In this paper wewill explore the formative impact of different teacher educators’ approaches when working with academic writing in different subjects.  We focus on how writing and other activities related to writing in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and in teaching practices impact student teachers’ formation towards becoming professional teachers. While formation is an ongoing process and includes what changes persons undergo throughout life, in the context of ITE formation includes learning the knowledge, skilled know-how, and the moral and societal dimensions inherent to a profession and the responsibilities of professionals (Sutphen & de Lange 2014).  Formation also comprises the reflections of whom you want to become and how the experiences with certain institutionalized education and work practices, their values and norms influence your development as a person and professional (Colby and Sullivan, 2008).

In our approach we build on three assumptions about writing as a significant tool in professional formation. First, writing enhances learning (Bruner 1973) and may encourage reflective thinking (Hilgard 1967). Second, through writing, responsible teacher educators desire to influence student teachers’ formation by engaging their students in meaningful and relevant learning opportunities and activities. The teachers want their students to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that they eventually benefit from and utilize in future professional practice (Martin & Dismuke 2015).  Third, knowledge about, and experience with,  “learning to write”, “writing to learn” and “learning to teach writing” is necessary in all subjects and across curriculum (Gallavan, Bowles & Young 2007; Street & Stang 2008).

We will critically examine teacher educators’ pedagogical reasoning and didactical choices and approaches in light of student teachers’ experiences and possible struggles and benefits with writing.  As the professional formation cannot be isolated from the student teachers’ experiences with writing in internship periods, we include students’ experiences from and reflections on practice in ITE and in teaching after some months at work. To be able to dig deeper into the teacher educators’ pedagogical reasoning and didactic choices, we have limited the sample of teacher educators to two teachers who in interviews with the students stood out as most significant to them in their learning process. We want to grasp both what, why and how dimensions in the teacher educators’ approaches with regard to intended formation. We look for these two teachers’ reasoning and reflections about writing in ITE and we look for how the content and pedagogy they choose influence the student teachers’ formation. Research questions are

1)      What strategies and teaching approaches do these two teacher educators utilize?

2)      Why do they choose these approaches?

3)      How do they go about in their teaching?

4)      What is highlighted by the students as most important to their own learning and professional formation?

In order to grasp the formative influence of teacher educators’ intentions and approaches when facilitating writing in ITE over time, formation as a relation tool is useful because it includes the relationship between the  intentions expressed by the teacher educators; how they want to “form” their students when facilitating writing and enrolling them into different discourses of writing (Ivanic 2004) and the students’ reflections about their experiences. In this paper, we identify which socially available possibilities for formation the teachers’ approaches open up for and encourage (Burgess and Ivanic 2010). We relate teachers’ reflections on their intentions with writing, and their approaches when facilitating writing, with students’ reflections on what has been important for them in their future teaching and roles as professionals.  

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