it hadn’t been before. It was easy for schools to aggregate data for the whole school but for the first time they had to disaggregate data according to race, ethnicity and in some cases social class. That helped people say, ‘well you’ve succeeded here but you’re failing massively with these kids’; you’d better pay attention to that. They failed schools that didn’t do that. RA: One last question on the problem of writing; is it the case that writing performance lags behind reading performance. Can you generalise to that extent?

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RS: It’s hard to do that because the assessment of writing is different in every state. There is no federal test. Reading is a little more consistent; we know a little more about that. The only national assessment we have is done by NAEP – the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That organisation samples across the whole of the country and develops data that actually is beginning to look at writing too, so for the first time we will be able to look at the two things. That’s new and is just coming out now. RA: Are they applying tests of their own which are reliable across the population? RS: Exactly, yes, and in fact they are showing up huge disparities between the state data and the NAEP data. So we have a more objective view that when Texas claims to have huge success and NAEP shows they are near the bottom, that’s significant, and vice-versa in other states. At the moment there are about 35 to 38 states that have assessments in writing and they vary from pretty awful to quite sophisticated. RA: That’s very important for people in the UK to understand… RS: The Feds are really minor players but they carry a big stick. Their role is to address inequities. That is at the heart of federal legislation for schools; poverty issues and more latterly inequities that No Child Left Behind is going to address. But still remember it’s only seven cents on the dollar. RA: If we accept that there is a problem with the teaching and learning of writing for young people, is helping teachers to become more confident as writers themselves the way to go about improving the situation? Why was it particularly that the National Writing Project focused on teachers and their own writing? RS: I would say that a principle of the NWP is that if you’re going to teach writing you must write yourself. There are several reasons for that, one of which is that you should have sufficient meta-skills to understand what it means to create a text. So we ask people to write in a number of genres in a number of different assignments. They choose largely the

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

kinds of things they are going to write about. We ask them to ask themselves how they created that text. We ask them to demonstrate teaching practice to each other, and we ask them to begin to formulate a theory of why things are successful in some classes and not others. But the added benefit that I think was hardly understood at the early days of the project is that when teachers start writing extensively, they discover things about themselves as learners that are almost an epiphany. The summer institute is a four-week intensive writing institute during which they spend all day every day for four weeks… they write extensively, they talk about practice, they study research, but the writing is at the centre, and they are writing all the time. I can only say to you that that is one of the most powerful things they take from it; it engages them intellectually in their profession again. It’s extraordinary to see and it happens every time. RA: It sounds as though there’s personal engagement as well as professional engagement. RS: That’s the heart of it, the personal engagement. The teachers get engaged in the issues, the problems of teaching, of themselves as a professional teacher; their weaknesses and their strengths. Writing illuminates so much of that. All of us who write know immediately what you know and what you don’t know when you sit down to write something, and teachers often have not written an extensive piece of writing for many years, not since college. Teachers will tell you things like: ‘the gift of this summer school was my writing’. So writing is very important but it’s not about turning them into creative writers, fiction writers, drama writers; that’s not the point. The point is that the process of writing is a way to organise your thinking and your learning and also excite you about what you know yourself. So it re-engages you professionally and it works very well. RA: How do teachers respond to the scheme? RS: We put K–12 teachers together, so all of a sudden you have primary teachers with middle school teachers with high school teachers. A lot of them are terrified to be asked to write.

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We put them into writing groups, we ask them to share their writing or particularly their reflections on their writing until they become more confident. The primary teachers think they will never be able to stand up to the high schools teachers, the high school teachers are frightened the elementary teachers will think they’re not as smart as they should be, so there’s nervousness initially. It is a great leveller because everyone has ideas. What you find is that primary teachers know things about teaching the child, and the high school teachers know things about teaching the discipline, and it’s bringing those things together that makes for such enrichment. At the end of a week you don’t know which grade anybody teaches; it smoothes it right out. By the second week that nervousness has largely disappeared and teachers are highly engaged in their writing to the extent that we have to pull them back to pay attention to the other things we want them to do. RA: Are there any extrinsic incentives for teachers; those who are highly sceptical for example, are there any incentives to get them on board? RS: There are. To describe the model: the NWP starts with the summer institute. Those who come to that institute are carefully chosen; we are looking for teachers with at least three years experience in the classroom, those who can demonstrate that they’ve had success in the teaching of writing and are recommended by somebody. They are all interviewed and they are chosen to come in. They are given a small stipend to participate. These days it’s probably about £800, something like that. They are also given university credits that they might use towards a degree, or towards salary increments, which their local districts may insist on. That group of teachers ultimately becomes the teachers of teachers and it’s there that you find your sceptics, and the people who say ‘seen this, done that, doesn’t work’. We organise the in-service work in school after the school day is over, during term time, and they too are provided with incentives to do that. In the end each writing project is a fee-for-service unit within the university. Currently there are 200 of these sites and they are successful to a greater or lesser extent depending in part

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

on the entrepreneurial nature of the business, and the quality of the workshops that can be offered. So it depends on that cadre of summer people; they’re incentivised because they are paid and they are excellent and have been selected because they are excellent. RA: You mentioned the university…. as I understand it, it’s regionally based and you have a lot of projects going on. What is the typical governance or structure? RS: Every project is headed up by a faculty member – a professor from a university. There are two departments that basically sponsor writing projects; English Literature departments and education departments and it’s about a 50/50 split. The university applies for a grant to start a writing project; they have to match the grant one dollar for every dollar they get. Why should they do this? In every university within their mission statement is a statement, which says, they should serve the community in which they reside and we have used this to remind them that this is a very good way in which they can serve local schools, be good neighbours and actually get more graduate students if they do this. So the incentive is not a lot of money but a lot of good will, and a place seen by teachers post-degree as an intellectual place where they can continue to get nourishment for their profession. Sometimes you have to remind the university of this but we have prevailed in most cases through thick and thin. The co-director of the writing project is a K–12 teacher, who is usually doing it in her or his spare time. The faculty member usually gets one course off in order to do it. RA: Was that model in place right from the start or did you gradually evolve towards it? RS: The basic model is pretty much unchanged, but what has changed, quite dramatically, is the sophistication of teachers in that time. There was a time when asking teachers to write was almost a completely novel idea. There are teachers coming through now who have been taught by writing project people and are already pretty much ahead of the game. They know a lot of the stuff, so what you see in writing projects is stepped up in theory, so you’ve actually got more complex

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things and you can ask more of teachers coming into the writing project. I would never have asked this is the 70s but the first thing I ask teachers today is: ‘What’s your theory of action? Why do you do what you do? Why do you think this class is successful? Are there particular writers or researchers that have informed your work?’ I don’t always get answers. In fact some teachers have no idea who might be informing their work, but they will know that collaborative learning is powerful if managed correctly. They will know that writing and reflection are good things to do. So that’s changed, but the basic model? It’s pretty much the same. RA: Is the cross-disciplinary nature at high school level a problem? Do you cater for all? RS: Until about three or four years ago it was just happenstance that we would get science, maths, social studies teachers. The percentage...10%, 15% of other disciplines? The rest – language arts teachers in the elementary schools, and English teachers. So that would dominate. Some ESL teachers, special education teachers – they often find their way to the writing project – but by and large the bulk is English teachers. So maybe five years ago now we were approached by the Carnegie Corporation and offered a grant to see if we could diversify even further by offering direct incentives to science and maths teachers through a reading/writing project, and this is significantly increasing the number of non-English teachers coming in. They are fabulous, really good; they are offering something very unusual. They are teaching us about discipline-based discourse, so that although you know in theory that every discipline has its own discourse and it’s useful to teach that both in reading and writing, there’s nothing like having them in your midst to do that. So it’s strengthening our work across disciplines. We’ve always been across disciplines but it’s been rather thin until now. RA: How is the writing that’s done on the projects assessed, and are the teachers accredited in some way? RS: When we start the summer institute we lay out the rules for what the course requires; they are very specific and we basically tell

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

them that if they complete the work in the way in which we believe they can, they will receive an A grade for the work. It seldom happens but if they don’t meet the requirements we will grade them down. We basically look at the writing as a completed, finished, public piece of work, so that although writing goes from private notes to public discourse, we want public discourse at the end of it. We expect there to be at least three or four pieces of writing that they submit and a demonstration of pedagogic practice, which is also part of it. That’s the central core. An important part is that every participant demonstrates for 90 minutes a piece of practice that they are particularly pleased with. They show students’ work very often, they talk about what they did in order to get students to do this particular piece of writing, and then they engage in a critique with the rest of the class. That often can form the basis of a workshop that they might use to demonstrate in-service programmes down the road a bit. So it’s the first step for us to say to them we want you to consider becoming a teacher of other teachers and your practice here is the beginning of that work. RA: So these three or four pieces that you assess, that’s like a portfolio of work? RS: Yes. RA: What about the accreditation side, what do they carry back? RS: It can be used for a course credit, it can go towards degrees if they’re enrolled in a degree programme (depending on the institution), and in many cases school districts allot increases in salary for x number of credits earned every year. RA: That sounds like a highly professionalised approach to continuing professional development, rather like in a medical model where there’s a requirement every year that a certain amount of training has to be done… RS: We’re moving towards that. Many school districts already say that in order for you to keep your credential you must maintain a certain amount of professional development. The other incentive is that in the summer institute they often receive a stipend.

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RA: Regarding what might or might not work in the UK… if you could talk us through the yearly model… RS: It’s a three-part model. The summer institute is the beginning, and summer institute fellows are invited back for a reunion meeting after, say, the first month of term, and from then on they’re invited back a regular intervals. When the teachers come back the first thing we want to know is ‘how’s it going, are you able to implement any of this new work?’ Sometimes the school district has narrowed everything down and you can’t do a lot with what you’ve discovered. Then the returning group will form an agenda for the year, so that they will decide how they want to spend the monthly meeting. Every site is different in this respect; some say they’re going to meet three-weekly, some every month and a half. It’s locally determined. What we suggest amongst the things they might want to do is the creation of a newsletter, the creation of workshops that are then offered to school districts, an enquiry group, a reading group and a writing group. Many times the writing they’ve begun has got them so excited that they might want to continue to publication, and that’s an extensive arm of what writing projects do; publish teacher writing. So to find ways to pick out pieces to take forward to publication, we help them submit to journals and sometimes the NWP will publish them or they might end up in a newsletter. Others want to do enquiry groups; they want to look at a problem in their schools and go back and develop that…. teacher research, that’s what it is. But teacher research has often covered some pretty soft stuff. We’re trying to put a little more rigour into that term and make it conform at least to ethnographic research so there is some theory of action behind that too. RA: Do you think, given that slightly different pattern, that the same model would work in England or would you imagine a different model? What’s essential to the American model…? RS: I’ve thought a lot about this. When the National Writing Project was formed in Britain back in the 90s I was asked to do some visits in schools and write up what I saw in the implementation, and immediately the short

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

summer is the problem. The number of days both countries teach is about the same but you have a lot of breaks during the year and we have the longest break in the summer with shorter breaks at Christmas and Easter. I think for it to be successful the model would have to be adapted. I am quite clear that this model would work in Britain. I’ve seen workshops done individually. I think the teachers are well trained. They have the right structures in schools, in fact in some cases I think it would be more welcome than the kinds of things we have seen in some districts here which are much more restrictive. I’ve always wanted to see if there’s a way to do it. So what I would do is something like this: I would break up the summer institute. I would try and get two weeks of the six weeks teachers have off. I would try to make them residential. I would have longer days. That would give me approx three weeks equivalent. Just take them away for a short period of time, preferably on a university campus with dorms, and that’s a system that would work. I would then bring them back during the longer breaks during the year for a weekend plus a day, something like three or four days in which to maintain continuity and keep the ideas alive. Let’s take the University of East Anglia, for which Norwich is the locus and they drew teachers from Norfolk and Suffolk; 20 teachers in the summer for two weeks and they would bring them back together for weekends during the year. Also if it were properly funded the K–12 teacher or the university professor who was running the project would visit during the year; would go out and see the schools and try and bring a group of teachers in a small area together for an afternoon. And after faceto-face, video conferencing – it costs nothing and the university should help establish some space on its server for doing that kind of thing. That way you have the face-to-face plus some local contact. The tricky part is the in-service part, and that’s important because it’s a recruiting ground for the next lot of summer institute people. It’s also a way to try and have leverage in individual schools. If you go to a school with, let’s say 1,000 pupils, you need a faculty of about 30 in that school to be interested in

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this subject, and then if you can get a writing programme going in that school across the subject area, that needs attention paid. The last time I looked, the professional development system in Britain does not lend itself easily to entrepreneurial efforts at the university, or a fee-for-service for the school districts. I don’t know how you would keep the project alive in the local university unless they were given a piece of the pie to operate a business. But this is where I think our success is really important: every writing project is locally governed. They are very sensitive to the area, so I would suspect that UEA would be much more sensitive to the school systems in Norwich and beyond rather than someone a hundred miles away. RA: I’m sure the local/regional dimensions are very important, but how might the national function pan out in the UK where the nation is geographically smaller and there’s more possibility of people meeting nationally… What is now the function of the National Executive Office of the National Writing Project? RS: As a said a little while ago, the federal role in education is relatively minor but it speaks with a big voice. When the NWP was growing rapidly with the help from foundations, the idea was surfaced that we should offer it as a special programme for the nation. A senator and a congressman were approached to get bi-party support for a programme that would ultimately serve every state. The federal government has huge sums of money and it’s not difficult to get money set aside for ‘demonstrations’. And so in 1992 the first appropriation was given by the federal government. Initially the project was at Berkeley, but the government refused to give it to a university because all the other universities would want it. So they asked the project to form an independent, not-for-profit corporation. Our job was to distribute the money across the country, which we could do fairly nimbly having a small staff. The government was very pleased with how lean and inexpensive an operation it was. Our job at the national level was ultimately to become the watchdog over the projects but to do it in a way that didn’t take the autonomy away from the projects. So we lay out several things: you must follow the model; you must find a match for the money we give you; and we will evaluate you every year to see if you are

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

keeping to that, and if you’re not we will give you a probationary period or we will de-fund you. We have de-funded 30 or 40 sites over the last 15 years since I was Director. So it’s a zero base every year. As we’ve got more money, as our appropriation from federal government increased, we increased the grant to the local sites. We started off giving them about $10,000 to do the whole thing every year; it’s now up to $40,000. In return for that, federal government has ratcheted up its demands on us to show evaluation and assessment, and therefore they wanted us to start doing research. We in turn ratcheted up our demands on each site, trying still to be hands-off. It’s a push and pull thing. So we’d say; ‘How come you don’t have much in-service? Why is your ‘product’, so to speak, no good – so teachers don’t want it?’ If so, you’ve got a problem because the promise by the Feds is not the summer institute; it’s about the teachers and the kids in the schools. Their object in funding us is to have leverage on those schools, so the in-service part becomes in their minds the most important thing. In our minds it’s the teachers’ professional development. RA: Is the major proportion of your funding at the centre from the federal purse? RS: Over 90%. RA: Over the history of the project where have you got money from? RS: From everywhere. There’s almost no foundation we haven’t hit on. But when we say about raising funds, the local sites have to do that too. So if you include our local sites, we’ve raised money from everything from a local auto-dealership up to the Carnegie Foundation and the Ford Foundation. When you said about England, it’s about the same size in terms of population as the State of California, and the GDP is about the same. What California did was create a state system of writing projects, which they funded centrally. They gave the money to the University of California to distribute among the sites and so there’s a network of 19 projects in California, funded by the state government, and with the same model at the base of it. So that’s a good comparison I think of both population and wealth.

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RA: In the UK (let’s hypothesise) we have government level funding, LEA (generally on a county or metropolitan basis) funding, independent sponsorship at local, regional, and national level, and then you’ve got selfhelp – the projects raising their own finance…? RS: Yes, that’s less common here. There is some of it – in rural communities that might play a greater role, but in the big city I think almost not. There is a way that when teachers in the writing project get a good reputation, they will mount a conference and charge for that, so they raise money that way sometimes. Also in their contracts they make profits. They are minor, but those profits are then ploughed back into the writing project and used, for example if a teacher wants to go to a conference, if you are on the programme the project will sponsor you to go. RA: In order to fund the central office – that comes out of the federal grant?... RS: Correct. In my own case I think 85 or 90% was charged to the feds, leaving me 15% to do fund raising, because you can’t double dip… So I would go to foundations and raise money for new projects. It was very hard to get funds for general support – where you’re not doing new work for it but it’s to support the ongoing. There’s another way you can make money and that is by publishing things and selling them. But the federal allotment has to be spent each year right down to the penny. I think that variety has kept things alive. Some projects we give $50,000. Some projects have raised, every year, over $1 million; others just meet the match. So we’ve got rural projects that are at the scale of $150,000 a year – that would be about minimum these days – and there are some projects at $1.2 – 1.3 million. New York City, for example. But then you have 65,000 teachers in New York City so it’s a much bigger operation. RA: Let’s move on to research and evaluation. Accounts and evaluations of the project seem to differ – let’s say the 20th century accounts as opposed to the last eight years or so. Most of the studies pre-2000 are descriptive… Since 2000 there is much more emphasis on ‘does this make a difference…?’. Could you

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

tell me about the sorts of research evaluation you’re doing in the project and what impact there is, if any, on the young people’s writing? RS: You’ve got the history right. For many years we would ask them to do evaluations of the kind you’ve described and we got of course hugely positive responses on that… We’re very clear that it’s accurate information. We know from that early stuff one very important thing; teachers love the summer institute. That’s not important, but what does it make a difference in? Even before 2000 we started to ask more leading questions of the kind that weren’t really evaluative but told us a lot about what was going on in their site, e.g. what are the demographics of your community and what are the demographics of the people you serve? Are you getting in and being able to do workshops for poor minority students? Things like that – so we started to get data about how effective they were within their own community. We could extrapolate from that. So, if you were in a city like Philadelphia, which was about 80% minority, and the writing project was serving the suburbs, we knew we’d have a problem. We also asked them if they were attracting a sufficiently diverse group in their summer institutes both in leadership and participation. So by asking the question we were asking them to be more responsive to their communities. What happened was, in the late 90s, I and my team pressured Washington for significant increases in funding and in the last two years of the Clinton administration we suddenly got their attention. Appropriations in Washington happen with three points; the President presents a budget for Education, the Senate has a request and the House has a request and then they work it out together. We always had Senate requests and we always had House requests but we never had the White House, so that the Senate would push and the Congress would push and then we’d get a small increase. Once we had all three in alignment the project starting jumping up significantly. What I did then was form a Research and Evaluation Unit. With an increase from the Feds came an increase in scrutiny from their IES (their research and

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evaluation group). Their demands were: ‘how do you know it’s working for children, how do you know it’s making a difference, etc’. When we formed the research unit I was lucky to get a very good researcher who was a psychometrician, also trained in qualitative methods, and who started the design at our request. He developed an adaptation of trait scoring – a six trait scoring method, which is apparently producing some very high correlations of accuracy, so we’re beginning to see exactly what happens to a kid in a writing project classroom. Anonymous scorers are saying ‘this is significant…’ So pressure from the government but also our internal need – we were very sensitive to the fact that we were spending good money and wanted to know if it was making a difference. RA: So in the UK we should build in a research and evaluation dimension from the start? RS: Absolutely. But the joy is that all of the projects are in universities. You are foolish if you don’t make use of that as an asset. Many university folk have to do research. There are graduate students in every university and we’ve started to form collections of researchers who are interested in the research in writing and we anticipate in the next few years we are going to get much richer data because we are in research places. So that could be very useful. RA: I’ve seen the two LSRI reports for 2003/4 and 2005/6. Can you put your finger on any particular project where there is, or is not, a clear impact on kids from teachers engaging with the National Writing Project? Does it work right through to a child’s development? If you can’t answer that, what sort of research needs to be put in place to help answer it? RS: The Local Sites Research Initiative chose ten or so sites across the country and there were increases in writing ability beyond that of teachers who weren’t writing project teachers. Significant in some, increases without statistical significance in others. Last year we started a major project, in discussion with the government, approved by the IES, of a random assignment project – much harder to do and

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

costing 10% of our budget ($2 million dollars) and that’s now finishing its first year. RA: Random assignment: that’s what we would call a randomised controlled trial, with a control group and experimental group? RS: Exactly, and it’s being done by an external agency who bid as part of a tender. We got a very good group and we’re very pleased. It’s hard to do, as you can imagine. You go to a writing project that’s been a project for 20 years, so there’s almost no school they haven’t worked in. So the increases are going to be still significant, but less so because it’s in the drinking water. The writing project approaches are everywhere. You go to a place where we’ve hardly had any impact and the increases are off the charts because most teachers haven’t been exposed to this work. RA: So there’s probably a longitudinal dimension in the design because you won’t always see impact in a child’s writing from a short-term intervention, or even over a year. Sometimes it’s like a depth charge that has impact later… RS: And sometimes students get worse as they try more complex things in writing… RA: And then you have the whole problem of the sampling issue of control groups and experimental groups…Getting the control group comparable is very, very difficult. RS: Yes, but I can say this: in all of the experiments we’ve done thus far, the students in writing project teachers’ classrooms do better than those that are not. We’ve seen that and we’ve verified that. Having said that, it’s really complex and this new study will, I think, nail it more completely than before. The so-called ‘gold standard’ of a real randomised trial is not possible in this situation as far as I can tell – all researchers have told us it’s absurd to think we can do it because the variables are so great. How to claim that it’s your intervention that’s working when there may be three, four or five programmes going on in the school is very tricky, and if you’re completely honest you can’t claim it. RA: Just to push this, what is the exact nature of the current project that you’re talking about?

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It’s not a randomised controlled trial in the pure sense…there are clustered trials where you don’t randomise from a population…if research designers deal in classes or schools that they then compare with each other, that’s called cluster trialing. It’s a little less pure… RS: Yes, it’s what they called the ‘silver standard’! Here’s an example of what they’re doing. First they looked at 200 sites, and then they eliminated the sites that are new, and they eliminated sites that are involved currently in research projects. From the other group, they sent out a request for participation and the criteria they used were; to invite you to participate in a project that will choose pairs of schools in your district, one of which will be randomly assigned to the control and one of which will be experimental. The control group has to agree not to do any professional development in writing for the term of the project, but they will receive money during that period for other professional development and then they will receive the writing project at the end of the trial. RA: So they’re not going to lose out… RS: No, and they will be compensated during that period of time. And there are pairs in each of the writing project service areas; two pairs in some districts, one pair in other districts, and they are randomly assigned across all of the people that applied for this. And it’s urban, rural, suburban. RA: It’s sound to me, technically, like paired, clustered trials…When is the report coming out? RS: The first year has just been completed so I expect there will be a report shortly. Remember I’ve stepped down now from the writing project. RA: Just for the record, can you say what your title is? RS: I’m Executive Director Emeritus of the National Writing Project, and I’m an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education in the University of California, Berkeley. I was Executive Director of the National Writing Project from 1994 to 2008.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

RA: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think ought to be borne in mind? RS: You asked the question earlier: how is the project different now to when it started? How has it evolved and changed? One of the things is that there is an increasing sophistication in all the projects in part because the knowledge base is improving; teacher knowledge is definitely improving. The notion that teachers should have knowledge-making as part of their job is becoming more commonplace, especially in writing projects. But what I’m also noticing is that the social networks that are at the heart of the success of the project is a movement that is becoming commonplace across all of education, so that there are books written on it. One book written on the project by Ann Liebermann, who is not a writing project person, talked about the success of the project in terms of social networking. She said it was an intellectual lifeline for teachers, where they could come to the university long after they finished their degrees and get sustenance from the community that is present in universities. I think that social network movement is really important to pay attention to because it’s being created outside of the professions. One of the pieces of work I’m doing now is looking to see what the impact of the internet is on learning in schools, and what we see there happening also is social networks developing, Facebook, etc.,

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and all of the things that are bringing people together are actually new ways that people are learning and collaborating together. I don’t think it’s new or fresh anymore for teachers to say that they know that collaborative learning is powerful. Writing projects have been promoting this for thirty years and it’s now commonplace, so that people are no longer as isolated as they were. So I see the social network aspect of this work as a powerful way to set it up; that you actually know a priori that this is the way that projects run, and it’s an attractive thing. Teaching is a lonely profession very often and professional organisations can’t do that kind of local work. What this does is bring it right into your community so the university is the locus, but it’s the group of schools around there that can get some action in, and especially if the university gives credibility to teachers’ knowledge. This is key. No project has succeeded here if it is not led by somebody who deeply believes that teachers know things, and a lot of faculty do not; they think that teachers basically need their course and they don’t really respect what teachers know, and that is very, very important. The teachers I’ve met in Britain over the years are more than adequate to the task and there would be an unleashing of a huge amount of knowledge that’s in those schools; bringing it into the public sphere would be enormously powerful to do.

The case for a National Writing Project for teachers

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0118 902 1000 www.cfbt.com

PMS 4217 08/08 ISBN 978-0-86160-060-1

CfBT Education Trust 60 Queens Road Reading Berkshire RG1 4BS