education writing

A Guide to Writing about Education

Introduction, types of papers, discipline-specific strategies.

Education is a field that bridges anthropology, sociology, psychology, science, and philosophy. When writing about education, you will utilize a myriad of writing styles and formats to address your essay topics.

As an education student, you may be asked to write:

• journals/field-notes: think of field-notes as the clay for your future thoughts, observations, and ideas; these are informal
• literature reviews: categorize or conceptualize relevant pieces of literature
• analysis papers: analyze outside sources to promote your own interpretation of a particular theory or style
• evaluative essays: look at a particular approach to teaching or theory of learning and discuss strengths and weaknesses
• narratives present collected data through use of informal methods, imaginary letters to parents, recommendations for school, etc.
• case studies: present problem, discuss others' thoughts on the issue, describe and analyze data/evidence, and draw conclusions
• research and lab papers: identify research questions, contextualize the question in the research literature; identify hypotheses, methods of data collection and reduction and analysis; discuss findings.

Here are some suggestions for approaching any education paper:

• Write about something that interests you Choose topics that will inspire you to delve deeper into research, synthesize new ideas, and spend time writing, revising, and editing. If you have trouble thinking of a topic, review your journal to see what ideas you have already come up with that might be applicable.
• Read If you're feeling confused about what is expected of you, try reading similar papers. Get together with other students and read each other's papers. Or, ask the professor to suggest some journal articles for you to look at for inspiration.
• Talk Talk about your paper, your ideas, and your problems. Talk with your professors, your classmates, and your friends. This will allow you to test out new ideas, find a topic you care about, talk through problems, and see where other people stand on your issue.
• Write a really bad paper It will give you a foundation to build a really great paper. Just be daring and try out radical ideas.
• Have ideas Make sure that each paper has an argument or an idea that you create. Outside support should be used to support the ideas you develop.
• Ground ideas in outside information Your ideas should be firmly based in outside literature, field-notes, research, etc. Every idea should have some fact or observation that supports it.
• Expect to revise Revise once, twice, as many times as needed. Be prepared to rip up a thesis or change your argument if necessary. Revision of grammar, content, and organization is key to an excellent paper. Good writing doesn't happen by magic.
• Take risks in ideas and in structure If your idea doesn't work out, try something else. Use complex and diverse sentences. Have fun while you're writing!

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Writing in Your Discipline: Writing for Education

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Writing Lesson Plans

If you plan to certify to teach, you will be asked to write lesson plans in many different classes. Lesson planning lies at the heart of good teaching, and written plans represent the most structured writing assignments you will do in education classes. A good lesson plan describes all the critical elements of your teaching plan, including what you intend for your students to learn, how the lesson will proceed, and how you will know that your lesson reached your goals. In good lesson plans these three elements (objectives, instructional activities, and assessments) are very clearly connected, and they inform each other.

Education is a field that bridges anthropology, sociology, psychology, science, and philosophy. When writing about education, you will utilize a myriad of writing styles and formats to address your essay topics. Your writing should always:

1) Be tailored for the audience of the educational community

2) Be tailored for the type or purpose of writing in education

3) Use formal, specific, and precise language

4) Be credibly sourced and free of plagiarism

5) Convey clear, complete, and organized communication

6) Use correct English language conventions

7) Be correctly formatted and styled

The types of writing in Education include: reflective writing, persuasive writing, analytic writing and procedural writing. 

Types of Papers

As an education student, you may be asked to write:

• journals/field-notes: think of field-notes as the clay for your future thoughts, observations, and ideas; these are informal
• literature reviews: categorize or conceptualize relevant pieces of literature
• analysis papers: analyze outside sources to promote your own interpretation of a particular theory or style
• evaluative essays: look at a particular approach to teaching or theory of learning and discuss strengths and weaknesses
• narratives present collected data through use of informal methods, imaginary letters to parents, recommendations for school, etc.
• case studies: present problem, discuss others' thoughts on the issue, describe and analyze data/evidence, and draw conclusions
• research and lab papers: identify research questions, contextualize the question in the research literature; identify hypotheses, methods of data collection and reduction and analysis; discuss findings.
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• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2023 12:20 PM

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Building Lifelong Writing Skills

Instead of addressing a single piece of writing, elementary teachers can focus on students’ overall abilities and needs.

Are you looking for more effective ways to help your students become stronger writers? Would you love to be able to make the following statements?

•  “I feel much more capable of identifying student needs in writing and teaching them strategies to use that improve their abilities.”
•  “I feel as though I have a better understanding of what my students really need.” 

These quotes are from educators who were reflecting on their first year teaching a writers’ workshop after working with their colleagues and me throughout the year. Both took the time to dig into some new ideas that helped them change their instructional practices in writing so that they were asking questions and making choices that moved their writers forward.

Prior to this year, these teachers tended to lean toward what many teachers often do—talk to students about what they see in their writing piece at the moment. For example, you may notice that a student isn’t using any elaboration techniques and their sentences or paragraphs are very short and simple. You may look through their piece and then ask the student, “What did that look like?” And then after they tell you, you might say, “OK, why don’t you write that down?” 

But consider this: How will this correction or revision, which is based solely on that particular piece, help your student to elaborate well in their next piece?  Will they take the strategy of adding details about how something looks and apply it to their writing next time? 

In my experience, understanding  Lucy Calkins’s idea of how to teach the writer, not the writing, is what we need to help grow writers so that students will apply new strategies in their future work. You want to know your students’ strengths and needs as writers, not just what the current writing piece may need at the moment.  Then, and only then, will you provide them with the tools they need to improve their skills as writers.

Here are my tips for helping your writers grow in their abilities by providing them with what they need as writers.

Know your writers

The most important step to building up your writers is knowing them . Know their writing behaviors and ability level. There are three ways to accomplish this. 

First, you’ll want to administer and analyze an “on demand” writing piece, a piece of writing that’s written independently in one period of time. As the students are writing, take note of their behaviors and record what you notice—are they engaged, on task, planning, revising, and editing?

Look through each writing piece and take note of the strengths and weaknesses. A rubric would be a helpful tool for this stage of the process. Then look at each piece according to the strands of the rubric and identify where the students stand. 

The third way to know your writers is to talk to them. During independent writing time, meet with students and learn how they work. Ask them how they planned their writing piece, why they chose their topic, what they’ll be doing next, etc. 

These questions will provide important information about how students think about the writing process, and it’s also an effective way to identify any struggles that students may be having with engagement. If they haven’t spent much time writing, or if you’ve seen them up and about and not writing, this is a simple way to find out why.

Find the ‘base level’ of need

Many times, the first aspect of writing that you notice in a student’s piece is what you choose to work on with the writer. For example, if you notice in one student’s piece that they consistently write only a page or two before moving on to a new topic, you may decide that they need to build their stamina or elaborate more. 

There’s often something else beneath what we see in the writing, however, that’s causing the student difficulty. In this case, perhaps they didn’t take any time to plan or rehearse their writing. Missing this step of the writing process would certainly prevent them from knowing what to write, and as a result, they would have only a few ideas to include in their piece. 

Teachers need to identify the real reasons for any difficulties their writers may have so that they can identify what they truly need to learn. This is another area where talking to and questioning students will help. As you hear more about a writer’s process and decision-making, you’ll be able to more easily identify their base area of need. 

One tool I’ve found to be quite effective for teachers in identifying the base level of need is “The Hierarchy of Writing Goals,” from Jennifer Serravallo’s The Writing Strategies Book : Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Writers . 

Teach the writers what they need

Once you’ve established the students’ areas of need, consider what the next steps might be in those skill areas that will help them to grow as writers. In the above example of the student who wrote only a page or two before starting a new topic, this writer needs techniques for planning out their writing. When they engage in the planning portion of the writing process, they won’t run out of things to include in their piece. 

You’ll want to choose a few strategies and teach them one at a time, either within a whole-class mini-lesson, a small group, or a one-on-one conference. One helpful strategy for planning a writing piece is to draw a quick sketch for each step of the story on each page of a booklet. An effective planning strategy for an informational piece would be to use bullet points to establish subtopics.  

Be sure the students understand that this is something writers do to help them write more about their topic and that they can use this anytime they’re planning a new piece. 

Use language of the writing strategy, not the writing 

The example at the beginning of this post of the student not using any elaboration techniques, with the teacher then asking them to write something for the piece that provides more detail, is an illustration of “teaching the writing.” Instead, it would have been better to teach the student a strategy that writers use for elaboration that would be useful for that piece, as well as future pieces. 

You might say, “If writers want to help their readers to understand what they’re writing about, they need to elaborate with details. One way to do this as a writer is to include words that tell about how something looks. This will help the reader to visualize what they’re reading, which will be more interesting to them.”

Notice how the language is pointing to what writers do rather than what could or should be in the piece of writing. This language helps teachers to stay focused on the writer’s choices and moves, and it also helps your writers to understand that they make choices as a writer and that these skills can be used anytime they are writing. 

Language is a very powerful aspect of “teaching the writer” for both the teacher and the students. The words you use when teaching a strategy will help you gear your instruction toward the writers. When you change your focus to growing your writers for their future and provide them with what they need for writing a new piece independently, you’ll make a much larger impact. 

Know your writers, find their base level of need, and teach them strategies using language that focuses on the writer, not the writing. Your writers will be creating strong pieces in no time. 

Teaching Writing, Master of Arts

Zanvyl krieger school of arts and sciences, ma in teaching writing.

The Master of Arts in Teaching Writing program helps teachers at all levels—from kindergarten to university—in all disciplines, learn to become master teachers of writing, acquiring new and innovative ways to teach writing to their students, studying theories and best practices on the teaching of writing that they can share with their colleagues, and pursuing their own writing in an exciting and supportive online community of teachers and writers. The Teaching Writing program allows participants to address individual situations, needs, and interests while learning within a diverse community. By offering flexible, interactive, and customized learning, the program provides a model for teaching writing and a forum where all teachers can learn and grow together as teachers of writing, and as writers too.

The program is built around five core principles:

• The best teachers of writing also write. Every course devotes some time and attention to having teachers explore their own writing, in whatever form or forms that course is built around.
• Teachers can learn from studying theories and best practices in the teaching of writing. Some readings and discussions about both accepted practices and the theories behind those practices are included in every course.
• Teachers can learn from and share with each other. Participants in the program will have experience and expertise in teaching and writing. Every course provides opportunities for participants to share that knowledge with their classmates, and to learn from each other.
• Teachers must have the freedom and encouragement to apply what they learn to meet their own specific needs and situations. The makeup of every class includes teachers teaching at different grade levels and in different disciplines. Every course encourages teachers to reflect on what they are learning and adapt that material to suit their individual needs.
• Teachers learn best in an interactive classroom (even a virtual one). Every course seeks to establish a sense of community.

Admissions Criteria for all Advanced Academic Programs

Program-specific requirements.

In addition to the materials and credentials required for all programs, the Master of Arts in Teaching Writing program requires a:

• Writing Sample: The writing sample may be in any form or genre, on any subject, and should not exceed 10 typed, double-spaced pages.
• Statement of Purpose: Your 750- to 1000-word statement of purpose should describe your professional goals and interests in using writing in your teaching and in exploring your writing.

Program Requirements

Students must complete nine courses, including:

• Three required core courses
• Two customizable core courses
• Four electives

Writing in Teacher Education

This guide provides a brief introduction to writing in the field of Teacher Education through the lens of threshold concepts. It includes:

• An overview of what writing characteristics are valued in teacher education
• A visualization of popular scholars in the field

What does Teacher Education Value in Writing?

The field of   teacher education   is rooted in the study of   teaching and learning , and a goal for the work of the field is   challenging candidates to become critically conscious curriculum makers for social justice in solidarity within community contexts . The field has some fundamental ways of looking at   pedagogy   and doing   curriculum . Sometimes outsiders or newcomers misunderstand or are confused and surprised by the fact that   the field exists in a sociopolitical context .

The following are threshold concepts necessary for thinking and practicing in the discipline. Each   threshold concept   is complex, interrelated with the others, and only briefly described here. Below, these threshold concepts (a sampling, not a definitive list) are “nested” within, and are italicized:

• Intellectual engagement:   Reframing what it means to be a student; moving from seeing self as a passive receiver of information toward an identity of a transformative teacher—an intellectual thinker and actor in democratic teaching and learning.
• Critical-consciousness:   Awareness of educational inequities and understanding of how and why inequity exists (e.g., power, privilege, curriculum) and the importance of anti-oppressive education.
• Empowerment/agency:   Seeing oneself as an educator as both capable of making change and responsible for making change.

Popular Scholars in Teacher Education

Teacher education is a broad field with many perspectives and scholars. The genres and kinds of writing in the field are  varied . Given the emphasis on social justice, teacher education values writing that  connects to the threshold concepts listed above . Professional writing is often in the forms of  books  and  journal articles , but the value in “ stories ”—the  experiences of educators, students, and families —is often found in  blogs , in  organizational reports , and  other types of writing .

Faculty from teacher education were asked the question: “What are ten seminal scholars that students should read and be informed by?” The responses were put into the below Wordle, which visually represents the frequency of responses. For example, Paulo Freire was the most frequently mentioned by faculty, followed by Howard Zinn, Kevin Kumashiro, William Ayers, Gloria Boutte, and Vivian Paley.

Figure 1: Names of authors are placed adjacent to each other in a cloud-like shape. The names of the authors are in different sizes and colors and include: Harper, Sensoy, Zinn, Kumashiro, Noddings, Noguera, MacNaughton, Gorsky, Neito, Paley, Milner, Freire, Kozol, Ladson-Billings, DiAngela, Ayers, Cochran-Smith, hooks, Gay, Sleeter, Boutte, Delgado, Dewey, Foucault, and Deleuze.

An initial observation from the Wordle is that the valued authors are informed by  intellectual engagement (e.g., strong theoretical grounding, synthesis of ideas), critical consciousness (e.g., deep understanding of perspectives and their meaning), and empowerment/agency (e.g., their words and actions are built on a passionate quest for change) .

What Teacher Education Values in Student Writing

Excellent student writing in teacher education  blends self-awareness/student voice  with  deep examination of theoretical constructs  and  social, political, economic, and other contexts .

The expectation for students as they enter the program is that they  begin to consider the impact of their own assumptions, beliefs, and educational experiences  on their beliefs as future teachers. As they matriculate through the program, they will increase their ability to engage with  complex educational issues  in ways that address the threshold concepts of  intellectual engagement, critical consciousness, and empowerment/agency .

Annotated Sample of Writing from Teacher Education

The following annotation of the article cited below provides students with examples of both  (a) writing strategies and conventions  that are commonly part of successful academic writing in teacher education, and  (b) content related to threshold concepts (important, core knowledge)  in teacher education:

Harper, S. R. & Hurtado, S. (2007). Nine themes in campus racial climates and implications for institutional transformation. University of Pennsylvania: From the Selected Works of Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ss.254

It is important to note that teacher education is a broad field with many theories, methodologies, and areas of content. The annotated article included here was selected because of its  emphasis on social justice  (a central focus in the Department of Teacher Education at Miami University), the  variety of research methodologies used  (both qualitative and quantitative), and  its contributions to threshold concepts —allowing readers to intellectually engage with issues (e.g., the issue of campus racial climates), become more critically conscious (e.g., understanding the impact of campus racial climates on students), and use knowledge to take action and create change (e.g., ways that readers can participate in creating more inclusive campus climates).

A caveat:  This article has a traditional research-based structure. While it is important for students to know how to read and understand this type of article, there are  many other styles of writing in teacher education that are equally effective in contributing to threshold concept learning.  Many use  story  and  voice  rather than traditional research methodologies. Students are encouraged to read broadly to explore as many perspectives and writing styles as possible; broad reading will increase awareness and understanding of topics and also assist the students in finding their own voices and strategies. Again, this represents elements of this style of writing within the field; annotations for how other styles of professional writing relate to threshold concepts would be different.

The following section provides information for each of the numbered annotations within the article. The article includes a total of 8 comments. These comments appear within the text of the article and are noted with bold text, brackets [ ], and the word "comment." You can also view these annotations or the original article in other formats linked below:

• PDF of Annotations within Article
• Original Article Text

Included Annotations

• Example/story.  The chapter lede of an example/story provides context for the remainder of the article; invests the reader in the importance of the topic. (A lede is the opening of a piece of writing.) (p. 7–8)
• Clear goal.  The paragraph explicitly states the goal and (as importantly) how that goal will be achieved. (last paragraph on p. 8, paragraph continues on p. 9)
• Synthesis of previous work.  The impact of foundational previous work of one of the authors (Hurtado) is noted; 15 years of research on the topic is summarized, and themes are identified; summary information is included in both narrative and table form. (p. 9–14)
• Identification of research gap.  Statement connecting previous work and work of the authors reported in the article. Authors note the predominance of quantitative work, and relative absence of qualitative work on the topic. (p. 12)
• Methodology of study.  Elements of qualitative study methodology described (e.g., selection criteria for institutions, use of focus groups). (p. 15–16)
• Findings.  Description of each of the nine themes. (p. 16–19)
• Call for action.  Meaning and implications of the findings are applied to needs and specific strategies for change. The action steps are clearly connected to and derived from the research reported in the article. (p. 19–21)
• References.  All works cited in the article are included. American Psychological Association (APA) style is used. (APA is the most commonly used style guide in education literature.) (p. 21–24)

Nine Themes in Campus Racial Climates and Implications for Institutional Transformation

Shaun R. Harper, Sylvia Hurtado

Example/Story

[Comment 1: This chapter lede (the opening of a piece of writing) provides context for the remainder of the article and invests the reader in the importance of the topic (p. 7–8)]

Administrators at two universities were probably less than excited about the news coverage their campuses received on April 27, 2006. Although they were located in different regions of the country, various indicators of racism and racial/ethnic minority student discontent were apparent at both institutions. On one campus in the Northeast, four alarming headlines and racerelated stories were printed on the front page of the student newspaper. An incident in which a campus police officer made racist remarks to three African American female students was juxtaposed with the story of a philosophy professor suing the university for demoting him from department chair because he reported to the dean of his college that students had been racially harassed and discriminated against by his faculty colleagues. The third front-page article described a letter sent to the administration by Hillel, the Jewish student organization, demanding an apology and other concessions for the unfair cancellation of a student art exhibit on campus. Among their requests, Hillel student board members asked the university to conduct “an investigation into the discrimination, racism, and intimidation” one of their members experienced in his interactions with the art gallery director.

A protest at the Office of the President organized by Black Caucus and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) student organization the day before was described in the final story. Protestors said they were insulted that staff members locked the office door and the president walked by refusing to address their concerns. Therefore, they slid a letter under the door, chanted outside on megaphones, and subsequently posted a video of the entire protest on YouTube.com. The protest was in response to what students perceived to be insufficient punishment against the women’s head basketball coach, a White woman, who allegedly interrogated a Black female player about her sexual orientation, repeatedly threatened to dismiss the student from the team if it was discovered that she was in fact a lesbian, and eventually demanded that the player leave the team. While this story appears to be more about sexual orientation than race, Black Caucus members were especially disturbed that this happened to an African American woman who was probably not the first or only player the coach suspected was gay. Perhaps institutional leaders believed these were isolated incidents that coincidentally occurred around the same time, hence there being no formal assessment of the campus racial climate following this day of problematic news coverage.

With support from the president and provost, the second university commissioned an audit of its campus racial climate. The day after a public presentation of preliminary findings from the audit, a reporter from the city newspaper wrote an article with a bold headline indicating the institution had received “a poor racial report card.” The story included a summary of the auditor’s findings and this quote from an African American male sophomore: “It is not a sensitive community for Black students. If I stay, the only reason will be to help effect change.” The article was also retrieved by the Associated Press and reprinted in newspapers across the nation. Unlike at the first university, administrators on this campus felt public pressure to respond to the problems that had been exposed and were expected to use findings from the racial climate audit to guide institutional change. Within one year, the midwestern school hired a chief diversity officer, crafted a memorandum of understanding with the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to improve the campus racial climate, organized a conference to examine the status of racial/ethnic minority male students, and pursued more purposefully the recruitment of a diverse faculty, among other efforts. The audit clearly raised institutional consciousness about the realities of race on campus and revealed racial toxins that had long existed but remained unaddressed.

These two predominantly White institutions (PWIs) had similar responses to racial issues on campus. Although the second university was forced to change after having been embarrassed in the local and national press, it is highly unlikely that the audit was the first indicator of racial turbulence on campus. Instead, there had been signals such as those at the first institution that had been disregarded, either intentionally or inadvertently. Unfortunately, such incidents and subsequent responses are not atypical.

[Comment 2: The following paragraph (last on p. 8, continuing to p. 9) explicitly states the goal and, equally as important, how that goal will be achieved.]

In this chapter, we synthesize fifteen years of research about campus racial climates and present nine themes that emerged from a multiinstitutional qualitative study we conducted. The primary goal here is to illuminate trends that persist on many college and university campuses, especially those that are predominantly White. At the end of the chapter, we use perspectives on transparency and organizational change to frame our implications for institutional transformation.

Synthesis of Previous Work

[Comment 3: In this section (p. 9–14), the impact of foundational previous work of one of the authors (Hurtado) is noted; 15 years of research on the topic is summarized, and themes are identified; summary information is included in both narrative and table form.]

Post-1992 Research on Campus Racial Climates

“The Campus Racial Climate: Contexts of Conflict” (Hurtado, 1992) is the most widely cited study on this topic. Results were derived from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) fourth-year follow-up survey, a nationally representative longitudinal study of college students in the late 1980s. Among the most salient findings was that approximately one in four survey respondents perceived considerable racial conflict on their campuses; this proportion was even higher at four-year institutions that were large, public, or selective. When racial conflict was present on campus, few students were convinced that fostering racially diverse learning environments was a high institutional priority. Racial/ethnic minority students were more likely to believe espoused institutional commitments to multiculturalism when racial tension was low. Hurtado also found that White students were less likely than Blacks and Latinos to perceive racial tension on their campuses, as most believed racism was no longer problematic in society. Furthermore, she concluded that racial tension is probable in environments where there is little concern for individual students, which is symptomatic of many large PWIs that enroll several thousand undergraduates.

The Hurtado study has been reprinted in books and frequently cited by scholars who have written about racial realities on college campuses over the past fifteen years. Given the problematic nature of the results presented in this landmark study, we retrieved and analyzed empirical research studies that have since been published in education and social sciences journals to determine how campus racial climates have evolved since 1992. Although considerable effort has been devoted to studying various topics concerning racial/ethnic minority undergraduates at PWIs, we reviewed only journal articles that focused on the racialized experiences of college students and campus racial climates. Also excluded are climate studies regarding racial/ethnic minority faculty and other underrepresented populations (such as LGBT and low-income students), conceptual pieces, literature reviews, unpublished conference papers, dissertations and theses, legal proceedings, reports, and books (with one exception: Feagin, Vera, and Imani, 1996).

Findings from studies that have been published since 1992 can be divided into three categories: (1) differential perceptions of campus climate by race, (2) racial/ethnic minority student reports of prejudicial treatment and racist campus environments, and (3) benefits associated with campus climates that facilitate cross-racial engagement. Studies in which these findings have emerged as well as the methods and samples on which they are based are presented in Table 1.1. Seventy-one percent of the articles we reviewed are based on quantitative methods, and only one qualitative study (Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso, 2000) was conducted at multiple institutions. Also apparent is that too few researchers have explored how Asian American and Native American students experience campus racial climates. What follows is a brief synopsis of recurring findings within each thematic cluster of studies.

[Tables removed]

Identification of Research Gap

[Comment 4: In the following section, there is an identification of a research gap: a statement connecting previous work and work of the authors reported in the article. The authors note the predominance of quantitative work, and relative absence of qualitative work on this topic. (p. 12)]

Differential Perceptions of Campus Climate by Race

Researchers have consistently found that racial/ethnic minority students and theirWhite peers who attend the same institution often view the campus racial climate in different ways. For example, racial/ethnic minorities in Rankin and Reason’s study (2005) perceived campus climates as more racist and less accepting than did White survey respondents. Similarly, D’Augelli and Hershberger (1993) noted, “Almost all of the sampled African American students reported having borne the brunt of racist remarks and most assumed that African Americans would be mistreated on campus” (p. 77). White students in their study did not report similar experiences and expectations. Nora and Cabrera (1996) found that Whites and racial/ethnic minorities alike perceived the campus climate negatively, reported discrimination from faculty, and recognized insensitivity in the classroom. However,White students’ perceptions were weaker on all three measures and not necessarily attributable to race. While both White and Black participants in Cabrera and Nora’s study (1994) felt alienated in various ways on campus, racial prejudice and discrimination was the predominant source of such feelings among the latter group.

Radloff and Evans (2003) linked perceptual differences to their participants’ home communities. That is, the White students they interviewed grew up in predominantly White neighborhoods and thus had limited firsthand exposure to racism prior to college. Cabrera and others (1999) found that perceptions of racial prejudice had greater effects on Black students’ levels of institutional commitment in comparison to their White counterparts who had also experienced various forms of discrimination. Multiple studies have shown that Black students report lower levels of satisfaction with racial climates and perceive differential treatment on the basis of race more frequently than do their Asian American, Latino, Native American, and White peers (Ancis, Sedlacek, and Mohr, 2000; Cabrera and Nora, 1994; Hurtado, 1992; Suarez-Balcazar and others, 2003). These differences are not just in perceptions but also in the way racial/ethnic minority students experience PWIs.

Minority Student Reports of Prejudicial Treatment and Racist Campus Environments

The second cluster of studies, half of them qualitative, offer insights into how racial/ethnic minority students experience race and racism on predominantly White campuses. Consistent with the pre-1992 literature (Allen, 1988; Fleming, 1984; Loo and Rolison, 1986; Nettles, Thoeny, and Gosman, 1986), the research reviewed here consistently calls attention to the isolation, alienation, and stereotyping with which these students are often forced to contend on campuses where they are not the majority. Perhaps the title of Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner’s article, “Guests in Someone Else’s House: Students of Color” (1994), best characterizes a feeling that is shared among many at most PWIs. In their study of racial/ethnic minority first-year students, Smedley, Myers, and Harrell (1993) discovered that racial conflict and race-laden accusations of intellectual inferiority from White peers and faculty engendered stresses beyond those generally associated with attending a highly selective university; they also found these stresses were most pronounced among Black students. While similar research has focused mostly on undergraduates, Hurtado (1994a) confirmed that Black and Latino graduate students are not immune to the deleterious effects of campus racial climates.

In their study of Latino student transition to college, Hurtado, Carter, and Spuler (1996) suggested, “Even the most talented Latinos are likely to have difficulty adjusting if they perceive a climate where majority students think all minorities are special admits [and] Hispanics feel like they do not ‘fit in.’ . . . Students may internalize these climate observations, presumably because these are more difficult to identify or sanction than overt forms of discrimination” (p. 152). Reportedly, experiences with racial discrimination and perceptions of racial/ethnic tension complicated the participants’ first- and second-year transitions. Beyond the first year, Hurtado and Carter (1997) found that perceptions of racial hostility had negative effects on Latino students’ sense of belonging in the junior year of college. In another study (Hurtado, 1994b), 68 percent of the high-achieving Latino students surveyed felt their peers knew very little about Hispanic culture, which significantly increased the participants’ feelings of racial/ethnic tension and reports of discriminatory experiences on campus.

Feagin, Vera, and Imani’s study (1996) appears to be the first to involve both Black students and parents in an examination of the campus racial climate. Situated at a public university in the Southeast, the participants were well aware of the institution’s racist history and the reputation it had garnered for being racially toxic. And the students described the confrontations they had with White peers and faculty, the absence of cultural space they could call their own, barriers to successfully navigating the institution, and the constant burden of disproving racist stereotypes regarding their academic abilities. Fries- Britt and Turner (2001) described how Black students’ confidence in their academic abilities is often eroded by stereotypes regarding their intellectual inferiority and presumed entry to universities because of affirmative action.

Black undergraduates participating in a research study by Swim and others (2003) wrote in diaries each time (if at all) they experienced racismmor perceived something on their campuses to be racist over a two-week period. Thirty-six percent documented unfriendly looks and skeptical stares from White students and faculty, 24 percent chronicled derogatory and stereotypical verbal remarks directed toward them, 18 percent kept a log of bad service received in the dining hall and other facilities on campus, and 15 percent noted other assorted incidents. The students attributed all of this negative treatment to racism. Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso (2000) found that when Black students experience racial microaggressions (subtle verbal, nonverbal, or visual insults), they begin to feel academically and socially alienated in spaces where such oppression occurs, and as a defense mechanism they create their own academic and social counterspaces (ethnic enclaves that offer shelter from the psychoemotional harms of racial microagressions). While the worth of ethnic culture centers, minority student organizations, and other counterspaces has been empirically proven in recent studies (Guiffrida, 2003; Harper and Quaye, 2007; Patton, 2006; Solórzano and Villalpando, 1998), a reality is that they often limit interactions between White students and racial/ethnic minorities.

Benefits Associated with Campus Climates That Facilitate Cross-Racial Engagement

Findings from studies in the third cluster are relatively consistent. Researchers have recently furnished a large body of empirical evidence to confirm the educational merit of deliberately creating racially diverse college campuses. Much of this evidence was used in support of testimony for the University of Michigan affirmative action cases (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger). These studies verify that students who attend racially diverse institutions and are engaged in educationally purposeful activities that involve interactions with peers from differentracial/ethnic backgrounds come to enjoy cognitive, psychosocial, and interpersonal gains that are useful during and after college (Antonio and others, 2004; Chang, 1999, 2001; Chang, Astin, and Kim, 2004; Chang, Denson, Sáenz, and Misa, 2006; Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, and Gurin, 2002; Pike and Kuh, 2006).

Exposure to diverse perspectives during college could interrupt longstanding segregation trends in society. Students (especially Whites) who engage meaningfully with peers from different backgrounds and diverse perspectives both inside and outside college classrooms are unlikely to remain isolated within their own racial/ethnic communities (Sáenz, Nagi, and Hurtado, 2007), which is believed to be sustainable in environments (such as residential neighborhoods) after college (Milem, Umbach, and Liang, 2004). In contrast to those who maintained racially homogeneous friendships, undergraduates (especially first-year students) with friends outside their race held fewer biases about and expressed less anxiety toward racially different others at the end of college (Levin, van Laar, and Sidanius, 2003). Participants in Antonio’s study on friendship grouping (2004) agreed their campus was racially segregated and could describe the range of racially homogeneous groups that existed. Despite this, many selected best friends based on those with whom they interacted most in the first year of college, not on the basis of race. These findings illustrate the importance of institutional intent in creating spaces and opportunities for meaningful cross-racial engagement, especially for students who are newcomers to an institution.

Methodology of Study

[Comment 5: This section (p. 15–16) describes the methodology of the study. Elements of the qualitative study methodology are described (e.g., selection criteria for institutions, use of focus groups)]

Multicampus Qualitative Study of Racial Climates

Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso’s article (2000) appears to be the only published qualitative study of racial climates based on data collected from more than one institution. It should be noted that their sample was composed exclusively of Black students. To explore the realities of race more deeply, we used qualitative research methods at five PWIs located in three different geographical regions of the country; two campuses were in rural towns and the others in urban areas. In light of Hurtado’s finding (1992) that institutional size affects perceptions of the campus racial climate, only large institutions were included in this study. On average, White students composed 73 percent of the undergraduate populations on these campuses. The primary goals were to pursue a deeper understanding of how contemporary cohorts of students experience campus racial climates in the three areas consistently noted in the literature, while searching for additional themes that have not been captured as fully in previous research.

Focus groups were facilitated with 278 Asian American, Black, Latino, Native American, and White students across the five campuses. The composition of each focus group was racially homogeneous (for example, only Native Americans in one and Latinos exclusively in another). Administrators in academic affairs, student affairs, and multicultural affairs assisted in participant recruitment by sending mass e-mail invitations to all undergraduates from each of the racial/ethnic minority populations on the campus; each White participant led a major campus organization such as student government. In addition to interviews with students, one additional focus group was facilitated with staff persons (mostly entry- and midlevel professionals) from academic affairs, student affairs, and multicultural affairs at each institution. Interestingly, only five of the forty-one staff participants were White, even though we never specified a preference for racial/ethnic minorities who worked at the institutions.

Each focus group session was audiorecorded and later transcribed. The interview transcripts were analyzed using the NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis Software Program. Several techniques prescribed by Miles and Huberman (1994) and Moustakas (1994) were systematically employed to analyze the data collected in this study. The analyses led to the identification of nine recurring themes, which are presented in the next section. To ensure the trustworthiness of the data, we shared our findings in public forums on each campus where participants were invited to deny or confirm our syntheses of what they reported in focus groups about the racial climate, a technique referred to as “member checks” (Lincoln and Guba, 1986). Patton (2002) noted that participants with seemingly unpopular or minority points of view might not feel empowered to offer divergent perspectives in focus groups and subsequently may decide against reporting something different or controversial, a trend better known as “focus group effect.” This certainly could have been the case in this study and is therefore acknowledged as a limitation. Using a different sampling and participant recruitment technique for White students, while justified below, is another noteworthy shortcoming.

[Comment 6: This section on findings describes each of the nine themes of the findings. (p. 16–19)]

Each of the five campuses in this study had its own context-specific challenges with race and racism, which are not discussed here to keep the institutions’ identities anonymous. Instead, we present and summarize nine common racial realities across the institutions.

Cross-Race Consensus Regarding Institutional Negligence

Racial/ ethnic minorities and White students alike expressed frustration with the incongruence of espoused and enacted institutional values concerning diversity. “The university has diversity plastered everywhere, but I have yet to see any real evidence of it,” one focus group participant commented. Many were also disappointed with the lofty expectation that they would magically interact across racial difference on their own. A White student told of growing up on a ranch in Texas where he had not interacted with anyone outside his race prior to enrolling at the university. Regarding the initiation of conversations with racial/ethnic minorities on the campus, he asked: “Why should I be expected to know how to do this on my own? And the university expects us to talk about something as sensitive as racism without helping us. This is unrealistic and actually unfair.” Other students wanted and needed assistance, structure, and venues in which to meaningfully engage with racially different peers, but they found little guidance from educators and administrators. Consequently, almost all of the students interviewed deemed their institutions negligent in the educational processes leading to racial understanding, both inside and outside the classroom.

Race as a Four-Letter Word and an Avoidable Topic

Participants, including the staff persons interviewed, spoke of the infrequency with which race-related conversations occurred on their campuses. Put simply, race remained an unpopular topic and was generally considered taboo in most spaces, including classes other than ethnic studies. At one institution, a midlevel staff member shared: “We don’t talk about race on this campus because this state has long struggled with racial issues that trace back to slavery. So the political climate is such that the university would get into trouble with the state legislators if we talked too much about race.” Students also referenced city and state political norms in their comments about the silencing of topics related to racism and racial injustice. “This campus is a microcosm of [this town] when it comes to running away from anything that even smells like race. It is just something we never talk about here, and most people are okay with that.” Many participants recognized the contradiction inherent in expecting students to interact across racial lines on campuses where race is deliberately unacknowledged in classrooms and other structured venues.

Self-Reports of Racial Segregation

Like the students in Antonio’s study (2004), participants here were well aware of the segregation on their campuses. Few encountered difficulty naming spaces where evidence of racial segregation could be found. Chief among them was fraternity row. In fact, one Black student referred to this segregated space as “Jim Crow Row,” as he reflected on fraternity parties and other events to which he had been denied access, perceivably due to his race. At the conclusion of a focus group at another institution, the participants led a guided tour through various “ethnic neighborhoods” (as they called them) in the campus dining hall, where racial segregation was visibly apparent. Beyond observable segregation trends on the campuses, most students we interviewed personally confessed to having few (if any) friends from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. Several White participants expressed an interest in building friendships with others but said they did not know how. By her own admission, a White female student leader was embarrassed that she had not even noticed until the focus group discussion that all of her close friends were White. In some instances, White students attributed their lack of engagement with racial/ethnic minority peers to the existence of minority student organizations. “If we did not have the Black frats, our chapters would have more diverse members,” an Interfraternity Council president claimed. Worth acknowledging here is that only twenty-nine students held membership in the four Black fraternities on this particular campus.

Gaps in Social Satisfaction by Race

White and Asian American students often expressed feelings of social satisfaction at the five institutions and found it difficult to identify aspects of the campus environment they would change. Because all the White participants were student leaders, the universality of this finding should be interpreted with caution. While not as satisfied as the White and Asian American students, Latinos and Native Americans mostly expressed gratitude for having been afforded the opportunity to matriculate at the various campuses. Their expectations for the provision of stronger social support appeared to be modest in comparison to those of their Black peers. It should be noted that Native American undergraduates were less than half of 1 percent of the undergraduate student populations on four of the campuses we studied. In one focus group, a Latina first-year student began with an enthusiastic description of the benefits associated with attending such a prestigious university, but hearing stories from others ignited consciousness of just how little social support she had been afforded at the institution. At every university, Black students expressed the highest degrees of dissatisfaction with the social environment.

Reputational Legacies for Racism

One logical explanation for Black student displeasure was the bad reputations that preceded the universities they attended. Some entered their institutions expecting to experience racism. “My parents, sister, aunt, and just about every African American in my home town couldn’t understand why I came here. They told me to go to [a black college] because this place is so racist,” one woman shared. In each focus group, other Black students told similar stories of how they had been warned about the racist environments they would encounter. “Kanye West said George W. Bush does not care about Black people. Well, it is obvious [this institution] does not care about Black people, and we have known this for a few generations now.” Like the students and parents in Feagin, Vera, and Imani’s study (1996), Black undergraduates interviewed for this study described how negatively their institutions were viewed within Black communities across the state because of historical exclusionary admissions practices. Many Black students withdrew prematurely in the past, and those who managed to persist through degree attainment often returned to their home communities with stories of the racism they had endured. Although this was found only among Black students in the study, its salience and consistency across the five campuses makes it noteworthy.

White Student Overestimation of Minority Student Satisfaction

White student leaders were selected because they were thought to be most likely to have interacted with racial/ethnic minority peers in the student organizations they led. Moreover, we suspected they were positioned to offer more meaningful appraisals of the campus racial climates because of their levels of political leadership on the campuses. Focus groups with these participants were always conducted after those with racial/ethnic minority students. The White students were most satisfied with the social environments, and they erroneously assumed their Black, Latino, and Native American peers experienced the institutions this same way. They reported that racial/ethnic minority student engagement in mainstream campus organizations was low, but for some reason those students were thought to be equally satisfied with their college experiences. When asked about the basis of their assumptions, the White participants often responded with, “I don’t know . . . I just figured everyone loves it here.” Because there was so little structured and meaningful interaction across races, student leaders who were presumed to have understood the general pulse of the campus were generally unaware of the disparate affective dispositions their racial/ethnic minority peers held toward the institutions.

The Pervasiveness of Whiteness in Space, Curricula, and Activities

Beyond ethnic and multicultural centers on the five campuses, Asian American, Black, Latino, and Native American students found it difficult to identify other spaces on campus in which they felt shared cultural ownership. White interests were thought to be privileged over others, which many racial/ethnic minorities viewed as inconsistent with institutional claims of inclusiveness. These perceptions are perhaps best illustrated in this quote from a sophomore student: “Everything is so White. The concerts: White musicians. The activities: catered to White culture. The football games: a ton of drunk White folks. All the books we read in class: White authors and viewpoints. Students on my left, right, in front and in back of me in my classes: White, White, White, White. I feel like there is nothing for us here besides the [cultural] center, but yet [this university] claims to be so big on diversity. That is the biggest white lie I have ever heard.” Other participants also critiqued the isolation of ethnic culture to a single center, office, or academic major. Although Asian American students generally appeared to be as satisfied as their White peers, even they expressed a desire for greater cultural representation.

Call for Action

[Comment 7: In this call for action (p. 19–21), the meaning and implications of the findings are applied to needs and specific strategies for change. The action steps are clearly connected to and derived from the research reported in the article. ]

The Consciousness-Powerlessness Paradox among Racial/Ethnic Minority Staff

Nearly 88 percent of the staff persons we interviewed were racial/ethnic minorities. Interestingly, they were fully aware of the degree to which minority students were disadvantaged and dissatisfied on the five campuses. They also knew about the extent to which racial segregation existed. Much of what the students shared in focus groups was confirmed (mostly without prompting) in interviews with the staff. One of the five White staff participants asserted, “Everyone around this table knows how segregated students are, but we never talk about it. It is the sort of thing that will piss the upper administration off and make them leery of you for raising the issue.” Despite their consciousness of the realities of race, most indicated a reluctance to publicly call attention to these trends for fear of losing their jobs or political backlash. “I feel bad for what the young brothers and sisters go through here, but there is only so much I can do since I have only been here two years,” a Latino academic advisor explained. Staff persons would complain to each other and privately strategize with students but felt powerless in voicing observations to senior administrators and White colleagues. Fear of being seen as troublemakers who were always calling attention to racism compelled many to remain silent.

Unexplored Qualitative Realities of Race in Institutional Assessment

In every focus group on each of the five campuses, student participants (Whites and racial/ethnic minorities alike) indicated that it was the first time any institutional effort was made to inquire about the qualitative realities of their racialized experiences. “You’re the first person to ask us these kinds of questions” was a common remark. Furthermore, the White student leaders said no one, including their student organization advisors, had ever asked them questions about minority student engagement and satisfaction or the frequency with which they interacted with peers who were racially different. Reportedly, the institutional research offices had not conducted any formal climate assessments. Likewise, informal queries from faculty and administrators were also uncommon. “If they truly cared, they would have asked us about these things before now,” a Native American male senior believed.

Implications for Institutional Transformation

The 2006 report of the commission appointed by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to explore needed areas of improvement in higher education called for more transparency regarding student learning outcomes on college and university campuses. Merely reporting outcomes, however, keeps the source of racial inequities undisclosed and does not result in better, more inclusive climates for learning. The consistency of results from fifteen years of empirical research, along with the nine themes that emerged in our study, make clear the need for greater transparency regarding racial realities in learning environments at PWIs. Even when cues are readily available (for example, a newspaper with four front-page articles related to racial injustice), the realities of race are typically made transparent only when there is a highly publicized, racially motivated incident or when embarrassing findings from an external auditor are made public.

Consistent with Kezar and Eckel’s recommendation (2002a), we suggest that administrators, faculty, and institutional researchers proactively audit their campus climates and cultures to determine the need for change. As indicated in many of the nine themes, racial realities remained undisclosed and unaddressed in systematic ways on college campuses. As long as administrators espouse commitments to diversity and multiculturalism without engaging in examinations of campus climates, racial/ethnic minorities will continue to feel dissatisfied, all students will remain deprived of the full range of educational benefits accrued through cross-racial engagement, and certain institutions will sustain longstanding reputations for being racially toxic environments.

Eckel and Kezar (2003) defined transformation as the type of change that affects the institutional culture, is deep and pervasive, is intentional, and occurs over time. Accordingly, deep change reflects a shift in values (for example, from espoused to enacted) and assumptions that underlie daily operations (for example, the flawed expectation that cross-racial interactions will magically occur on their own). Pervasiveness indicates that change is felt across the institution in the assumptions and daily work of faculty, staff, and administrators. For example, the Black culture center on a campus cannot improve an institution’s external reputation if professors routinely perpetuate racist stereotypes in classrooms. Also, racial/ethnic minority students will continue to feel like “guests in someone else’s house” if student activities offices fail to sponsor programs that reflect the diverse cultures represented on a campus. Intentionality in constructing culturally affirming environments and experiences that facilitate the cultivation of racially diverse friendship groups must substitute passivity and negligence. As previous research has established, these racial climate issues have consequences for student outcomes (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen, and Allen, 1998). For example, attention to diversity in the curriculum and cocurriculum, particularly in the first two years of college, results in student development along many dimensions of complex thinking and social cognitive growth (Hurtado, 2005).

Eckel and Kezar (2003) also distinguished transformation from other types of change, including adjustments that continually happen in academia that are neither pervasive nor deep, such as showing a one-hour video on respecting diversity at new student orientation; isolated change that may be deep but limited to one unit or program area, as when an ethnic studies department offers a cluster of elective courses on race; or far-reaching change that affects many across the institution but lacks depth, as with a policy regarding the symbolic inclusion of an equal opportunity statement on letterhead and all hiring materials. Moreover, Kezar and Eckel (2002b) found that senior administrative support, collaboration, and visible action are among the core elements requisite for transformational change in higher education. While administrative leadership on its own is insufficient, our findings make clear that entry- and midlevel professionals, especially racial/ethnic minorities, often feel silenced and powerless to transform campus racial climates.

In their 2005 study, Kezar and Eckel interviewed thirty college presidents who had been engaged in organizational change with a significant emphasis on the success of racial/ethnic minority students. The presidents used a strategy of dialogue and discussion in the appraisal of their own and their institutions’ commitments to diversity, while holding various stakeholders accountable for aligning efforts with stated institutional values and priorities. If this is to occur on other campuses, race cannot remain an avoidable topic. For instance, if accountability for student learning is a high priority, dialogue and strategic efforts must be directed toward addressing undercurrents of racial segregation that inhibit the rich learning that occurs in cross-racial engagement. Likewise, faculty and staff in academic affairs, student affairs, multicultural affairs, and other units on campus should be challenged to consider their roles as accomplices in the cyclical reproduction of racism and institutional negligence.

Despite fifteen years of racial climate research on multiple campuses, the themes of exclusion, institutional rhetoric rather than action, and marginality continue to emerge from student voices. Conducting a climate study can be symbolic of institutional action, only to be filed away on a shelf. We advocate that data gathered through the ongoing assessment of campus racial climates guide conversations and reflective examinations to overcome discomfort with race, plan for deep levels of institutional transformation, and achieve excellence in fostering racially inclusive learning environments.

[Comment 8: In these references, all works cited in the article are included. American Psychological Association (APA) style is used. APA is the most commonly used style guide in education literature. (p. 21–24)]

Allen, W. R. “Black Students in U.S. Higher Education: Toward Improved Access, Adjustment, and Achievement.”  Urban Review , 1988, 20(3), 165–188.

Ancis, J. R., Sedlacek, W. E., and Mohr, J. J. “Student Perceptions of Campus Cultural Climate by Race.”  Journal of Counseling and Counseling Development , 2000, 78, 180–185.

Antonio, A. L. “When Does Race Matter in College Friendships? Exploring Men’s Diverse and Homogeneous Friendship Groups.”  Review of Higher Education , 2004, 27(4), 553–575.

Antonio, A. L., and others. “Effects of Racial Diversity on Complex Thinking in College Students.”  Psychological Science , 2004, 15(8), 507–510.

Cabrera, A. F., and Nora, A. “College Students’ Perceptions of Prejudice and Discrimination and Their Feelings of Alienation: A Construct Validation Approach.”  Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies , 1994, 16(3), 387–409.

Cabrera, A. F., and others. “Campus Racial Climate and the Adjustment of Students to College: A Comparison Between White Students and African American Students.”  Journal of Higher Education , 1999, 70(2), 134–160.

[Remaining citations removed]

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Effective writing instruction for students with learning problems

by: The GreatSchools Editorial Team | Updated: November 20, 2022

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Writing is both a social and a cognitive process. In the world outside the classroom, people write to communicate with an audience, drawing on their knowledge of content and writing, strategies for planning and revising, and basic writing skills. In a previous article , I discussed writing development and disabilities in terms of five components:

• the social context for writing
• the writer’s knowledge
• planning processes
• text production
• evaluation and revision
• self-regulation

In this article, I will outline components of effective writing instruction, to help parents assess the quality of instruction in their child’s classroom. The goals of good writing instruction for students with disabilities are the same as those for all students.  All students need to develop their knowledge about the purposes and forms of writing, basic writing skills, strategies for planning and evaluating their work, and motivation. However, struggling writers need more support and more intensive, explicit instruction in skills and strategies.

A high-quality writing program will provide a balance between opportunities for children to engage in writing that is meaningful to them, and to receive explicit instruction in the skills and strategies they need to become proficient writers. Development of the self-regulation strategies and motivation needed for independent writing are also important. The writing classroom should provide:

• a context for regular, meaningful writing
• instruction in handwriting, spelling, and sentence formation, as needed
• instruction in strategies for planning, revising, and self-regulation during the writing process
• attention to development of motivation for writing
• use of technology to support the writing process (this important topic will be addressed separately in a future article)

Context for regular, meaningful writing

The foundation of an effective writing program is the opportunity for frequent writing on meaningful tasks that have an audience and purpose. This principle is at the heart of the Writers’ Workshop approach used widely over the past 20 years. 1 When children have a regular time to write, see their writing tasks as meaningful, and get responses to their writing from peers, teachers, and others, they are motivated to write and come to understand the purposes and value of writing.

Consider, for example, the contrast between learning persuasive writing in order to master the five-paragraph essay format, and learning persuasive writing in order to argue a point of view in a social studies debate. Or consider the difference between writing a story that only the teacher reads and grades, and reading your story to your peers in class or publishing it in a class magazine for parents.

Writing for real purposes makes writing far more enjoyable. Furthermore, it helps students to understand the reasons behind the various forms of writing. For example, they learn that persuasive writing needs to consider the possible objections of the readers. And the opportunity to read their stories to the class gives them direct feedback on what features made it entertaining.

It is sometimes a challenge for teachers to design opportunities for students to publish and share their writing with audiences.  Fellow students in the class are the most common audience — always available to provide responses in peer conferences or class readings. Many teachers have students create class magazines or write books for the class library.  Some teachers invite parents and other guests to readings of class work, or encourage children to write letters to a variety of audiences.  The Internet now provides a range of possible new audiences. Many websites publish children’s work or support collaborative research projects among classrooms.

In addition to writing for specific audiences, writing can be made meaningful by connecting it to other areas of the curriculum. Writing as part of research projects in science and social studies shows children how writing about a topic can enhance their learning. When the projects are shared with others, they provide a model for communication in a learning community — an important use of writing in the adult world.

Parents can provide important support for this aspect of writing by encouraging children to write at home. Think of all the ways you use writing — from shopping lists, to thank-you notes, to email — and engage your child in those activities.

Explicit instruction in basic writing skills

All students can benefit, at some point in their development, from direct instruction in the basic writing skills of handwriting, spelling, punctuation, and sentence formation.  For many students with writing problems, difficulties in these skills are a significant barrier to writing.  These students need extra time devoted to explicit instruction and practice in basic skills.   This instruction should be carefully planned and include regular monitoring of student progress. However, it also needs to be efficient so that it does not dominate either instruction or writing time.

Handwriting

The basic goals of handwriting instruction are to help students develop writing that is legible and fluent, that is, relatively rapid and not effortful. 2 As in reading, fluency is important. When students are not fluent and have to pay attention to handwriting, it interferes with other aspects of the writing process. Either cursive or printing can be effective.  Instruction should include teaching how to form letters correctly, as well as how to hold the pen and paper. Short daily practice sessions (10-15 minutes) followed by application in meaningful writing tasks are most effective. Fluency in handwriting is best promoted through frequent writing, and develops gradually over time. Instruction in the primary grades for children experiencing difficulty with handwriting may help to prevent later writing problems. In addition to instruction, teachers and parents should consider the use of word processing or other computer tools as a way of compensating for problems with handwriting.

Spelling and decoding skills are strongly connected.  Both require phonemic awareness and phonics skill, knowledge of spelling patterns, and familiarity with high-frequency words. Thus, spelling is part of both reading and writing instruction. Students with reading and writing problems generally need explicit, intensive instruction in decoding and spelling that emphasizes sound-symbol relationships and patterns. In writing, the practice of “invented spelling” in the primary grades helps students to develop their phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge. Instructional methods that emphasize spelling patterns by grouping words with similar patterns are effective.

In addition, students with spelling problems need support in memorizing the spelling of high-frequency, irregularly spelled words (for example, “right,”  “laugh,” and “their”).  Word lists, word walls, personalized spelling dictionaries, and strategies for studying spelling words are all common ways to support learning high-frequency words.

In addition to instruction, students need opportunities to practice spelling words both in lists and in the context of writing. A few recommendations pertain particularly to writing.

• First, instruction should pay special attention to the words most commonly used in student writing. 3
• Second, because many students with learning disabilities will continue to have problems with spelling even after learning to read fluently, it is especially important for such students to learn strategies for proofreading their writing.
• Third, they also need to learn to use tools, including dictionaries and spell checkers, to monitor and correct their spelling.  Personalized dictionaries, in which students write the words they are learning, can be helpful.

Sentence formation

Even good writers often pause to figure out how to express their ideas in sentences. For struggling writers, writing correct, effective sentences is a significant problem. In addition to learning to write grammatically correct sentences, they need to learn to write sentences with embedded clauses, write topic sentences that introduce main ideas, use transition words, and craft introductory sentences. There is less research on instructional methods in this area than for spelling and handwriting, and some of the research results go against common wisdom or practice. For example, traditional grammar instruction, with its focus on rules for correct writing, has little impact on the quality of students’ writing.

Three methods that have support from research or from the practices of effective teachers are sentence expansion, sentence combining, and teaching sentences within paragraph types. 4 All three methods require students to apply their language sense (asking themselves: “Does that sound right?”) to writing increasingly complex sentences, rather than learning grammatical rules. In sentence expansion , students begin with “kernel sentences” composed of a subject and verb, for example, “John ran.”   Then they add elements to expand the sentence to tell more about the “who, what, why, when, and where.”  In sentence combining methods, students begin with several short sentences and learn how to combine them into longer more complex sentences. In paragraph-based methods, students learn sentence patterns for the topic, detail, and concluding sentences in different types of writing, such as sequence paragraphs and persuasive paragraphs. As always when learning skills, it is important for students to have opportunities to practice these skills in meaningful writing tasks, with regular feedback.

Strategies for planning, revising, and self-regulation

Proficient writers have sophisticated strategies for planning and evaluating their writing. They:

• set goals for communicating with an audience
• use knowledge of genre to generate and organize content
• evaluate their writing in terms of their goals and general standards for writing
• often revise extensively

In contrast, struggling writers do little planning and limit their revising primarily to correcting errors. The research on the cognitive processes of good writers has been used to develop strategies to teach to less proficient writers. For example, we can teach students planning strategies that help them to use knowledge of organizational elements of text (e.g., in persuasive writing:  position, reasons, evidence, and conclusion) to generate and organize their writing.  Research provides strong evidence that we can successfully teach struggling writers to use more effective strategies for planning and revising and, thereby, help them to make substantial improvements in their writing. 5 Fortunately, strategy instruction is effective with average learners as well as struggling writers, so it is a good method for general education classes that include students with disabilities.

Figure 1 below provides an example of a strategy for revising a piece of writing. 6 This peer revising strategy involves a pair of students who get together to help each other evaluate and revise their papers. The steps are written as instruction to the student who is acting as editor. To teach the strategy, the teacher models applying the evaluation questions to samples of writing and making revisions to improve the writing. The teacher engages the students in collaboratively applying the strategy until students are ready to practice it in pairs. Note that a wide range of evaluation criteria could be used in step 3. The strategy provides a routine to support students in evaluation and revision that looks more like the processes that proficient writers use.

Figure 1: Peer Revising Strategy6

• LISTEN and READ along as the author reads the story.
• TELL what the story is about and what you liked best.
• READ the story to yourself and make NOTES about:
• CLARITY? Is there anything you don’t understand?
• DETAILS? What information/details could be added?
• DISCUSS your suggestions with the author.
• Author decides what changes to make.

Effective instruction in strategies for planning and revising a piece of writing requires a teacher to:

• Provide an explicit explanation of how the strategy works.
• Demonstrate or model the strategy while “thinking aloud” to show students the cognitive processes involved.
• Provide guided practice in which the students try out the strategy with teacher support.
• Provide independent practice and application in other situations.

It takes several weeks to teach a strategy effectively, so usually teachers would only teach 3 or 4 strategies in the course of a year.

Another important part of teaching strategies is helping students to develop self-regulation strategies . Several aspects of self-regulation can be included along with strategy instruction.

• First, self-regulation involves the ability to select strategies and monitor whether they are working . Thus, teachers must spend time discussing why the strategy is important and when and where it might be used. In addition, they teach students how to evaluate their own writing and decide whether a strategy is working for them.
• Second, self-regulation includes task management , so teachers discuss with students how to set aside a time and place for writing.
• Third, it includes strategies for coping with difficulty and maintaining persistence . Teachers help students to learn things they can say to themselves to keep a positive attitude and to praise or reward themselves for good work.

The model of strategy instruction developed by Steven Graham and Karen Harris 7 , the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), as its name indicates, includes several procedures for enhancing self-regulation.

Motivation and final words

One of the most difficult challenges about working with students who struggle with writing is increasing their motivation. One cannot consider a writing instruction program successful unless, in addition to teaching skills and strategies, it helps students to develop positive attitudes toward writing. Without such positive attitudes, it is unlikely that students will use writing well outside of the classroom or continue to develop their skills.

I’d like to close by mentioning two important aspects of a writing program that contribute to motivation. First, writing instruction should engage students in writing that is satisfying to them in its own right. When writing is taught as an exercise with the emphasis solely on proper form or passing a test, not only do students remain unmotivated, but also they are less likely to learn what is being taught because it is not connected to any meaningful purpose. In contrast, when students write for meaningful purposes, have some choice in topic, and share and publish their work for peers, parents, and others, they develop a positive appreciation for the value of writing.

Second, failure is one of the main causes of poor motivation. Students who expect to fail at writing tasks will engage in them reluctantly, if at all. The antidote for failure is explicit instruction that shows students how to use effective writing processes and provides adequate practice so that they can develop mastery. Students want to know “how to do it,” and it is the teacher’s role to show them. When students work in an environment where they write for meaningful purposes and teachers provide explicit instruction on how to write effectively, the motivation to learn to write is seldom a problem.

When parents understand the challenges that students with learning difficulties face as they strive to become proficient writers, they are better equipped to help their kids overcome frustrations with writing, to provide opportunities at home for kids to practice meaningful writing, and to advocate for their children’s learning needs in the classroom.

• Calkins, L. The art of teaching writing . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994.
• Graham, S. “Handwriting and spelling instruction for students with learning disabilities:  A review.”   Learning Disability Quarterly ,Vol. 22.
• Graham, S., Harris, K. J., et. al. “The basic spelling vocabulary list.” Journal of Educational Research , Vol. 86.
• Haynes, C., & Jennings, T. “Listening and speaking: Essential ingredients for teaching  struggling writers.” Perspectives (in press).
• Graham, S. “Strategy instruction and the teaching of writing: A meta-analysis.” In C. A. MacArthur, S. Graham, et al., Handbook of Writing Research , 2006.
• MacArthur, C. A., Schwartz, S. S., et al. “Effects of a reciprocal peer revision strategy in special education classrooms.”  Learning Disabilities Research and Practice , Vol. 6.
• Graham, S. & Harris, K. J. Writing better: Effective strategies for teaching students with learning difficulties . Baltimore, MD: Brooks, 2005.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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4 ways to get students excited about writing

Growing up, I liked to write. More specifically, though, I liked to write about things I liked. While I could crank out a decent enough essay like the best of them, my real passion was in creative writing. Buried in the depths of my office closet is a box holding over a dozen spiral-bound notebooks and hundreds of loose pieces of paper (all adorned with my middle-to-high-school handwriting) spinning elaborate tales of drama and adventure, mostly inspired by my favorite fantasy novels.

A few pieces, though, stand out. There’s the short story I wrote for my honors English class in tenth grade, when we were studying the works of Edgar Allan Poe. My teacher gave us the option to either write an essay comparing the themes in multiple examples of Poe’s work or to demonstrate our understanding of the class material by writing an original short story mimicking Poe’s style. I chose the latter. And I got an A.

Looking back at my high school career, I realize how extremely fortunate I was to have English teachers who understood the importance of “leaning in” and getting to know me as a person. The Poe assignment was one of many in which my teachers found ways to tailor writing tasks so that they felt more interesting and relevant. It was their ability to create buy-in on my part that resulted in my not only wanting to write for school but also in my learning to see myself as a writer both inside and outside of the classroom.

There’s a great deal of focus in writing instruction on making sure students consider their audience. Just as we want students to know their audience, however, we, as teachers, need to also know our students so that we can empower them to use their writing voices. Here are four tips on how to go about this in your classroom.

1. Assign authentic writing tasks

My colleague Julie Richardson recently wrote about engaging student interest with authentic writing tasks . Namely, she calls out the importance of having students consider what they want to accomplish with a particular piece of writing, in addition to what their teacher wants. This callout is in keeping with research by scholars including Steve Graham and Sarah Freedman , among others, that demonstrates the importance of considering what sorts of writing tasks students might engage in outside the classroom. Authenticity is an excellent way to get students excited about writing.

By integrating authentic writing tasks into your curriculum, you can help your students see the value in school-based writing. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Making a thank-you card for a friend or family member
• Using picture books to write simple stories
• Creating comic books or graphic novels
• Summarizing and critiquing movies or episodes of TV shows
• Documenting a family story or recipe
• Reporting on the unexpected origins of an everyday item
• Leaving effective online reviews for products
• Writing a cover letter for a potential job
• Drafting requests to state and local representatives

2. Get to know your students

To get started identifying authentic writing tasks for your students, ask yourself: who are my students? What drives and motivates them? What are their strengths? What are their opportunities for growth? Why should knowing how to write—and to write well—matter to them?

One simple way to start the getting-to-know-you process is by asking students to complete a writer reflection survey. This not only allows you, as the teacher, to learn more about how your students view and approach writing, but it also gives them a chance to self-reflect and consider, perhaps for the first time, how they view and approach writing.

To gauge shifts in students’ perspectives, I recommend administering your survey multiple times (e.g., once at the beginning of the year and once at the end, or between major writing assignments). Some examples of potential statements you might include, asking students to indicate their level of agreement from strongly disagree to strongly agree , are:

• I can stay focused when I write.
• It’s hard for me to remember how to spell words.
• I write differently depending on who will read my writing.
• I like adding extra features to my writing, like illustrations or labels.
• I know who I can go to for help with my writing.
• I usually understand the directions in school writing assignments.
• I see myself as a writer.
• I believe writing is important in everyday life.

For younger students, consider adapting your survey into a classroom activity that gets students up and moving around the room. Designate certain parts of the classroom as “response areas,” then read each statement aloud and ask students to walk to the response area that best matches how they feel about the statement. For example, students who strongly agree with the statement “I can stay focused when I write” might go stand by the back wall, while those who strongly disagree might go stand up front by the whiteboard, while those somewhere in between could stand in the middle of the classroom.

Note, however, that a survey such as the one described here is simply the beginning of an ongoing conversation you’ll need to have with your students as you discover more about who they are and how you can help them feel more confident as writers.

To keep the conversation going, consider asking students to keep a writing journal that they regularly share with you and in which you can provide feedback and answer questions. You might also incorporate peer review sessions into your lessons, as these sessions allow students to hone their writing skills and share their work with peers. Both of these approaches can get students excited about writing and help them begin to see themselves as writers who understand and appreciate the value of writing in their everyday lives.

3. Prioritize an asset-based approach

When getting to know your students, take particular care to use an asset-based approach; that is, do not mistake difference for “less than.” For example, you may have students in your classroom who are more comfortable and fluent expressing themselves in a language other than English. You might have students with disabilities like dyslexia, which can make accurate spelling a challenge. You might have students with ADHD for whom the act of sitting down and quietly drafting a paper is difficult. Does that mean these students have less potential as writers than their peers? Of course not! It simply means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to writing instruction.

Multilingual students, for whom weaving together words from two or more languages can be as natural as breathing, should be allowed and encouraged to incorporate translanguaging into their writing process. Students with dyslexia or for whom spelling is otherwise a challenge should be provided access to accommodations like spell check and speech-to-text, which research shows can lead to improved writing outcomes. Students with ADHD, meanwhile, may benefit from more explicit guidance on what is expected, prewriting activities such as mind mapping, and having a larger writing task broken down into smaller micro-assignments, as noted by educator Tracy Collins on Edutopia .

The importance of an asset-based approach can’t be overstated and is an invaluable way to get students excited about writing.

4. Aim for inclusivity

Consider that you may also have students whose lived experiences are such that they don’t find some popular assigned prompts relevant. For example, a student who spent their summer at home or working to help support their family probably isn’t going to feel particularly seen if asked to write about what sort of vacation they took while school was out. A student with same-sex parents, if tasked with writing about their family, may wonder if the instructor has considered the possibility that not everyone’s family includes a mom and a dad and whether it’s safe (or even allowed) to talk about their home life at school. Similarly, a female student of color might roll her eyes at being assigned an essay on yet another book written by a white male author who lived in England hundreds of years ago and who never had to deal with the intersection of racism and sexism she faces on a daily basis, or to consider how living at that intersection shapes one’s lived experiences.

Once you’re aware of the multitude of identities in your classroom, you can tailor your writing assignments appropriately. For example, instead of asking students to write about where they may (or may not) have gone on summer vacation, you can ask them to write about the ideal summer vacation, that is, what would they like to do? Where would they like to go, and why? Similarly, if asking students to write about their families, make sure you’ve established that your classroom is a safe space in which diverse family structures are celebrated and are well-represented in the books or other written texts you analyze with your class. Finally, do an author audit of the books assigned as part of your curriculum. Are they all (or mostly all) white male authors? If so, look into alternative books that you could use instead that might be more interesting and relevant for your students. Not sure where to start? Try your school librarian, who will more likely than not be happy to help!

It can be challenging to get students excited about writing. But as those delivering and differentiating the curriculum, it’s vital that teachers consider the needs, interests, and identities of their students. It is only by knowing them well that you can assign truly authentic writing tasks.

When choosing prompts and designing assignments, I encourage you to make a habit of asking yourself, how can I make this something my students want to write about? How can I cultivate a sense of community in my classroom so that each student-writer can show up comfortably and confidently as their whole, authentic self?

You may also wish to read through NWEA’s stances on writing , which contain a wealth of research-backed information demonstrating what effective, equitable writing instruction looks like.

As noted at the beginning of this article, it can be difficult to get students excited about writing. But if you’ve ever seen that spark in a student’s eyes the moment they realize they’re a writer, then you know it’s well worth the effort to try.

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The One Method That Changes Your—and All Students’—Writing

Science-based writing methods can achieve dramatic results..

Posted May 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

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• This method received only limited uptake, despite high-profile research publications and textbooks.
• A focus on writing style might have limited the method's impacts.

I remember spending hours commenting painstakingly on my students’ papers when I was a graduate student teaching in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. My students loved our classes, and they filled my sections and gave me terrific course evaluations. Yet I could see that their writing failed to change significantly over the course of the semester. I ended up feeling as if I should refund their money, haunted by the blunt instruments we had to teach writing.

As I’ve learned from directing five writing programs at three different universities, methods matter. When I reviewed comments on papers from instructors who taught in my programs, I discovered that the quantity and quality of comments on students’ papers made only a slight impact on writing outcomes. For instance, one notoriously lazy instructor took several weeks to return assignments and only used spelling and grammar checkers to automate comments. But his conscientious colleague made dozens of sharp observations about students’ arguments, paragraphs, and sentences. However, Mr. Conscientious’ students improved perhaps only 10% over Mr. Minimalist’s students. Even then, the differences stemmed from basic guidelines Mr. Conscientious insisted his students write to, which included providing context sentences at the outset of their essay introductions.

Educators have also poured resources into teaching writing, with increasing numbers of hours dedicated to teaching writing across primary, secondary, and higher education . Yet studies continue to find writing skills inadequate . In higher education, most universities require at least a year of writing-intensive courses, with many universities also requiring writing across the curriculum or writing in the disciplines to help preserve students’ writing skills. However, writing outcomes have remained mostly unchanged .

While pursuing my doctorate, I dedicated my research to figuring out how writing worked. As a graduate student also teaching part-time, I was an early convert to process writing. I also taught those ancient principles of logos, ethos, and pathos, as well as grammar and punctuation. Nevertheless, these frameworks only created a canvas for students’ writing. What was missing: how writers should handle words, sentence structure, and relationships between sentences.

Yet researchers published the beginnings of a science-based writing method over 30 years ago. George Gopen, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams created a framework for identifying how to maximize the clarity, coherence, and continuity of writing. In particular, Gopen and Swan (1990) created a methodology for making scientific writing readable . This work should have been a revelation to anyone teaching in or directing a writing program. But, weirdly, comparatively few writing programs or faculty embraced this work, despite Williams, Colomb, and Gopen publishing both research and textbooks outlining the method and process.

Peculiarly, this framework—represented by Williams’ Style series of textbooks and Gopen’s reader expectation approach—failed to become standard in writing courses, likely because of two limitations. First, both Gopen and Williams hewed to a relativistic stance on writing methods, noting that rule-flouting often creates a memorable style. This stance created a raft of often-contradictory principles for writing. For example, Williams demonstrated that beginning sentences with There is or There are openings hijacked the clarity of sentences, then argued writers should use There is or There are to shunt important content into sentence emphasis positions, where readers recall content best. Second, these researchers failed to tie this writing framework to the wealth of data in psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience , or cognitive psychology on how our reading brains process written English. For instance, textbooks written by these three principal researchers avoid any mention of why emphasis positions exist at the ends of sentences and paragraphs—despite the concept clearly originating in the recency effect. This limitation may stem from the humanities’ long-held antipathy to the idea that writing is a product, rather than a process. Or even that science-based methods can help teachers and programs measure the effectiveness of writing, one reason why university First-Year Writing programs have failed to improve students’ writing in any measurable way.

Nevertheless, when you teach students how our reading brains work, you create a powerful method for rapidly improving their writing—in any course that requires writing and at all levels of education. Students can grasp how writing works as a system and assess the costs and benefits of decisions writers face, even as they choose their first words. This method also works powerfully to help students immediately understand how, for instance, paragraph heads leverage priming effects to shape readers’ understanding of paragraph content.

Using this method, I and my colleagues have helped students use a single writing assignment to secure hundreds of jobs, win millions in grant funding, and advance through the ranks in academia. However, we’ve also used the same method without modifications in elementary and secondary classrooms to bolster students’ writing by as much as three grade levels in a single year.

Perhaps the time has arrived for this well-kept secret to revolutionizing student writing outcomes to begin making inroads into more writing classrooms.

Gopen, G. D. and J. A. Swan (1990). "The Science of Scientific Writing." American Scientist 78(6): 550-558.

Gopen, George. The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Gopen, George. Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace . University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace . Harper Collins, 1994.

Williams, Joseph. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace . Longman, 2002.

Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Ph.D. , is a consultant on writing and organizations. She is also the author, with Maria B. Grant, MD, of The Biomedical Writer: What You Need to Succeed in Academic Medicine .

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The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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Special education teachers fill out mountains of paperwork, customize lessons for students with a wide range of learning differences, and attend hours of bureaucratic meetings.

It’s easy to see why it would be tempting to outsource parts of that job to a robot.

While there may never be a special educator version of “Star Wars”’ protocol droid C-3PO, generative artificial tools—including ChatGPT and others developed with the large language models created by its founder, Open AI—can help special education teachers perform parts of their job more efficiently, allowing them to spend more time with their students, experts and educators say.

But those shortcuts come with plenty of cautions, they add.

Teachers need to review artificial intelligence’s suggestions carefully to ensure that they are right for specific students. Student data—including diagnoses of learning differences or cognitive disorders—need to be kept private.

Even special educators who have embraced the technology urge to proceed with care.

“I’m concerned about how AI is being presented right now to educators, that it’s this magical tool,” said Julie Tarasi, who teaches special education at Lakeview Middle School in the Park Hill school district near Kansas City, Mo. She recently completed a course in AI sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education. “And I don’t think that the AI literacy aspect of it is necessarily being [shared] to the magnitude that it should be with teachers.”

Park Hill is cautiously experimenting with AI’s potential as a paperwork partner for educators and an assistive technology for some students in special education.

The district is on the vanguard. Only about 1 in 6 principals and district leaders—16 percent—said their schools or districts were piloting AI tools or using them in a limited manner with students in special education, according to a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey conducted in March and April.

AI tools may work best for teachers who already have a deep understanding of what works for students in special education, and of the tech itself, said Amanda Morin, a member of the advisory board for the learner-variability project at Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that works on equity and technology issues in schools.

“If you feel really confident in your special education knowledge and experience and you have explored AI [in depth], I think those two can combine in a way that can really accelerate the way you serve students,” Morin said.

But “if you are a novice at either, it’s not going to serve your students well because you don’t know what you don’t know yet,” she added. “You may not even know if the tool is giving you a good answer.”

Here are some of the areas where Park Hill educators and other school and district leaders see AI’s promise for special education—and what caveats to look out for:

Promise: Reducing the paperwork burden.

Some special education teachers spend as many as eight hours a week writing student-behavior plans, progress reports, and other documentation.

“Inevitably, we’re gonna get stuck, we’re gonna struggle to word things,” Tarasi said. AI can be great for busting through writer’s block or finding a clearer, more objective way to describe a student’s behavior, she said.

What’s more, tools such as Magic School—an AI platform created for K-12 education—can help special education teachers craft the student learning goals that must be included in an individualized education program, or IEP.

“I can say ‘I need a reading goal to teach vowels and consonants to a student,’ and it will generate a goal,” said Tara Bachmann, Park Hill’s assistive-technology facilitator. “You can put the criteria you want in, but it makes it measurable, then my teachers can go in and insert the specifics about the student” without involving AI, Bachmann said.

These workarounds can cut the process of writing an IEP by up to 30 minutes, Bachmann said—giving teachers more time with students.

AI can also come to the rescue when a teacher needs to craft a polite, professional email to a parent after a stress-inducing encounter with their child.

Some Park Hill special education teachers use “Goblin,” a free tool aimed at helping neurodivergent people organize tasks, to take the “spice” out of those messages, Tarasi said.

A teacher could write “the most emotionally charged email. Then you hit a button called ‘formalize.’ And it makes it like incredibly professional,” Bachmann said. “Our teachers like it because they have a way to release the emotion but still communicate the message to the families.”

Caveat: Don’t share personally identifiable student information. Don’t blindly embrace AI’s suggestions.

Teachers must be extremely careful about privacy issues when using AI tools to write documents—from IEPs to emails—that contain sensitive student information, Tarasi said.

“If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard outside of the school, you should not be putting it into any sort of AI,” Tarasi said. “There’s no sense of guaranteed privacy.”

Tarasi advises her colleagues to “absolutely not put in names” when using generative AI to craft documents, she said. While including students’ approximate grade level may be OK in certain circumstances, inputting their exact age or mentioning a unique diagnosis is a no-no.

To be sure, if the information teachers put into AI is too vague, educators might not get accurate suggestions for their reports. That requires a balance.

“You need to be specific without being, without being pinpoint,” Tarasi said.

Caveat: AI works best for teachers who already understand special education

Another caution: Although AI tools can help teachers craft a report or customize a general education lesson for students in special education, teachers need to already have a deep understanding of their students to know whether to adopt its recommendations.

Relying solely on AI tools for lesson planning or writing reports “takes the individualized out of individualized education,” Morin said. “Because what [the technology] is doing is spitting out things that come up a lot” as opposed to carefully considering what’s best for a specific student, like a good teacher can.

Educators can tweak their prompts—the questions they ask AI—to get better, more specific advice, she added.

“A seasoned special educator would be able to say ‘So I have a student with ADHD, and they’re fidgety’ and get more individualized recommendations,” Morin said.

Promise: Making lessons more accessible.

Ensuring students in special education master the same course content as their peers can require teachers to spend hours simplifying the language of a text to an appropriate reading level.

Generative AI tools can accomplish that same task—often called “leveling a text"—in just minutes, said Josh Clark, the leader of the Landmark School , a private school in Massachusetts serving children with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences.

“If you have a class of 30 kids in 9th grade, and they’re all reading about photosynthesis, then for one particular child, you can customize [the] reading level without calling them out and without anybody else knowing and without you, the teacher, spending hours,” Clark said. “I think that’s a super powerful way of allowing kids to access information they may not be able to otherwise.”

Similarly, in Park Hill, Bachmann has used Canva—a design tool with a version specifically geared toward K-12 schools and therefore age-appropriate for many students—to help a student with cerebral palsy create the same kind of black-and-white art his classmates were making.

Kristen Ponce, the district’s speech and language pathologist, has used Canva to provide visuals for students in special education as they work to be more specific in their communication.

Case-in-point: One of Ponce’s students loves to learn about animals, but he has a very clear idea of what he’s looking for, she said. If the student just says “bear,” Canva will pull up a picture of, for instance, a brown grizzly. But the student may have been thinking of a polar bear.

That gives Ponce the opportunity to tell him, “We need to use more words to explain what you’re trying to say here,” she said. “We were able to move from ‘bear’ to ‘white bear on ice.’”

Caveat: It’s not always appropriate to use AI as an accessibility tool.

Not every AI tool can be used with every student. For instance, there are age restrictions for tools like ChatGPT, which isn’t for children under 13 or those under 18 without parent permission, Bachmann said. (ChatGPT does not independently verify a user’s age.)

“I caution my staff about introducing it to children who are too young and remembering that and that we try to focus on what therapists and teachers can do collectively to make life easier for [students],” she said.

“Accessibility is great,” she said. But when a teacher is thinking about “unleashing a child freely on AI, there is caution to it.”

Promise: Using AI tools to help students in special education communicate.

Park Hill is just beginning to use AI tools to help students in special education express their ideas.

One recent example: A student with a traumatic brain injury that affected her language abilities made thank you cards for several of her teachers using Canva.

“She was able to generate personal messages to people like the school nurses,” Bachmann said. “To her physical therapist who has taken her to all kinds of events outside in the community. She said, ‘You are my favorite therapist.’ She got very personal.”

There may be similar opportunities for AI to help students in special education write more effectively.

Some students with learning and thinking differences have trouble organizing their thoughts or getting their point across.

“When we ask a child to write, we’re actually asking them to do a whole lot of tasks at once,” Clark said. Aspects of writing that might seem relatively simple to a traditional learner—word retrieval, grammar, punctuation, spelling—can be a real roadblock for some students in special education, he said.

“It’s a huge distraction,” Clark said. The student may “have great ideas, but they have difficulty coming through.”

Caveat: Students may miss out on the critical-thinking skills writing builds.

Having students with language-processing differences use AI tools to better express themselves holds potential, but if it is not done carefully, students may miss developing key skills, said Digital Promise’s Morin.

AI “can be a really positive adaptive tool, but I think you have to be really structured about how you’re doing it,” she said.

ChatGPT or a similar tool may be able to help a student with dyslexia or a similar learning difference “create better writing, which I think is different than writing better,” Morin said.

Since it’s likely that students will be able to use those tools in the professional world, it makes sense that they begin using them in school, she said.

But the tools available now may not adequately explain the rationale behind the changes they make to a student’s work or help students express themselves more clearly in the future.

“The process is just as important as the outcome, especially with kids who learn differently, right?” Morin said. “Your process matters.”

Clark agreed on the need for moving cautiously. His own school is trying what he described as “isolated experiments” in using AI to help students with language-processing differences express themselves better.

The school is concentrating, for now, on older students preparing to enter college. Presumably, many will be able to use AI to complete some postsecondary assignments. “How do we make sure it’s an equal playing field?” Clark said.

A version of this article appeared in the May 22, 2024 edition of Education Week as The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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6 ways to use Microsoft Copilot for end-of-school-year tasks

May 14, 2024.

By Microsoft Education Team

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The end of the school year is a hectic time for educators everywhere. Between reviewing content, completing assessments, and maintaining classroom management, it’s easy to feel the pressure of too many responsibilities and not enough time to accomplish everything.

Whether closing out the academic year in the northern hemisphere or preparing for the next one in the southern hemisphere, Microsoft Copilot offers innovative and efficient ways to complete many of the tasks that occupy these transitional times of year. From drafting student feedback to composing newsletters and offering planning suggestions for events, Copilot adapts to whatever task it’s asked. To get started, all you need is a basic understanding of how to access and use Copilot.

Start using Copilot for your end-of-school-year tasks

You can learn how to use Copilot by visiting Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot .

When you’re ready to get started, go to copilot.microsoft.com or download the iOS or Android mobile app.

Writing prompts for the end of the school year

Prompting Copilot to generate content requires practice. Including specific information in your prompt helps produce more relevant responses.

An effective Copilot prompt:

• Asks the tool to take on a role called a persona .
• Provides an objective  that tells the tool what to do or produce.
• Defines the audience  who will be using whatever Copilot generates.
• Includes context  that gives the tool background information.
• Sets boundaries  that limit or constrain responses.

Elements of a Good Prompt infographic which includes tips for writing prompts that produce more relevant responses.

Throughout this post, you’ll find sample prompts that include these components. We recommend borrowing inspiration from them and adjusting to make them fit your own classroom, or you can copy and paste the examples without modifications if you are just beginning.

Now let’s learn how Copilot can help you complete six common end-of-school-year tasks.

1. Craft student feedback at the end of the school year

Copilot can help you write end-of-school-year feedback in a style and tone that all students can understand. Simply craft a prompt that includes the subject area and details about the feedback you want to provide, and Copilot can draft a constructive, supportive statement written specifically for students. For example:

You are a fourth-grade teacher who is writing feedback on a student’s current reading skills. The student uses details to explain what text means but is unable to draw inferences in fiction. The student can identify in-text examples that illustrate a given theme but is unable to independently produce a theme without guidance. Write a short statement that explains this feedback to a student. Include a description about why using details is important and 1-2 ways to develop this skill. The paragraph should be written with plain text so that a fourth-grade student will understand.

You can always refine your prompt if the response is not what you expected. Simply include something like, “Re-write this feedback in Spanish” without selecting New topic , and Copilot will continue where you left off. Give it a try.

2. Write end-of-school-year reflections

Educators often write end-of-school-year newsletters for families, update class blogs with a final post, and draft reflections on school year goals. Copilot can assist with all these tasks and can help you create personalized, engaging visuals for your content. For example, you can use the following prompt to produce a summer newsletter for families.

You are the science department leader for a middle school in New York City. Draft a summer newsletter for families that includes an introduction that talks about the past year and 5 sections: Science Books for Young Adults, Science at Home, Science Summer Camps, Science Events in NYC, and NY Science Museums. Only include information that can be linked to a website to learn more. The newsletter should be written in plain text using an informal tone.

You can also share your experiences, memorable moments, and insights from the school year and Copilot will help you find creative ways to share this information with colleagues, families, and students.

3. Organize classroom materials at the end of the school year

The last few weeks of a school year includes packing up classrooms for the summer, collecting books and devices, and organizing materials for the next year. Copilot can create checklists or reminders for end-of-school-year tasks like these and offer suggestions that you might not even consider. For example:

You are a high school media specialist who checks out technology to administrators and educators. Write a checklist of the 3 most important things to do before returning each of the following devices: document camera, tablet, digital projector, games, and wires. Make each device a section heading and use bulleted lists for the content. Write the checklists so that the content is easily understood by people with varying levels of technological expertise.

Another way to use Copilot when you are organizing classroom materials is to ask for suggestions for efficient ways to declutter and prepare your classroom for the next school year.

4. Plan an end-of-school-year celebration

Many schools celebrate major milestones like the start of summer or moving from lower grades to higher grades with a party or ceremony. Copilot can be your personal planner and assist with brainstorming ideas for end-of-school-year events, awards ceremonies, or virtual gatherings. It can even suggest ways to be more inclusive in areas you might not have considered, like food options in the prompt below.

You are a guidance counselor in charge of helping rising eighth-grade students transition from middle school to high school. Draft a letter to middle school teachers that shares the biggest differences between middle school and high school. Include paragraphs on class schedules, touring the high school, meeting educators, extracurricular activities, and summer reading books. The letter should be written in a formal, conversational tone.

Whether you are creating invitations, planning activities, or drafting speeches, Copilot can be your creative collaborator.

5. Develop transition materials at the end of the school year

When students enter elementary school or move to middle or high school, everyone involved in the transition needs to know how to prepare for this change. Students need to know what to expect, families need to know how to support their children, and current educators need to provide relevant information. Copilot can help create transition materials so that everyone stays informed using a prompt like this example:

You can also use Copilot to write welcome letters, tips for success, or information about what to expect in the upcoming year.

6. Streamline parent communication at the end of the school year

Copilot can help you create templates for parent-teacher conferences at the end of the school year, as well as student progress updates, and letters to families. For example, you can ask Copilot to create a message to families about signing up for conferences with the following prompt.

You are a high school math teacher who teaches introductory algebra. Write a letter to families about parent-teacher conferences. Include an introductory paragraph that thanks families for their ongoing support and paragraphs about what will happen during the conferences, why conferences are important, who should attend, and how to prepare for the meeting. Conclude the letter with a paragraph about how to sign up for a conference slot. Write the letter using an approachable, informal tone.

Microsoft Copilot is a versatile AI tool for educators that adapts to your specific needs. To learn more about Microsoft’s AI solutions and resources, check out Smart learning: AI resources every educator should know and the  AI for educators learning path on Microsoft Learn. Most importantly, enjoy the end of the school year with your students and the time you saved by using Copilot. 

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