Abstract
Using a framework for discourses about writing, the qualitative study investigates teachers’ discussions about student texts during focus group sessions. The setting was a small, private school with a diverse student population and teachers who shared an approach to teaching. Their discussions focused on aspects of student writing including word choice and voice; learning to write within genres such as narrative, opinion, and poetry; and writing for an audience. Teachers valued multimodality by emphasizing how pictures and text can support one another throughout the writing process. The data reflect teachers’ knowledge of the students as writers and their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The teachers shared underlying discourses of writing included creativity, genre, process, and social processes. The study provides a counter example to previous work that identified teachers using deficit discourse about students’ texts, and demonstrates how focus groups in which teachers talk about texts can be a model for professional development.
Recommended Citation
McCarthey, Sarah J.; Vu, Ngan; and Zhang, Jiadi
(2025)
"Teachers’ Talk about Children’s Texts,"
Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 13:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol13/iss1/4
Included in
Elementary Education Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons