Abstract
Writing, while vital to success in education and the workforce, is an area of relatively low achievement internationally. In Aotearoa New Zealand, underachievement is particularly marked in upper primary schools and amongst certain groups: indigenous Māori, Pasifika, and boys. A collaborative, design-based, research and development project to support teachers of years 5 to 8 to generate stronger engagement, accelerated progress, and higher levels of achievement in writing, particularly by these learners, is reported. Smart tools were employed to aid the process of teacher inquiry into practice, their learning, and that of their students. The findings present the themes encapsulating the practices identified by participating teachers as making a difference for their underachieving students. Findings from classroom observations show positive change in dimensions of teacher practice related to these themes, while standardized achievement data indicate substantial movement and enhanced rates of progress by those in the lowest levels of achievement.
TopContext And Related Literature
The study reported here concerns the writing of students in Aotearoa New Zealand, where performance is characterized in international literacy tests as “high achievement, low equity”, a situation that has persisted over time. Aotearoa New Zealand is a bi-cultural nation. The largest city, Auckland, where about a third of people live, is highly diverse by world standards. In some schools children represent 60 different ethnicities. By 2020 the majority of school children in Auckland were predicted to be indigenous Māori or Pasifika (an inclusive term for children with varied cultural heritage from one of several South Pacific Islands). Underachievement in schooling is disproportionately seen in these two groupings; in writing they score, on average, 15% below students from European and “other” groups (this latter category, employed by the Ministry of Education, largely consists of students from Asia and India).
A relatively small research base in Aotearoa New Zealand has examined writing teaching in primary schools. Some studies have identified common instructional patterns and others the practice of demonstrably effective teachers. Widely employed classroom routines and structures are identified from Parr and Jesson’s (2016) survey of writing instruction in primary classrooms; from Jesson and Cockle’s (2014) descriptions of normal classroom practice as well as from descriptions of teachers nominated as exemplary writing teachers (e.g., Gadd & Parr, 2017; Glasswell, 2000). Broadly, these practices are whole class modelling, including the reading and exploring of text often as part of shared writing, followed by independent or guided writing for small groups, with teacher support of writers through feedback within writing conferences and practices involving sharing and peer response.