Writing In And Out Of Control

Author(s):

Tomas Englund(presenting / submitting)Emma Arneback(presenting)Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 08 A, Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

09:00-10:30

Room:

B020 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Christine Teelken

Contribution

Subtitle: A semi-longitudinal study of seven students' writing in preschool teacher education

In this study we follow seven students in their writing in preschool teacher education during two and a half years: From their second semester in higher education, to a finished essay in the end of their sixth semester. The study is conducted at a Swedish University with the aim to capture the formative impact of writing over time, with a specific focus on how writing in teacher education influences students' understanding and view on their future profession as preschool teachers. Three research questions are in focus in this paper: a) how student teachers look at the function of writing during their education, b) how the student teachers develop as writers over time, c) how their future identity as teachers is visualized and gicven character in their writing.

Theoretically we take our point of departure in academic literacy, in the sense that we understand academic writing as a social and cultural practice in higher education (cf. Ivanic 1998, Lea & Street 1998, Lillis 2001; Blåsjö 2004; Macken-Horaik et al 2006). In contrast to research that consider academic writing as a pre-defined set of rules that student teachers need to adapt to, an academic literacies approach focuses on writing as a social practice where students take part in and develop different literacies, implying its formative impact.

Method

The sample of informants is selected from preschool teacher education at a Swedish university. In the selection process we contacted one group of students and asked them if they wanted to participate. As a result we have been following seven student teachers through interviews andanalysing of their text production over time. During the first two years we interviewed and collected text samples from each student each semester (in total four interviews and at a minimum four texts per student). The last semester we have followed the student teachers more closely in their process of writing an essay: in interviews, stages of textproduction, supervision and seminars.

Expected Outcomes

The expected outcomes indicate so far that the student teachers do change their view on writing over time. From the beginning writing seems very difficult for many of them (cf. Lillis 2001, Ask 2005) combined with a feeling of writing out of control. With new tools in writing over times most of the students developed a growing feeling of writing in control. These tools can for example be on how to formulate research questions, choose and use research methods and analytical concepts and present a result. With a growing feeling of confidence and control, most of the students in this study goes from feeling of being out of control to be more and more in control in their writing. They become students in higher education. One critical aspect in the analysis is that the student teachers partly describe a weak link between writing in their studies and their future work. During their first year this occurs since the student teachers are occupied by how to become a student in higher education and how to write and read in the 'right' way. The content thereby becomes hard to understand. In other parts of their education this link becomes weak since the content doesn’t relate to the fact that they should be preschool teachers. Over time, there is however clear that the students are part in processes of formation that give them tools to reflect over their future work.

References

Ask, S. (2005). Tillgång till framgång. Lärare och studenter om studieövergången till högre utbildning [Roads to academic written language]. Växjö universitet: Licentiatavhandling i Nordiska språk. Blåsjö, M. (2004). Studenters skrivande i två kunskapsbyggande miljöer [Students’ writings in two knowledge-constructing settings]. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Stockholm Studies in Scandinavian Philology 37. Ivanic, R. (1998): Writing and Identity. The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Amsterdam:John Benjamins. Lea, M., & Street, B. (1998). Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education 23(2), 157–172. Lillis, T. M. (2001). Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. London: Routledge. Macken-Horaik, M., Devereux, L., Trimingham-Jack, C., & Wilson, K. (2006). Negotiating the territory of tertiary literacies: A case study of teacher education. Linguistics and Education 17, 240–257.

Author Information

Tomas Englund (presenting / submitting)

Örebro university

Education

Örebro

Emma Arneback (presenting)

Örebro University

Örebro

Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke

University of Oslo

Department of Education

Oslo

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.