Mary M. Juzwik

Writing into the 21st Century: An Overview of Research on Writing, 1999 to 2004

This study charts the terrain of research on writing during the 6-year period from 1999 to 2004, asking “What are current trends and foci in research on writing?” In examining a cross-section of writing research, the authors focus on four issues: (a) What are the general problems being investigated by contemporary writing researchers? Which of the various problems dominate recent writing research, and which are not as prominent? (b) What population age groups are prominent in recent writing research? (c) What is the relationship between population age groups and problems under investigation? and (d) What methodologies are being used in research on writing? Based on a body of refereed journal articles (n = 1,502) reporting studies about writing and composition instruction that were located using three databases, the authors characterize various lines of inquiry currently undertaken. Social context and writing practices, bi- or multi-lingualism and writing, and writing instruction are the most actively studied problems during this period, whereas writing and technologies, writing assessment and evaluation, and relationships among literacy modalities are the least studied problems. Undergraduate, adult, and other postsecondary populations are the most prominently studied population age group, whereas preschool-aged children and middle and high school students are least studied. Research on instruction within the preschool through 12th grade (P-12) age group is prominent, whereas research on genre, assessment, and bi- or multilingualism is scarce within this population. The majority of articles employ interpretive methods. This indicator of current writing research should be useful to researchers, policymakers, and funding agencies, as well as to writing teachers and teacher educators.

Situating Narrative-Minded Research: A Commentary on Anna Sfard and Anna Prusak's "Telling Identities"

In their “Telling Identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for Investigating Learning as a Culturally Shaped Activity” (Educational Researcher, May 2005), Anna Sfard and Anna Prusak articulate the promise of story or narrative in defining identity as an analytic tool in sociocultural research on learning. The article, as I read it, strives toward a process-rich notion of identity that responds to prior sociocultural articulations of identity as an analytic construct (e.g., Gee, 2001; Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). Noting the dangers of treating identity as a product or an essential core that remains static over a lifetime—or that boils down to “is-statements” about “being a certain kind of person” (p. 16)— Sfard and Prusak theorize identity as a relational and dynamic process. That is, identity changes across time (cf. Lemke, 2000) and space (cf. Gee, 2001), and thus is always in motion. These changes depend, at least in part, on social and contextual interactions, rather than on inner or individual processes alone. Theorizing identity as a process, the authors propose narrative, or story, as a definition that can allow the term identity to serve as a “missing link” (p. 15) for understanding individual learning in sociocultural contexts. The authors propose to “equate identities with stories about persons” (p. 14), which I shall refer to as the identity-as-narrative construct. Narratives provide a mechanism for capturing the always-in-motion process of identifying, because they are “discursive counterparts of one’s lived experiences” (p. 17, emphasis in original). The authors build a theory of learning using this narrativized definition of identity. Sfard and Prusak distinguish between two sets of possible narratives about persons: “actual identities” and “designated identities” (p. 18). Whereas actual identities consist of “stories about the actual state of affairs” (p. 18), designated identities consist of “narratives presenting a state of affairs which, for one reason or another, is expected to be the case, if not now then in the future” (p. 18, emphasis in original). The authors define learning, finally, as closing the gap between actual and designated identity.1 Illustrating this argument, an empirical example compares native and immigrant Israeli mathematics students (and a representative individual within each collective). Sfard and Prusak conclude with a call for “narrative-minded researchers” to shed new light on learning as cultural activity (p. 21). Sharing Sfard and Prusak’s goals for increasing narrativeminded research, I aim to clarify the term narrative, which is not defined in their article. Specifically, I elaborate two central issues. Sfard and Prusak locate the identity-as-narrative construct within a sociocultural tradition. Because the term sociocultural has been widely and divergently used in educational research, I clarify this term in relation to the identity-as-narrative construct. I identify two genealogies of sociocultural work on narrative. Situating the identity-as-narrative construct in the American sociolinguistic tradition affords a useful definition of narrative as a unit of discourse that is distinct from non-narrative discourse. Further elaborating this affordance, the second section addresses the identityas-narrative construct from a methodological standpoint. By conceptualizing narrative-minded research work as a series of rhetorical processes and choices, this discussion untangles some of the complexities of narrative definition, identification, translation, and transcription. This response, in further fleshing out Sfard and Prusak’s argument about narrative, should contribute to the project of rendering the identity-as-narrative construct explicit enough for use in the practice of research. I hope, too, that these clarifying remarks will bolster the likelihood of this construct being used credibly and generatively in educational research.

Oral Narrative Genres as Dialogic Resources for Classroom Literature Study: A Contextualized Case Study of Conversational Narrative Discussion

Five questions guided a case study exploring the relationship between oral narrative and discussion in middle school literature study: (a) Relative to similar classrooms in a large-scale study, how can overall literature instruction be characterized? (b) Relative to similar classrooms in a large-scale study, how well do students achieve in the focal classroom? (c) What, if any, are the links between oral narrative and discussion? (d) If discussion and narrative co-occur, what sorts of oral narratives do narrators tell in discussions? and (e) If discussion and narrative co-occur, how can we characterize the overlap in terms of interaction? In the frequent conversational narrative discussions, where oral narrative and discussion discourse overlapped, teacher and students used various kinds of oral narrative genres to prime, sustain, ratify, and amplify discussion.

Writing, Religious Faith, and Rooted Cosmopolitan Dialogue: Portraits of Two American Evangelical Men in a Public School English Classroom.

Some literacy scholars have embraced rooted cosmopolitanism as a framework for educating in today’s globalized and pluralistic world, where communicating across difference is an important individual and societal good. But how is the “cosmopolitan turn” in writing complicated by considering the religiosity of writing teachers and student writers? Is it possible for writing instructors and student writers to stay rooted in their own faith traditions, while maintaining openness to other ethical vantage points? What new questions are raised for cosmopolitan-minded writing pedagogy by these considerations? Through portraiture, we present complex pictures of how an American evangelical Christian teacher, Sam, and one of his evangelical Christian students, Charlie, engaged with a writing unit focused on “This I Believe” essay writing. The portraitures suggest that Sam, a more cosmopolitan evangelical, envisioned the unit as an invitation to (a) articulate one’s own beliefs in the wide universe of moral possibility and (b) get used to the beliefs of others who are ethically different from oneself. Charlie, on the other hand, conceptualized the unit’s writing, listening, and reading tasks as ways of honoring God and letting God speak through his literate practices. Our interpretation suggests that his populist evangelical faith made it difficult for him to openly engage in cosmopolitan dialogue across ethical difference. We hope our portraits of Sam and Charlie might move scholars interested in writing, literacy education, and rooted cosmopolitanism to engage themselves with the challenges and possibilities opened up when students’ and teachers’ religious roots are taken seriously.

Teaching and Learning Argumentation in English: A Dialogic Approach

Various instructional approaches have been laid out for conceptualizing argumentation talk and writing in English classrooms. One prominent, and historically durable, approach is formalist—teachers slot the teaching of argument into a form-based approach, usually using the 5-paragraph theme. This model too often fails to persuade students of the significance of argumentation—the social, ethical, and other work that argument writing and talk does in the world. Drawing on research examples from our ongoing work on argument talk and writing in English classrooms, we articulate a second model, a dialogic framework, conceptualizing argument writing as a multivoiced conversational turn in which the writer responds to previous utterances and anticipates future utterances.

Assigning and framing argument writing to foreground significance: comparing three approaches in secondary English

ABSTRACT How can secondary English teachers assign and teach argumentative writing to foreground its significance for students and their life trajectories? This article compares three approaches – formalist, structured process and conversational entry – in the light of this aim. Through analysis of exemplar assignments, the comparison illustrates the potential problems posed for significance with approaches that foreground both formalist and structured process. It also reveals possibilities and benefits of the all too rarely used, yet promising, conversational approach which conceptualises written arguments as entering into conversations and so shifts the argumentative assignment framing away from technicalities of written text itself towards the broader conversation students’ written argument is entering. In conclusion, we discuss applications, benefits and limitations of our comparison across the three argument assignment approaches.

1.3 A Rhetorical Approach to Classroom Narrative Study: Interpreting Narration as an Ethical Resource for Teaching in the USA

Narrative inquiry approaches have become popular as an interpretive method in curriculum studies and teacher education, but they are not designed to carefully study the intricacies of classroom talk, much less its rhetorical dimensions. This chapter presents a rhetorical approach for interpreting narrative talk-in-interaction in classrooms. Grounded in a sustained example of a unit of Holocaust study in a Midwestern United States middle school literacy classroom, I elaborate a model for interpreting narrative-in-interaction within an over-arching rhetorical approach, entailing multi-functional study of narrative discourse. Calling upon earlier educational narrative scholarship in ethnography of communication and interactional sociolinguistics, I argue that rhetorical interpretation of everyday classroom narratives can reveal not only the aesthetic and poetic shaping of course subject matter and curriculum, but also the profound moral socialization that may occur as teachers tell stories to students. While focusing primarily on teacher storytelling, I also discuss narrative curricular material (e.g., literary texts under study) and stories told by students. This rhetorical interpretive approach illuminates how narratives work as dynamic resources used by teachers to do poetic, performative, and ethical work in their classrooms. A rhetorical epistemology and an accompanying set of methodological assumptions and interpretive practices warrant my argument about narrative practices and texts in classrooms.

Negotiating Moral Stance in Classroom Discussion about Literature: Entextualization and Contextualization Processes in a Narrative Spell

‘I was in the store the other day and the clerk was ignoring me. She was waiting on a person over here and then she went to wait on a person over here. And after she did this twice, and I had been there first, I spoke up and I said, ‘Excuse me, am I invisible?’

TEACHING THE DIMENSIONS OF LITERACY

TEACHING THE DIMENSIONS OF LITERACY. Stephen B. Kucer and Cecilia Silva . Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006. Pp. xv + 406.

Teacher Identity in the Context of Literacy Teaching: Three Explorations of Classroom Positioning and Interaction in Secondary Schools

49.95 paper. Kucer and Silvas work is a companion volume to Kucers (2005) earlier volume, Dimensions of Literacy: A Conceptual Base for Teaching Reading and Writing In School Settings , now in its second edition. In this earlier volume, Kucer argued that literacy should be understood in all its dimensions—cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, and developmental—and that to reduce our understanding of literacy to any one dimension alone is to lack wisdom about its total nature. Whereas the previous volume offers a theoretical exposition of these four dimensions of literacy (i.e., content knowledge for teachers), this new work provides answers to the question “Well, now that I am equipped with a multidimensional understanding of literacy, what shall I do on Monday morning?” (i.e., pedagogical content knowledge; Shulman, 1986).