Norwegian classrooms are highly digitalized environments and the recent pandemic has finalized the long process of equipping students with their own digital units, computers or iPads (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2021, 2022).  A similar development worldwide has gradually changed the environment of students’ writing processes and tools accessible to students while writing. This digitalized context in the classrooms needs to be examined to gain insights into the writing processes of students. Additionally, knowledge about the writing processes of students without the use of artificial intelligence (AI) provides a basis for evaluating the impact AI has on students’ writing. In this project, I intend to examine how students in junior high school in Norway use technology in their co-writing processes. Research on collaborative writing in junior high school is scarce as is research of writing in Microsoft Word and research of writing processes (Zhang et al., 2021).

The overall aim of the project is to examine how writing competencies are operationalized by students in the English as a second language junior high-school classroom when co-writing in highly digital environments. This question will be answered in three steps through an article-based dissertation.

The first article is a scoping review of the use of digital technology in English as a second language writing education. The second and third article are empirical and will address two different aspects of co-writing in ESL in digital environments, the creation of texts and the interaction between students, students and teacher, and students and digital technology such as Microsoft Word and its varied functions, sources, dictionaries, large language models and other technology the students choose to use. Research questions of the three articles are presented below.

RQ1: How is technology utilized in co-writing in English as a second language in junior high-school? 

RQ2: How do students interact while co-writing in highly digitalized environments in the Norwegian ESL classroom?

RQ3: How are texts created in the Norwegian ESL classroom when students co-write and interact with digital tools?

This project is a case study in terms of (Stake, 1995) .This project is firmly placed within the qualitative paradigm focusing on thorough understanding of the particularities of the case rather than generalizability. The first article will map the knowledge in this field and identify research gaps in line with Munn et al.’s (2018) procedure for identification and analysis of articles. The next two articles will be empirical contributions to the research of writing processes. The study will be conducted in a junior high school in ninth grade. During the data collection students will co-write in pairs sitting next to each other, each with a computer. Students’ screens will be recorded, students’ conversations will be video recorded with a camera that will also record the screens of the students in order to be able to capture the discussions of the students with reference to the text they are discussing. The teachers’ interactions with students in the classroom will be video recorded. Students’ texts will be collected with the task that is administered by the teacher, the teacher’s instruction at the beginning of the lesson and the preceding week’s worth of English lessons will be video recorded. Interviews with students and teachers will be audio recorded. To answer my first question, I will conduct a scoping review that will analyse relevant research conducted between years 2010 and 2024 and point to knowledge gaps in the research. My second and third research questions will be finetuned according to the outcome of the scoping review to address the research gaps that will be identified through this review. The analysis used in both the second and third article will be data driven. In my preliminary plan, interactions between students, students and teachers, and students and the technology will be analysed using conversation analysis (Skovholt et al., 2021) or interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Both conversation- and interaction analysis make it possible to analyse interactions that are the focus of the second article. The final decision will be made depending on the data collected. To answer my third research question, I will apply thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to the students’ texts and the recording of the writing process to gain a systematic overview of the themes involved. Depending on the data that is collected I will conduct a linguistic analysis of the text or apply conversation analysis to the writing process.

This is a PhD project and a work in progress. The data is planned collected during spring semester 2025. This project is aiming at providing insights into students’ writing processes and interactions during collaborative writing in Microsoft Word in the English classes in junior high schools in Norway. Research on this age group using this technology is scarce and this research intends to contribute with insights into students writing processes, the choices they make while writing, the way they use technology in their writing and the nature of interactions between students in collaborative writing.

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