The National Writing Project

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

My dream outcomes

Effective site-based professional learning for teachers of writing across the curriculum

Affirmation of the importance of “the writer” in teachers’ professional identity

A range of practices that have been shown to have worked in motivating students to write and succeed as writers in the classroom.

A set of diagnostic, formative and summative assessment procedures that are ecologically valid and helpful to teachers in their feedback to students and reporting to parents.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

Basic tenets of a NWP (Andrews, 2008)

to teach writing, you need to be able to write; students should respond to each other’s writing; the teacher should act as writer alongside the students, and be

prepared to undertake the same assignments as the students; there is research about the teaching of writing that needs to be

considered and applied, where appropriate, in the classroom; teachers can be their own researchers in the classroom; the best teacher of writing teachers is another writing teacher;

and 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.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

Some Facts about the NWP in the US

• The NWP has for more than 30 years offered professional development summer institutes to K-16 teachers across content areas and grade levels.

• The NWP consists of 190+ college-based sites in 50 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, serving approximately 125,000 teachers a year.

• NC declined from eight sites to two when state funding stopped. Sites seek support from LEAs to raise the matching funds and gain the federal $$.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

• In its 30 year history, the NWP has served approximately 3.5 million teachers, nearly the same as the total population of teachers in the USA today.

• 770 University faculty annually devote approximately 2,000 person hours in offering over 100,000 professional development hours per year.

• The cost per NWP program is approximately $2.00 per participant, as compared to $30 per participant for the National Science Foundation.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

Historical Overview

• In 1970s, process model was based on how real writers write (Bay Area Writing Project)• Little teacher direction or intervention• Used mainly for narrative writing• Emphasized process more than product

• Simplistic Pedagogy resulted (Rohman’s model)• Teacher describes three stages (prewrite-write-rewrite) and

students use them to produce a story

• In 1980s, influenced by cognitive research• Embraced a more recursive and reflective model

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

The NWP in New Zealand

established in New Zealand in 1987distinct projects based in four urban centresScanlan and Carruthers’s (1990):

“as the teachers became writers themselves their attitude to the teaching of writing changed”;

“how the teachers taught writing changed”;“student writing improved as a result of these changes”;

and“teachers demonstrated their new skills and knowledge to

other teachers” (p. 14).

© 2015 Taylor & Francis