writing instruction and digital literacy

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Reimagining Writing Instruction With Digital Tools

Often educators are advised to first consider their instructional goals and then find a digital tool that will help them in satisfying their teaching needs. However, we’ve found that by exploring digital tools and apps, teachers can see new possibilities for writing instruction. Therefore, learning about digital tools can act as an impetus for considering alternative approaches for strengthening writing skills. 

At Kent State’s Research Center for Educational Technology , we have the privilege of collaborating with local teachers and students to integrate technology into their education and learning. Teacher and student cohorts visit our technologically advanced classroom for six weeks, five days a week, for two hours each day. This spring, we observed a second-grade teacher as she received situated professional development for integrating technology into her literacy instruction while her students had opportunities to explore digital tools for writing.  On the basis of that implementation, we offer suggestions for programs and mobile applications that might best help educators facilitate writing activities and assignments in their classrooms.

Preparing students for writing

• Why It’s Important : Although the writing process is not a lockstep, there is strong evidence to support that students are more successful as writers when they understand it. Therefore, engaging students in prewriting and organizing activities before they start the first draft improves the quality of their writing.
• Digital Tools : Digital notebooks, such as Penzu , can serve as writing journals for students to generate ideas. In addition, applications like Popplet and Padlet can provide a space where students may independently or collaboratively brainstorm about topics or genre elements. By using these digital tools, students can make their planning visible as they can easily organize and reorganize ideas. 

Multimodal compositions

• Why It’s Important : Technology is changing how people write. By composing with images, audio, and video, students learn to use multiple modes to convey meaning. For students who might be considered struggling writers, composing with a variety of modes can also help students be more strategic in their rhetorical decision making.
• Digital Tools : There are a number of apps and digital tools that allow students to produce multimodal compositions. Haiku Deck , Buncee , and Adobe Spark are a few tools we routinely use with teachers and students. However, we would also encourage teachers to think about how programming and coding with apps such as Daisy the Dinosaur and Scratch Junior might also help their students engage in digital storytelling. 

Publishing students’ writing

• Why It’s Important :  When students publish their writing for a wide audience, they have opportunities to receive authentic feedback. This process develops their writerly voice: They become more aware of who will be reading their composition and tailor their voice according to the purpose, the context, and the audience. 
• Digital Tools : Digital platforms, such as Edmodo and Seesaw , are spaces for students to share their writing and then receive feedback.

Apps should align with pedagogy; however, teachers can reimagine how they can implement engaging, research-based writing instruction by exploring digital tools. This reimagination can also be facilitated through conversations with others; teachers grow by seeing the best practices of others. In addition to providing some examples in this blog, we also developed and have now opened access to SpedApps , a database with over 400 apps. This resource is not only a collection of mobile apps for content instruction (e.g., literacy) but is also a community where teachers can share the promise and pitfalls of mobile-based instruction as well as add their own favorite apps. 

Kristine E. Pytash is an associate professor at Kent State University. Richard E. Ferdig is the Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor, IT, Research Center for Educational Technologies. Enrico Gandolfi is a research fellow at Kent State University. Rachel Mathews is a doctoral student at Kent State University. This work was funded, in part, by a corporate gift from AT&T.

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

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• The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing is Taught in Schools

Table of Contents

• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: How Much, and What, do Today’s Middle and High School Students Write?
• Part III: Teachers See Digital Tools Affecting Student Writing in Myriad Ways
• Part IV: Teachers Assess Students on Specific Writing Skills
• Part V: Teaching Writing in the Digital Age

A survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers finds that digital technologies are shaping student writing in myriad ways and have also become helpful tools for teaching writing to middle and high school students.  These teachers see the internet and digital technologies such as social networking sites, cell phones and texting, generally facilitating teens’ personal expression and creativity, broadening the audience for their written material, and encouraging teens to write more often in more formats than may have been the case in prior generations.  At the same time, they describe the unique challenges of teaching writing in the digital age, including the “creep” of informal style into formal writing assignments and the need to better educate students about issues such as plagiarism and fair use.

The AP and NWP teachers surveyed see today’s digital tools having tangible, beneficial impacts on student writing

Overall, these AP and NWP teachers see digital technologies benefitting student writing in several ways:

• 96% agree (including 52% who strongly agree) that digital technologies “allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience”
• 79% agree (23% strongly agree) that these tools “encourage greater collaboration among students”
• 78% agree (26% strongly agree) that digital technologies “encourage student creativity and personal expression”

The combined effect of these impacts, according to this group of AP and NWP teachers, is a greater investment among students in what they write and greater engagement in the writing process.

At the same time, they worry that students’ use of digital tools is having some undesirable effects on their writing, including the “creep” of informal language and style into formal writing

In focus groups, these AP and NWP teachers shared some concerns and challenges they face teaching writing in today’s digital environment.  Among them are:

• an increasingly ambiguous line between “formal” and “informal” writing and the tendency of some students to use informal language and style in formal writing assignments
• the increasing need to educate students about writing for different audiences using different “voices” and “registers”
• the general cultural emphasis on truncated forms of expression, which some feel are hindering students willingness and ability to write longer texts and to think critically about complicated topics
• disparate access to and skill with digital tools among their students
• challenging the “digital tool as toy” approach many students develop in their introduction to digital tools as young children

Survey results reflect many of these concerns, though teachers are sometimes divided on the role digital tools play in these trends.  Specifically:

• 68% say that digital tools make students more likely—as opposed to less likely or having no impact—to take shortcuts and not put effort into their writing
• 46% say these tools make students more likely to “write too fast and be careless”
• Yet, while 40% say today’s digital technologies make students more likely to “use poor spelling and grammar” another 38% say they make students LESS likely to do this

Overall, these AP and NWP teachers give their students’ writing skills modest marks, and see areas that need attention

Asked to assess their students’ performance on nine specific writing skills, AP and NWP tended to rate their students “good” or “fair” as opposed to “excellent” or “very good.”  Students were given the best ratings on their ability to “effectively organize and structure writing assignments” with 24% of teachers describing their students as “excellent” or “very good” in this area. Students received similar ratings on their ability to “understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue.”  But ratings were less positive for synthesizing material into a cohesive piece of work, using appropriate tone and style, and constructing a strong argument.

These AP and NWP teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to “navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition” and “reading and digesting long or complicated texts.”  On both measures, more than two-thirds of these teachers rated students “fair” or “poor.”

Majorities of these teachers incorporate lessons about fair use, copyright, plagiarism, and citation in their teaching to address students’ deficiencies in these areas

In addition to giving students low ratings on their understanding of fair use and copyright, a majority of AP and NWP teachers also say students are not performing well when it comes to “appropriately citing and/or referencing content” in their work.  This is fairly common concern among the teachers in the study, who note how easy it is for students today to copy and paste others’ work into their own and how difficult it often is to determine the actual source of much of the content they find online.  Reflecting how critical these teachers view these skills:

• 88% (across all subjects) spend class time “discussing with students the concepts of citation and plagiarism”
• 75% (across all subjects) spend class time “discussing with students the concepts of fair use and copyright”

A plurality of AP and NWP teachers across all subjects say digital tools make teaching writing easier

Despite some challenges, 50% of these teachers (across all subjects) say the internet and digital tools make it easier for them to teach writing, while just 18% say digital technologies make teaching writing more difficult.  The remaining 31% see no real impact.

Positive perceptions of the potential for digital tools to aid educators in teaching writing are reflected in practice:

• 52% of AP and NWP teachers say they or their students use interactive whiteboards in their classes
• 40% have students share their work on wikis, websites or blogs
• 36% have students edit or revise their own work and 29% have students edit others’ work using collaborative web-based tools such as GoogleDocs

In focus groups, teachers gave a multitude of examples of the value of these collaborative tools, not only in teaching more technical aspects of writing but also in being able to “see their students thinking” and work alongside students in the writing process.  Moreover, 56% say digital tools make their students more likely to write well because they can revise their work easily.

These middle and high school teachers continue to place tremendous value on “formal writing”

While they see writing forms and styles expanding in the digital world, AP and NWP teachers continue to place tremendous value on “formal writing” and try to use digital tools to impart fundamental writing skills they feel students need.  Nine in ten (92%) describe formal writing assignments as an ��essential” part of the learning process, and 91% say that “writing effectively” is an “essential” skill students need for future success.

More than half (58%) have students write short essays or responses on a weekly basis, and 77% assigned at least one research paper during the 2011-2012 academic year.  In addition, 41% of AP and NWP teachers have students write weekly journal entries, and 78% had their students create a multimedia or mixed media piece in the academic year prior to the survey.

Almost all AP and NWP teachers surveyed (94%) encourage students to do some of their writing by hand

Alongside the use of digital tools to promote better writing, almost all AP and NWP teachers surveyed say they encourage their students to do at least some writing by hand.  Their reasons are varied, but many teachers noted that because students are required to write by hand on standardized tests, it is a critical skill for them to have.  This is particularly true for AP teachers, who must prepare students to take AP exams with pencil and paper.  Other teachers say they feel students do more active thinking, synthesizing, and editing when writing by hand, and writing by hand discourages any temptation to copy and paste others’ work.

About this Study

The basics of the survey.

These are among the main findings of an online survey of a non-probability sample of 2,462 middle and high school teachers currently teaching in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, conducted between March 7 and April 23, 2012.  Some 1,750 of the teachers are drawn from a sample of advanced placement (AP) high school teachers, while the remaining 712 are from a sample of National Writing Project teachers.  Survey findings are complemented by insights from a series of online and in-person focus groups with middle and high school teachers and students in grades 9-12, conducted between November, 2011 and February, 2012.

This particular sample is quite diverse geographically, by subject matter taught, and by school size and community characteristics.  But it skews towards educators who teach some of the most academically successful students in the country. Thus, the findings reported here reflect the realities of their special place in American education, and are not necessarily representative of all teachers in all schools. At the same time, these findings are especially powerful given that these teachers’ observations and judgments emerge from some of the nation’s most advanced classrooms.

In addition to the survey, Pew Internet conducted a series of online and offline focus groups with middle and high school teachers and some of their students and their voices are included in this report.

The study was designed to explore teachers’ views of the ways today’s digital environment is shaping the research and writing habits of middle and high school students, as well as teachers’ own technology use and their efforts to incorporate new digital tools into their classrooms.

About the data collection

Data collection was conducted in two phases.  In phase one, Pew Internet conducted two online and one in-person focus group with middle and high school teachers; focus group participants included Advanced Placement (AP) teachers, teachers who had participated in the National Writing Project’s Summer Institute (NWP), as well as teachers at a College Board school in the Northeast U.S.  Two in-person focus groups were also conducted with students in grades 9-12 from the same College Board school.   The goal of these discussions was to hear teachers and students talk about, in their own words, the different ways they feel digital technologies such as the internet, search engines, social media, and cell phones are shaping students’ research and writing habits and skills.  Teachers were asked to speak in depth about teaching research and writing to middle and high school students today, the challenges they encounter, and how they incorporate digital technologies into their classrooms and assignments.

Focus group discussions were instrumental in developing a 30-minute online survey, which was administered in phase two of the research to a national sample of middle and high school teachers.  The survey results reported here are based on a non-probability sample of 2,462 middle and high school teachers currently teaching in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Of these 2,462 teachers, 2,067 completed the entire survey; all percentages reported are based on those answering each question.  The sample is not a probability sample of all teachers because it was not practical to assemble a sampling frame of this population. Instead, two large lists of teachers were assembled: one included 42,879 AP teachers who had agreed to allow the College Board to contact them (about one-third of all AP teachers), while the other was a list of 5,869 teachers who participated in the National Writing Project’s Summer Institute during 2007-2011 and who were not already part of the AP sample. A stratified random sample of 16,721 AP teachers was drawn from the AP teacher list, based on subject taught, state, and grade level, while all members of the NWP list were included in the final sample.

The online survey was conducted from March 7–April 23, 2012.  More details on how the survey and focus groups were conducted are included in the Methodology section at the end of this report, along with focus group discussion guides and the survey instrument.

There are several important ways the teachers who participated in the survey are unique, which should be considered when interpreting the results reported here.  First, 95% of the teachers who participated in the survey teach in public schools, thus the findings reported here reflect that environment almost exclusively.  In addition, almost one-third of the sample (NWP Summer Institute teachers) has received extensive training in how to effectively teach writing in today’s digital environment.  The National Writing Project’s mission is to provide professional development, resources and support to teachers to improve the teaching of writing in today’s schools.   The NWP teachers included here are what the organization terms “teacher-consultants” who have attended the Summer Institute and provide local leadership to other teachers.  Research has shown significant gains in the writing performance of students who are taught by these teachers. 1

Moreover, the majority of teachers participating in the survey (56%) currently teach AP, honors, and/or accelerated courses, thus the population of middle and high school students they work with skews heavily toward the highest achievers.  These teachers and their students may have resources and support available to them—particularly in terms of specialized training and access to digital tools—that are not available in all educational settings.  Thus, the population of teachers participating in this research might best be considered “leading edge teachers” who are actively involved with the College Board and/or the National Writing Project and are therefore beneficiaries of resources and training not common to all teachers.  It is likely that teachers in this study are developing some of the more innovative pedagogical approaches to teaching research and writing in today’s digital environment, and are incorporating classroom technology in ways that are not typical of the entire population of middle and high school teachers in the U.S.  Survey findings represent the attitudes and behaviors of this particular group of teachers only, and are not representative of the entire population of U.S. middle and high school teachers.

Every effort was made to administer the survey to as broad a group of educators as possible from the sample files being used.  As a group, the 2,462 teachers participating in the survey comprise a wide range of subject areas, experience levels, geographic regions, school type and socioeconomic level, and community type (detailed sample characteristics are available in the Methods section of this report).  The sample includes teachers from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  All teachers who participated in the survey teach in physical schools and classrooms, as opposed to teaching online or virtual courses.

English/language arts teachers make up a significant portion of the sample (36%), reflecting the intentional design of the study, but history, social science, math, science, foreign language, art, and music teachers are also represented.  About one in ten teachers participating in the survey are middle school teachers, while 91% currently teach grades 9-12.  There is wide distribution across school size and students’ socioeconomic status, though half of the teachers participating in the survey report teaching in a small city or suburb.  There is also a wide distribution in the age and experience levels of participating teachers.  The survey sample is 71% female.

About the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is one of seven projects that make up the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. The Project produces reports exploring the impact of the internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. The Pew Internet Project takes no positions on policy issues related to the internet or other communications technologies. It does not endorse technologies, industry sectors, companies, nonprofit organizations, or individuals. While we thank our research partners for their helpful guidance, the Pew Internet Project had full control over the design, implementation, analysis and writing of this survey and report.

About the National Writing Project

The National Writing Project (NWP) is a nationwide network of educators working together to improve the teaching of writing in the nation’s schools and in other settings. NWP provides high-quality professional development programs to teachers in a variety of disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. Through its nearly 200 university-based sites serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, NWP develops the leadership, programs and research needed for teachers to help students become successful writers and learners. For more information, visit www.nwp.org .

• More specific information on this population of teachers, the training they receive, and the outcomes of their students are available at the National Writing Project website at www.nwp.org . ↩

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Writing Instruction to Support Literacy Success: Volume 7

Table of contents, rethinking writing products and processes in a digital age.

Writing as a hot topic in literacy has recently gained a foothold in terms of importance to academic and career success, finally receiving the attention it warrants and thus, this chapter provides timely information about how to teach writing products and processes in the 21st century.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a historical examination of writing instruction, this chapter provides a contextual lens for how writing has not always been a priority in the field of literacy; how writing and reading are interconnected; and how differing theories aim to explain writing development.

Writing has taken on a balanced approach between writing for product and writing as a practice. Teacher pedagogy has been heavily influenced by the advent of high-stakes assessments. Other factors such as maintaining motivation and engagement for writing affect student performance. Writing and reading benefit from an integrated instructional approach.

Practical implications

Elements of writing instruction are deconstructed to provide information for teachers to support students’ confidence in their writing abilities, build their identity as writers, and promote individualization and creativity to flourish through independence.

Turning around the Progress of Struggling Writers: Key Findings from Recent Research

To identify features of teacher support associated with children who made accelerated progress in writing in an early literacy intervention.

Mixed methods were used to describe the paths, rates, variability, and potential sources of change in the writing development of 24 first grade students who participated in an early literacy intervention for 20 weeks. To describe the breadth and variability of change in children’s writing within a co-constructed setting, two groups who made high and low progress were identified.

We focus on one child, Paul, who made high progress (became more independent in the writing of linguistically complex messages) and the features of teacher support that this child received compared to those who made lower progress. We compare him to another child, Emma, who made low progress. Teacher support associated with high progress included a conversational style and flexibility to adapt to the child’s message intent as the student composed, supporting students to write linguistically more complex and legible messages, and supporting students to orchestrate a broad range of problem-solving behaviors while writing.

We describe how teachers can support children to gradually take control of the composition process, how they can recognize complexity in early written messages and we provide suggestions as to how teachers can systematically assess, observe, and support children’s self-regulation of the writing process.

Accelerating Student Progress in Writing: Examining Practices Effective in New Zealand Primary School Classrooms

Writing performance is an international issue and, while the quality of instruction is key, features of the context shape classroom practice. The issues and solutions in terms of teacher practice to address underachievement need to be considered within such a context and the purpose of the chapter is to undertake such an analysis.

Data from five different research projects (national and regional) of the author and colleagues, and two studies of the author’s doctoral students, are synthesized to identify both common and specific elements of primary/elementary (years 1–8, ages 5–13) teacher practice in writing. These data provide an indication of the practices which appear to be the most powerful levers for developing writing and for accelerating student progress in the context in which the teachers work. These practices are discussed.

The identified practices are: (1) acquiring and applying deep knowledge of your writers; (2) making connections with, and validating, relevant cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge; (3) aligning learning goals in writing with appropriately designed writing tasks and ensuring that students understand what they are learning and why; (4) providing quality feedback; (5) scaffolding self-regulation in writers; (6) differentiating instruction (while maintaining high expectations) and (7) providing targeted and direct instruction at the point of need. A discussion and a description of writing-specific instantiations of these help to illustrate their nature and the overlaps and interconnections.

As much of the data are drawn from the practices of teachers deemed to be highly effective, classroom practices associated with these teachers can be targeted as a means to improve the quality of instruction more widely in the particular context.

Ideas as a Springboard for Writing in K-8 Classrooms

To review and synthesize findings from peer-reviewed research related to students’ sources of ideas for writing, and instructional dimensions that affect students’ development of ideas for composition in grades K-8.

The ideas or content expressed in written composition are considered critical to ratings of writing quality. We utilized a Systematic Mixed Studies Review (SMSR) methodological framework (Heyvaert, Maes, & Onghena, 2011) to explore K-8 students’ ideas and writing from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Students’ ideas for writing originate from a range of sources, including teachers, peers, literature, content area curriculum, autobiographical/life experiences, popular culture/media, drawing, and play. Intertextuality, copying, social dialogue, and playful peer interactions are productive strategies K-8 writers use to generate ideas for composing, in addition to strategies introduced through planned instruction. Relevant dimensions of instruction include motivation to write, idea planning and organization, as well as specific instructional strategies, techniques, and tools to facilitate idea generation and selection within the composition process.

A permeable curriculum and effective instructional practices are crucial to support students’ access to a full range of ideas and knowledge-based resources, and help them translate these into written composition. Instructional practices for idea development and writing: (a) connect reading and writing for authentic purposes; (b) include explicit modeling of strategies for planning and “online” generation of ideas throughout the writing process across genre; (c) align instructional focus across reading, writing, and other curricular activities; (d) allow for extended time to write; and (e) incorporate varied, flexible participation structures through which students can share ideas and receive teacher/peer feedback on writing.

Process with a Purpose: Low-Stakes Writing in the Secondary English Classroom

To describe how low-stakes writing can assist teachers in eliciting greater student engagement and involvement in their own writing by focusing the stages of the writing process more on student thinking than on the surface structure of their writing.

This chapter examines some of the important research literature addressing process writing in general and low-stakes writing in particular. The authors’ experiences with teaching English in the secondary classroom inform their analysis of implementing low-stakes writing assignments as part of the writing process.

The authors describe how using non-judgmental feedback on low-stakes writing assignments allows the teacher and students to have conversations on paper which are intended to help students explore, expand, and clarify their own thinking about a topic. By establishing a continuing conversation on paper with the students about their writing, the teacher takes on the role of “trusted ally” in the writing process, rather than the more traditional role of an arbiter of writing conventions.

Although the presumptive focus of writing instruction for the last two decades has been on the writing process, the tendency to turn the individual steps of the writing process into discrete writing products in a formulaic manner can cause many important parts of the writing process itself to be either overlooked or given short shrift. This chapter provides useful descriptions of ways in which low-stakes writing assignments can afford teachers the means by which to focus their students’ attention on key portions of the writing process so that their writing products are ultimately improved.

Learning Language and Vocabulary in Dialogue with the Real Audience: Exploring Young Writers’ Authentic Writing and Language Learning Experiences

To explore the potential of conversations with an authentic audience through blogging for enriching in young writers the understanding of the communicative function of writing, specifically language and vocabulary use.

We situate our work in the language acquisition model of language learning, in which learners develop linguistic competence in the process of speaking and using language (Krashen, 1988; Tomasello, 2005). We also believe that language learning benefits from formal instruction (Krashen, 1988). As such, in our work, we likened engaging in blogging to learning a language (here, more broadly conceived as learning to write) through both natural communication (acquisition) and prescription (instruction), and we looked at these forms of learning in our study.

We were interested in the communicative function of language learning (Halliday, 1973; 1975; Penrod, 2005) among young blog writers, because we see language learning as socially constructed through interaction with other speakers of a language (Tomasello, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978).

The readers and commenters in this study supported young writers in their language study by modeling good writing and effective language use in their communication with these writers. Young writers also benefited from direct instruction through interactions with adults beyond classroom teachers, in our case some of the readers and commenters.

Blogging can extend conversations to audiences far beyond the classroom and make writing a more authentic endeavor for young writers. Teachers should take advantage of such a powerful tool in their writing classrooms to support their students’ language study and vocabulary development.

Understanding a Digital Writing Cycle: Barriers, Bridges, and Outcomes in Two Second-Grade Classrooms

To describe how the digital writing experiences of two collaborating second-grade classrooms are representative of a digital writing cycle that includes barriers, bridges, and outcomes. Additionally, this chapter aims to link theory and practice for teachers working with an increasingly younger generation of multimodal learners by connecting teacher reflections to New Literacies perspectives.

The current study is informed by multiple perspectives contributing to New Literacies research. These perspectives blend the traditional disciplines of literacy and technology while recognizing both the growing use of digital tools and the new skills and dispositions required for writing. This chapter uses multiple data points to present (1) how the teachers approached implementation of digital writing tools, (2) how students responded to the use of digital writing tools, and (3) how the digital-related writing experiences aligned with key tenets of New Literacies research.

The authors present student barriers for full participation with corresponding bridges implemented by teachers to help students navigate in the digital writing classroom. Each finding is supported with examples from student and teacher interviews as well as classroom observations and artifacts. The chapter concludes with a “lessons learned” section from the perspective of the teachers in the study with each tenet supporting a New Literacies perspective by addressing key considerations of multimodal environments such as the importance of early opportunities for teaching and learning with new literacies, the need to help inexperienced students bridge technical skill gaps, and the benefit of social relationships in the digital community.

By adapting findings of the study to a digital writing cycle, this chapter discusses how guiding principles of New Literacies research reflects classroom practice, thereby granting current and future teachers a practical guide for bridging theory and practice for implementing digital writing experiences for elementary students in multimodal environments.

Classroom Writing Community as Authentic Audience: The Development of Ninth-Graders’ Analytical Writing and Academic Writing Identities

To describe the role one classroom writing community played in shaping students’ understandings of the analytical writing genre; and to discuss the impact the community had on students’ developing academic writing identities.

While research has demonstrated the impact of classroom writing communities on student writing practices and identities at the elementary level (Dyson, 1997) and for secondary students engaged in fiction writing (Halverson, 2005), less is known about the role classroom writing communities may play for secondary students who are learning to write in academic discourses. This chapter explores the practices of one such classroom community and discusses the ways the community facilitated students’ introduction to the discourse of analytical writing.

The teacher turned the classroom writing community into an authentic audience, and in so doing, he developed students’ understandings of the analytical writing genre and their growing identities as academic writers. First, he used the concept of immediate audience (i.e., writing to persuade real readers) as the primary rationale for students to follow the outlined expectations for analytical writing. Second, he used inquiry discussions around student work (i.e., interacting with other members of the writing community) to prepare students for a future audience of prospective independent school English classrooms.

By turning the classroom writing community into an authentic audience through inquiry discussions, teachers can develop students’ deep and flexible understandings of a potentially unfamiliar writing genre. Furthermore, by employing the classroom writing community as a support for moving students through moments of struggle, teachers implicate students’ expertise as academic writers, thereby facilitating their willingness to take on academic writing identities.

Engaging Students in Multimodal Arguments: Infographics and Public Service Announcements

To present the instructional activities of an intervention enacted in two formative experiment studies. The goal of these studies was to improve students’ argumentative writing, both conventional and digital, multimodal.

This chapter provides the instructional steps taken by high-school teachers as they integrated multimodal argument projects into their classroom, describing the planning and instructional activities needed to teach students both the elements of argument and the practice of digital, multimodal design.

The author discusses the practical pedagogical steps and considerations needed to have students create digital, multimodal arguments in the form of infographics and public service announcements. Students were engaged in the creation of these arguments; however, practical considerations are discussed for both task complexity and the merger between digital and conventional writing.

Research suggests that integrating digital tools and multimodality into classrooms may be needed and valued, but practical suggestions for this integration are lacking. This chapter provides the needed pedagogical application of digital tools and multimodality to academic instruction.

The Use of Google Docs Technology to Support Peer Revision

To investigate sixth-grade students with learning disabilities and their use of Google Docs to facilitate peer revision for informational writing.

A qualitative case study is used to examine how students used Google Docs to support peer revision. Constant comparative analysis with a separate deductive revision and overall writing quality analysis was used.

The findings indicate that students used key features in Google Docs to foster collaboration during revision, they made improvements in overall writing quality, their revisions focused on adding informational elements to support organization of their writing and revisions were mostly made at the sentence level, and students were engaged while using the technology.

We postulate that the use of peer revision coupled with Google Docs technology can be a powerful tool for improving student writing quality and for changing the role of the writing teacher during revision. The use of peer revision should be accompanied with strong explicit instruction using the gradual release of responsibility model so that peer tutors are well-trained. Writing teachers can use Google Docs to monitor and assess writing and peer collaboration and then use this knowledge to guide whole and small-group instruction or individual conferences.

A Framework for Literacy: A Teacher–Researcher Partnership Considers the “C-S-C Paragraph” and Literacy Outcomes

To describe the role of teaching “the paragraph” in furthering literacy goals. The study considers one concept, the Claim-Support-Conclusion Paragraph (CSC) as a curricular and pedagogic intervention supporting writing and academic success for the marginalized students in two classrooms.

While this study corresponds to a gap in the literature of writing instruction (and paragraphing), it takes as its model the development of comprehensive collaborations where researcher-scholars embed themselves in the real practices of school classrooms. A fully-fledged partnership between researcher, practitioners, is characteristic of “practice embedded educational research,” or PEER (Snow, 2015), with analysis of data following qualitative and case study methodology.

Practice-embedded research in this partnership consistently revealed several important themes, including the effective use of the CSC paragraph functions as a critical common denominator across rich curricular choices. Extensive use of writing practice drives increased literacy fluency for struggling students, and writing practice can be highly integrated with reading practice. Effective writing instruction likely includes analytic and interpretive purposes, as well as personal, aesthetic writing, and teaching good paragraphing is intertwined with all of these genres in a community that values writing routines.

Greater academic success for the marginalized students in their classroom necessitates the use of a variety of scaffolds, and writing instruction can include the CSC paragraph as a means to develop academic literacies, including argumentation. Collaborative and innovative work with curriculum within a PEER model may have affordances for developing practitioner and researcher knowledge about writing instruction.

Powerful Writing Instruction: Seeing, Understanding, and Influencing Patterns

Our purpose in this chapter is to examine the implementation of a set of lesson frameworks to set conditions for teachers to deal with the complex challenges related to writing instruction in a high-stakes testing environment. These lessons provided a flexible framework for teachers to use in tutorials and in summer writing camps for students who struggle to pass the state-mandated tests, but they also build shared understandings about writing as a complex adaptive system.

We look to two sources for our theoretical framework: the study of complex adaptive systems and research-based writing instruction. In the chapter we summarize insights from these sources as a list of patterns that we want to see in powerful writing instruction. The analysis presented here is based on open-ended interviews of 17 teachers in one of the partner districts. The results of an inductive analysis of these transcripts is combined with a summary of 9th and 10th grade test results to inform the next iteration of this work.

Our findings suggest a shift toward patterns that imply shared understandings that writing and writing instruction require dialogue, inquiry, adaptability, and authenticity. These lesson frameworks, rather than limiting teacher’s flexibility and responsiveness, provide just enough structure to encourage flexibility in writing instruction. Using these frameworks, teachers can respond to their students’ needs to support powerful writing.

This set of lesson frameworks and the accompanying professional development hold the potential to build coherence in writing instruction across a campus or district, as it builds shared understandings and practices. We look forward to further implementation, adaptation, and documentation in diverse contexts.

Fourth Graders as Researchers: Authors and Self-Illustrators of Informational Books

To facilitate teacher–researcher collaboration in order to implement an informational writing research project using the framework of Browse, Collect, Collate, and Compose embedded within the writing workshop.

This study was conducted using a qualitative (Merriam, 1998) method of inquiry, more specifically, case study research design. A researcher and a practitioner came together to explore problems related to authentic use of expository genre and collaborated to help fourth graders write informational books.

The development of an authentic informational book was in contrast to the inauthentic purposes whereby students studied expository writing as preparation for statewide testing of student writing achievement. The study advocates the usage of authentic literacy contexts where students can enjoy writing for personal purposes.

Collaboration between classroom teachers of writing and researchers contributes to the theoretical and practical knowledge base of the teacher and researcher. Overall literacy development is enhanced when students read and write out of their own interest. Students use trade books as mentor texts to compose and create their informational books. The value of seeing fourth graders as researchers and making an informational book serves the authentic purpose of writing.

Seniors, Scholars, Researchers: Using an Inquiry Approach to Writing the Research Paper

This chapter presents a description of a pilot course for 12th-grade students in research methods and writing, using Guided Inquiry Design to develop students’ critical literacy and information literacy skills.

Using a practitioner inquiry methodology, this teacher research study makes use of qualitative data to examine student perspectives and experiences, teaching artifacts and student work samples. The research seeks to identify ways students practice critical literacies when engaged with inquiry learning, as well as the characteristics of a classroom learning community designed to support students’ experiences in inquiry learning.

Teachers of research-based writing are encouraged to adopt a guided inquiry approach to their instruction in which they flip the script on the thesis statement, allow for an almost uncomfortable amount of exploratory reading, put the focus on the process instead of the product, and form a guided inquiry team with the school librarian.

This chapter serves as a resource for practicing teachers, teacher researchers, and teacher educators assisting new teachers in embedding critical inquiry skill development in student writing.

Augmenting Academic Writing Achievement for All Students

Writing is an act of expressive communication achieved through the medium of print. It is but one of three modes of linguistic communication. The other expressive mode is speaking, while listening and reading comprise the two receptive modes. The purpose of this chapter is to present the impact of a study in which students read and discussed expository poetry. Then they exchanged ideas relating to scientific concepts in the poems with students in a different group via pen pal letters. We analyzed these pen pal letters over four weeks to determine the influence of writing opportunities in an atmosphere rich in all four aspects of linguistic communication, involving authentic communication between students and within a community of learners.

Design/methodology/Approach

Six of Brod Bagert’s unpublished poems concerned with science concepts were read by students in Collaborative Discover Groups (CDG) in two third-grade classes. After the groups discussed the poems, a mini-lesson on one of the Six Traits of Writing followed, and the students responded individually to a teacher-generated prompt related to the specific poem. The responses were in the form of pen pal letters to students in another class who had just read the same poem, received the same teacher-directed mini-lesson, and had had a similar discussion in their respective CDG. The data gleaned from these letters provide information demonstrating the effect of emphasizing all linguistic facets synergistically in a social, communicative setting. Both the processes and the findings will be discussed.

Analysis of the pen pal letters third-grade students wrote over four weeks showed the following patterns. (1) There was an increase in the discursive nature of the writing. (2) The incidence of rhetorical questioning, using A + B = C reasoning, and evaluative thinking was present in the fifth set of letters, and not in the first. Additionally, the number of sentences per letter increased from the first to the fifth, and the number of words per letter increased from approximately 50 words per letter to 75 words per letter. It appears that the linguistically synergistic communicative processes employed in this study are reflected in the increased sophistication and communicative nature of these writings.

The data revealed the importance of including the sociocultural tenants in the classroom, emphasizing that reading, writing, speaking, and listening are all a part of the same phenomenon. Together they strengthen and support each other.

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Why Digital Writing Matters in Education

Writing teachers like me (and perhaps like you) have been caught in a tight spot for some time now. On the one hand, computing technologies have radically transformed the meaning of "writing." On the other hand, high stakes assessments and their impact on teaching have limited what counts as writing in school.

As a teacher, I feel pulled in different directions. Thankfully, there are some good educational resources available. The National Writing Project recently published Because Digital Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Online and Multimedia Environments by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and Troy Hicks. Their book is a good resource for teachers interested in thoughtfully incorporating digital writing into their teaching, and it also will point readers toward other high-quality resources. In the spirit of their book, I am going to take up the issue of why digital writing matters, focusing on two issues:

• Digital writing challenges what counts as writing and reveals the gap between how writing works in the world and how we teach it in schools.
• Digital writing platforms and services are ways to innovate instruction and learning.

Why Writing Matters

I always find it worth starting with why writing matters in education and in life. In school, writing is a key language skill (if not a subject) and also supports learning in other content areas. In a knowledge society, written expression shapes success for individuals and groups. Because of computer networks, youth now in school will write more than any prior generation in human history. Yet we pay relatively little attention to writing in school, which is why the National Commission on Writing has called writing the " forgotten R ."

A second Commission report concluded that writing is a "threshold skill" for hiring and promotion among professional employees. Those who cannot write and communicate clearly will have difficulty landing a job and little chance of promotion. Leadership positions are out of the question.

The "Digital" in Digital Writing

What distinguishes "digital" writing? Yes, technologies matter, particularly networks, which really are the big change agent in the last twenty years. But the most powerful changes are cultural. Digital writing is networked, and because of this, often deeply collaborative or coordinated. Wikipedia, for instance, is not possible without a computer network. But it is the cultural changes in how we write that an example like Wikipedia makes clear. Or consider Facebook, which is perhaps the most pervasive and commonplace collaborative writing platform in human history.

But digital technologies also have made it easy to "write" in all sorts of new ways. We can use more modes and resources, such as image, sound and video. We can remix the work of others -- with and without permission -- and share what we create more easily than ever before. And people do, all the time, and for all sorts of compelling reasons. Many of these people are our students.

It is often said that technologies don't get interesting until they become culturally meaningful. I think this is the case with the technologies of digital writing, and I can't help but contrast the dynamic ways that writing is changing in the world with what happens too often in my school. According to a recent Pew Internet and American Life survey , 86 percent of teenagers believe that writing well is important to success in life. But they don't see most of the writing that they do in their lives as "real" writing. Yet, ironically, it is the writing in which they find the most pleasure, that they do most eagerly and, arguably, that they do most successfully.

Making "the Digital" Work for Teaching and Learning

One of the problems worth solving is how to scale high quality writing instruction in ways that enrich the lives of teachers and students. We know what works in writing instruction:

• Engaged teachers and engaging environments
• Direct writing instruction and practice
• Revision focused on higher order concerns, guided by review feedback and informed by shared criteria

High quality writing instruction can also be expensive and time consuming, and often schools feel as if they can't do it. Or, as a cost-saving measure, technologies like machine grading are seen as a substitute for teaching.

But the same digital technologies that enable communication and collaboration might help teachers design technologies that make their teaching lives richer and their students more productive. We have been inventing technologies like this out of our own teaching, such as Eli , a service that supports peer learning in writing. Increasingly, there are other services available that extend the ability of computer networks to be tools for learning in writing (see, for example, Crocodoc ). We need many more efforts to support and share the innovations of teachers wrestling with how to teach digital writing in their schools.

There is no question that we have been witnessing an explosion of digital writing for some time now. We are living through a period of particularly rapid changes in how we write. Digital writing matters, and our challenge is to figure out how to be useful to those interested in leveraging these new writing platforms with thoughtfulness and power.

5 ways to integrate digital content into literacy instruction today

• March 26, 2019
• eSchool Media Contributors

As Discovery Education’s senior vice president of teaching and learning, I am constantly in communication with superintendents, principals, teachers and other educators about how to improve student literacy. This conversation often emanates from a discussion on the most effective way to “go digital” while simultaneously improving the reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills of all students. During these conversations, I’ve found that while there is unanimous agreement that instruction has evolved significantly (and positively) over the last few years, technology’s influence on literacy instruction has not changed significantly.

However, it’s a fact that today’s world is a digital world and we need to ensure that we are teaching students not only the traditional comprehension and composition skills associated with paper and pencil, but also the new skills of reading and writing digital texts. After all, there are definite differences between reading a book and reading a website or writing a blog and writing a literary essay.

The effective and intentional use of digital content in literacy instruction will not only engage students, but it may also strengthen and increase their literacy development. Take, for example, Ted Hasselbring’s research on using technology to increase the achievement of struggling readers. He reminds us that we know what good reading instruction looks like; we need to find technology to support that.

At Discovery Education we have a wide variety of digital curriculum resources, including our digital textbook series, or Techbooks, that include important and useful features like changing Lexiles or reading text aloud to support students as they transact with content area text. But, those digital curriculum resources, as Hasselbring states, must be used in conjunction with good reading instruction, and for that matter, all literacy instruction.

Here are five ways that you can integrate digital content into your reading and writing instruction to foster, build and ultimately, increase the literacy skills of all of your students:

• Use video to build the background knowledge of your students as a scaffold into complex texts or complex content. Think about some of the great novels that you read with students in your classrooms. As I reflect back on my experiences as a teacher, I’ll never forget reading aloud Esperanza Rising with my fifth graders or walking into a high school classroom where the teacher was reading the picture book Unspoken: A Story From the Underground Railroad to her students. These books have amazing stories with amazing words. Students learn a lot of history from these types of stories. However, using video clips to build their knowledge and understanding of the time periods when these stories occurred will make the literary experience richer and increase their ability to apply comprehension strategies like visualization and inferencing. Resources like Discovery Education Streaming provides teachers with thousands of video clips to pair with texts; consider using these types of curricular resources prior to reading texts or before introducing complex content to scaffold your students’ understanding. Think of it as giving your students a picture in their head on which to hang the words they are reading or hearing.
• Develop domain-specific vocabulary through a multimodal approach. Everyone loves a good glossary! It’s one of the early skills that we teach young readers as they read informational texts. Look at the bold-faced word. What do we do with that word? I’m sure this sounds familiar. I’m also pretty sure that the experience of going to the glossary, finding the word, reading the definition and still not understanding it, is also familiar. What if, however, along with the definition, there was an image, and a video clip and an animation, or other types of media to help you understand? Vocabulary is critical to reading and writing success. As you introduce new vocabulary to your students, particularly domain-specific words like photosynthesis or peninsula, integrate different types of digital content into your instruction or consider having your students build their own digital glossaries.
• Incorporate digital content into explicit reading instruction. In planning your next small group reading lesson, model for students how to read a digital text. How does the right navigation of a digital text help your comprehension? When do you click the hyperlink? Do you read the text first and then watch the video? These are different types of skills that teachers need to model for students and then, engage them in guided practice. However, reading a digital text is only one example of using digital content during explicit instruction. Think about teaching your students how to read a digital image or how to “read” an animation. While the skills and strategies for reading printed and digital content might be the same, how and when they are used looks different.
• Cultivate different types of writing with digital content. Turn off the sound of a short video clip and have students write the narration. Show an animation of the water cycle and have students write the process in step-by-step format. Watch a video on how to take care of a cat and another one on how to take care of a dog, then have students write a compare and contrast piece. Literacy standards across various states require students to write narrative, informative and argumentative pieces. Digital content not only fosters these types of writing, it provides the opportunity to write in a variety of formats while differentiating the domains of focus, content, organization and style.
• Turn students into content creators by mashing digital content with reading, writing, speaking and listening. Good readers write; good writers read. In the real world, reading, writing, speaking and listening are integrated. How do we help students learn this? Engage them in creating projects that use published digital content that is integrated with pieces they write, pictures they draw, audio or video recordings they make, etc. Troy Hicks, author of Digital Writing, Digital Teaching , calls this a “Mash-up.” These types of student content creations use all kinds of traditional literacies, but also a variety of new literacies like visual literacy, digital literacy, and information literacy.

No matter how much our technology changes our world, teaching our students to read and write will always be paramount to their future success. Processes will change; tools will change; and yes, even books will change. However, students will always need to read, write, speak, and listen. So, I encourage educators everywhere to begin to use digital content to prepare students for “new” literacies. Our students are depending on you to do so!

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How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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A Guide to Effective Writing Instruction

In this blog post, Dr. Gary Troia explores the world of effective writing instruction, linking structured literacy practices with the art of teaching writing effectively to provide valuable insights for educators. Throughout this post, readers will gain a deep understanding of the essential elements of effective writing instruction and how to seamlessly incorporate them into the structured literacy classroom.

Table of Contents

• Understanding Structured Literacy

The Writing Rope by Joan Sedita

Characteristics of effective writing curriculum, references and further reading, introduction to structured literacy, understanding structured literacy and its role in reading and writing education.

In structured literacy classrooms in which principles associated with the science of reading are employed, teachers use comprehensive, systematic, and explicit instruction to address the fundamental building blocks of successful reading—phonological awareness, phonics patterns, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension (which is addressed primarily through the development of topic and discourse knowledge). Of course, reading is only one aspect of literacy that requires teachers’ expertise and focus; writing development and instruction also benefit from a structured literacy approach. However, many teachers may be unfamiliar with teaching writing using this approach, in part because most teachers have little preparation to teach writing and because there has been a dearth of high-quality writing curricula and instructional materials available for teachers to use. 

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The Essential Components of Writing Instruction

The Writing Rope by Joan Sedita (2022) offers a convenient way of remembering the critical building blocks of writing in a structured literacy classroom. These are: (1) transcription skills, namely spelling, handwriting, and keyboarding; (2) text structures, including types of writing genres and their main structural elements (e.g., narratives have a setting, a plot with a climax, and character reactions), varied discourse patterns within genres (e.g., compare-contrast versus cause-effect, flashbacks, and flashforwards, haiku versus sonnet), paragraph organization, and vocabulary used to signal linkages and transitions between ideas; (3) syntax, which includes awareness and use of appropriate grammatical structures to most effectively convey meaning; sentence elaboration and combining; and punctuation used to signal syntactic elements; (4) writing craft, namely precise and varied word choice, literary devices (e.g., allusion, symbolism, onomatopoeia), and awareness of task, audience, and purpose; and (5) critical thinking, which includes gathering information through reading source materials and/or performing their own investigations, generating and organizing ideas (i.e., planning), drafting text by hand or through digital means in manageable segments, and revising and editing a text for communicative effectiveness.

All these building blocks in the structured writing classroom must be thoughtfully coordinated to form a comprehensive writing program for students, which is necessary across grades and across disciplines taught in schools to help all students become competent writers. An exemplary writing program also will typically have the following characteristics (see Troia, 2013 for more information):

• Meaningful writing experiences and authentic writing tasks that promote personal and collective expression, reflection, inquiry, discovery, and social change whenever possible to motivate students.      

• A sense of community in which risks are encouraged, children and teachers are both viewed as and engage as writers, personal ownership is expected, and collaboration is a cornerstone so that students are willing to experiment with their writing. 

• Predictable routines that involve both explicit instruction (i.e., modeling with teacher think-aloud, guided collaborative practice with feedback, and independent practice opportunities with feedback) and sustained student practice; in kindergarten, at least 30 minutes daily is recommended, while beyond kindergarten at least one hour daily is recommended, with half the time allocated to explicit instruction (see Graham et al., 2012).     

• A common language for shared expectations and feedback regarding writing quality, which might include the use of traits (e.g., organization, ideas, sentence fluency, word choice, voice, conventions, and presentation).

• Procedural supports such as anchor charts, student-teacher and peer conferences, graphic organizers, checklists for revision/editing, “booster” lessons to help students attain mastery, and computer tools for removing transcription barriers when necessary.

• Integration of writing instruction with reading instruction and content-area instruction (e.g., use of touchstone or mentor texts to guide genre study used for all literacy activities, use of common themes across the curriculum, maintaining learning notebooks in math and science classes as source material for writing, teaching decoding  and  spelling of the same phonics patterns, teaching letter formation while introducing letter-sound correspondences).

• Intentional adjustments to emphasis on teaching the writing process, form, and meaning to meet learners’ needs.          

• Differentiated instruction for struggling learners, multilingual learners, and advanced learners.

• Resident writers and guest authors who share their expertise, struggles, and successes so that children and teachers have positive role models and develop a broader sense of writing craft.

• Opportunities for teachers to upgrade and expand their own conceptions of writing, the writing process, and how children learn to write, primarily through professional development activities but also through being active members of a writing community (e.g., the National Writing Project).

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Empowering Writers Through Self-Regulation

To assist students with navigating all the complex aspects of writing, teachers should consider the role of self-regulation in writing, as successful writers are highly aware of themselves as writers, of factors that influence their writing performance, and of how to use diverse strategies to manage these factors effectively. Self-regulation in writing includes at least three coordinated components: (1) goal setting, (2)self-talk, and (3) self-evaluation. Incorporating self-regulation components in writing instruction has been shown to positively affect both strong and weak writers’ composing abilities (e.g., Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005; Graham & Perin, 2007).

The Power of Goal Setting in Writing

Setting goals enhances attention, motivation, and effort and facilitates strategic behaviors (e.g., planning before drafting) through the valuation of goal attainment. In other words, if a goal is sufficiently important, a student will do all that is necessary to attain it. Research has demonstrated that goal setting improves writing skills (e.g., De La Paz, 2007; Page-Voth & Graham, 1999). For goals to have the most beneficial impact on writing behavior and performance and to encourage the student to marshal sufficient effort, they should be challenging (i.e., just beyond the student’s current level of writing skill), proximal (i.e., attainable within a short period of time), concrete, and self-selected or collaboratively established (because real or perceived control boosts achievement motivation). Goals can focus on a writing process (e.g., “I will use my graphic organizer to help me write”; “I will have my writing partner check my paper for mistakes before I put it in my portfolio”) or an aspect of the product (e.g., “I will be sure to have at least three main ideas and, for each idea, two supporting details in my informative paper”; I will include at least five action helpers, descriptive words, or transition words to improve my word choice”).

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The Magic of Self-Talk for Young Writers

Self-talk (instructions, questions, affirmations, or exhortations directed to oneself) helps orient attention to relevant information, organize thoughts, plan actions, and execute behaviors. In addition, self-talk helps one cope with anxiety, frustration, self-doubt, and impulsivity, which tend to plague struggling writers and even those who are more accomplished writers. Self-talk has been widely investigated for several decades by researchers in many areas of psychology—sports, counseling, psychotherapy, and education—with promising results (e.g., Dobson, 2010; Manning & Payne, 1996). With respect to teaching young writers to use self-talk, it is most effective when (1) the content is tailored to the demands of the task and the individual’s needs; (2) it is rehearsed aloud to automaticity and then used as a form of “inner speech” to control thoughts, feelings, and actions; and (3) it is monitored for fidelity of use by the teacher. Examples of self-talk include, “Have I used my revising checklist to check my work?,” “This is hard, but I can do it if I try my best,” “I am good at coming up with ideas, so I will turn in a good paper,” and “Keep concentrating so you do not get distracted!”

Encouraging Self-Evaluation and Growth in Young Writers

Self-evaluation consists of self-monitoring and self-recording behavior and can be used to assess attention, strategy use, and task performance. Frequently, self-evaluation is accomplished through the graphic representation of a target behavior’s occurrence with a goal (thus, these two aspects of self-regulation are functionally interdependent). For instance, students might quantify their use of story structure elements in fictional narratives produced over time on a chart with the maximum score at the top (the goal). Likewise, students can track how many words they have written per time interval, with the goal of increasing their productivity by 25% over baseline. Self-evaluation has been found to positively affect behavior and academic performance (e.g., Lloyd, Bateman, Landrum, & Hallahan, 1989; Maag et al., 1993). Self-evaluation helps students establish worthwhile goals because the concrete data collected during this process provide feedback on their status relative to an external benchmark or a personal goal.

Fostering Writing Skills with Mentor Texts

Several other practices based on empirical research and informed professional practice can help teachers foster writing development (see Graham & Perin, 2007). The examination of touchstone or mentor texts for attributes that students can mimic in their own writing (e.g., a strong lead for an informative article, the use of dialogue to advance the plot in a story, applying onomatopoeia to create vivid sensory details, the use of punctuation and capitalization to mark and build cadence in a poem) helps them internalize a mental model for the written product and identify rhetorical goals. It thus gives students a focus for their planning and revising efforts. The use of mentor texts is enhanced when strong models of particular aspects of writing are contrasted with weak examples. A related instructional practice involves activities to develop genre and topic knowledge. Again, such knowledge can help students acquire internal frames of reference or performance benchmarks for planning and making meaningful revisions to their writing. In many cases, knowledge about a genre is appropriated through immersion in texts that exemplify the canonical genre traits (e.g., story structure) and discussion of (1) how the genre reflects a unique way of communicating ideas within specific contexts (its purposes and functions) and (2) how the genre is embodied in the structure of the text (its form). Explicit and systematic instruction in genre structure, coupled with authentic purposes for reading and writing in that genre, positively impacts the quality of students’ writing within a genre (e.g., Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Martineau, 2007).

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Elevating Writing through Effective Peer and Teacher Conferencing

Finally, peer and teacher conferencing, whether one-on-one or in small groups, is frequently used in structured writing classrooms to engineer better student papers. However, conferencing between students and teachers often has the “flavor” of typical instructional discourse (teacher-controlled and centered on assignment requirements and teacher expectations) rather than egalitarian conversations regarding writing craft and composition content, especially when the teacher is more knowledgeable about the writing topic. Moreover, peer respondents often provide vague and unhelpful comments and suggestions to authors unless they are explicitly taught to give meaningful feedback. Thus, the positive impact of conference feedback on the quality of students’ papers is likely because many students benefit from attention to even the most global aspects of composition, such as text structure and form, and notably improve their texts with even limited revision. To maximize the effectiveness of writing conferences, a teacher should aim to do the following (see Martin & Certo, 2008):

• Establish a conversational stance to understand students’ goals and ideas before discussing specific textual issues.

• Provide frequent and varied opportunities for conferencing about pieces of writing.

• Encourage flash drafting, a technique in which smaller segments of text (e.g., the climax of a story) are drafted, examined (through conferencing), and revised to help the student feel less invested in a completed draft of the whole paper.

• Collaboratively establish concrete goals for planning, drafting, and/or revision.

• Give weaker writers more conference time that is also of high quality.

• Along with a student’s text, use checklists, questionnaires, and graphic aids as touchpoints during conferences to help link concrete tools with strategic behaviors.

Empowering Educators Through Effective Writing Instruction

In conclusion, effective writing instruction is a vital component of literacy education, and when coupled with structured literacy practices, it can genuinely empower educators and students alike. I hope this blog post has shed light on the critical elements of effective writing instruction and how they can be harnessed within structured literacy classrooms. For those eager to explore this topic further, I invite you to learn more about Bridge to Writing at heggerty.org/bridgetowriting, where you can access valuable resources and tools to enhance your teaching journey. Together, we can help students become proficient and confident writers.

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De La Paz, S. (2007). Managing cognitive demands for writing: Comparing the effects of instructional components in strategy instruction. Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 23, 249-266.

Dobson, K S. (Ed.). (2010). Handbook of cognitive-behavioral therapies (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., D’Aoust, C., MacArthur, C., McCutchen, D., & Olinghouse, 

N. (2012). Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: A practice guide (NCEE 2012-

4058). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications_reviews.aspx#pubsearch.

Graham, S., Harris, K. R., & Mason, L. (2005). Improving the writing performance, knowledge, and self-efficacy of struggling young writers: The effects of self-regulated strategy development. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30, 207-241.

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools—A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York . Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Lloyd, J. W., Bateman, D. F., Landrum, T. J., & Hallahan, D. P. (1989). Self-recording of attention versus productivity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 22, 315-323.

Maag, J. W., Reid, R., & DiGangi, S. A (1993). Differential effects of self-monitoring attention, accuracy, and productivity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 26, 329-344.

Manning, B. H., & Payne, B. D. (1996). Self-talk for teachers and students: Metacognitive strategies

for personal and classroom use . Allyn & Bacon.

Martin, N. M., & Certo, J. L. (2008, February). Truth or tale? The efficacy of teacher-student writing conferences . Paper presented at the Third Writing Research across Borders Conference, Santa Barbara, CA.

Page-Voth, V., & Graham, S. (1999). Effects of goal setting and strategy use on the writing performance and self-efficacy of students with writing and learning problems. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 230-240.

Purcell-Gates, V., Duke, N. K., & Martineau, J. A (2007). Learning to read and write genre-specific texts: Roles of authentic experience and explicit teaching. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 8-45.

Sedita, J. (2022). The writing rope: A framework for explicit writing instruction in all subjects . Brookes Publishing.

Troia, G. A. (2013). Effective writing instruction in the 21st century. In B. M. Taylor & N. K. Duke (Eds.), Handbook of effective literacy instruction: Research-based practice K-8 (pp. 298-345). Guilford Press.

Gary A. Troia, PhD, CCC-SLP

Gary A. Troia, PhD, CCC-SLP, is Associate Professor of Special Education at Michigan State University. Prior to receiving his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 2000, he worked 10 years in the public schools as a special educator and speech- language pathologist, and 6 years as a university clinical supervisor. Dr. Troia is co- editor of the journal Topics in Language Disorders and serves on the editorial boards of several top special education journals. With colleagues Froma Roth and Colleen Worthington, he developed a phonological awareness intervention program for young at-risk children called Promoting Awareness of Speech Sounds (PASS), published by Attainment Company. With fellow researchers Lori Skibbe and Ryan Bowles and funding through the Institute of Education Sciences, he has developed an online phonological awareness assessment for young children with complex communication needs called ATLAS-PA, one component of the Access to Literacy Assessment System. Dr. Troia has authored over 70 research papers, book chapters, and white papers and has given numerous presentations about his work in the areas of phonological processing and awareness, writing assessment and instruction, and teacher professional development in literacy. He has been awarded over $6.5 million in intramural and extramural grants and contracts.

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Digital Literacy Lessons Bookmarked 6 times

Digital literacy lessons.

We live in a digital world; even very young students need to think digitally. These lessons can help them build the skills and dispositions they need to become safe and savvy internet users. Visit the  Digital Literacy Framework to see each lesson sorted by skill.

Choosing Reliable Sources This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, addresses the importance of locating and verifying reliable sources when working with online information. This lesson is aimed at a young audience and operates on the assumption that many students in the class are not yet reading and writing independently.

Part of a Community Online This lesson focuses on helping young children learn to participate in different kinds of digital communities. Students will solidify and work on what they know about being part of any community.

Advertisements and You This lesson starts by showing children some of the kinds of advertisements they might run into online and helping them analyze these ads with a critical eye.

Evaluating Reliable Sources This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, addresses the importance of locating and verifying reliable sources when working with online information.

Understanding Online Searches By learning about search algorithms, students will start to understand that the information they get from searching online does not simply materialize out of thin air! This understanding will enable students to critically evaluate search results.

Participating in Digital Communities This lesson aims to help students learn to safely and respectfully participate in different kinds of digital communities.

Privacy and Security Online Students will discuss basic guidelines for maintaining privacy and security online. To help them internalize these rules, students will illustrate what it would mean to follow each guideline.

Producing Digital Information This lesson focuses on what it means to produce digital content and share information using online platforms.

Sensible Consumers As children use digital media with increasing frequency, advertisers who work with digital platforms continue to understand kids as an ideal target audience. Among other things, this means it is important to help children learn to read online ads sensibly and critically.

Activism Online This lesson introduces children to different ways young people have used the internet to work toward positive social change.

Analyzing How Words Communicate Bias This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, focuses on teaching students to identify how writers can reveal their biases through their word choice and tone. Students will identify “charged” words that communicate a point of view. Students will understand how writers communicate a point of view implicitly by writing their own charged news stories.

Understanding and Evaluating Online Searches In the age of Google and other search engines, this lesson aims to help students navigate how information comes to them through online search tools.

Civic Engagement and Communication as Digital Community Members Just as we engage students in establishing guidelines for building inclusive, safe spaces in our classrooms, it is vital that students learn how to communicate in internet groups and respond to bias online.

The Privacy Paradox This lesson teaches students to understand the impact of online actions on their personal privacy.

Digital Activism Remixed As social media engagement among youth continues to rise, students are becoming increasingly exposed to and involved in hashtag campaigns related to themes of identity, diversity, justice and social action.

Advertising on the Internet This lesson focuses on teaching students to understand the role of identity in the online marketplace and online advertising, and advertisers’ intent to manipulate consumers.

Social Media for Social Action This lesson will engage students in the debate about the efficacy of social media as a tool for social change.

Media Consumers and Creators, What Are Your Rights and Responsibilities? This lesson focuses on the concept of "fake news" and the responsibilities of news and media creators and consumers. Students will explore PEN America's News Consumers' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities and read an article about "fake news" that presents strategies on how to approach digital sources.

News Consumers' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities This lesson focuses on PEN America's News Consumers' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. Students will read the bill of rights, rephrase some of the rights and responsibilities, and rank the rights in order of importance. Finally, students will work together to construct a short dramatic skit that shows the significance of one right of their choosing.

Grades 9-12

Evaluating Online Sources In this lesson, students will locate and verify reliable sources of information.

Understanding How Digital Information Comes to You In this lesson, students will learn how different search engines work.

Constructively Engaging in Digital Communities This lesson will introduce students to the need for practicing inclusivity and empathy when engaged in digital communication.

How Online Communication Affects Privacy and Security In this lesson, students will examine their digital footprints, discuss the positives and negatives of having a footprint, and determine how they can most safely manage their footprints.

How Fair Use Works This lesson focuses on copyright and fair use. Students will discuss these concepts and then complete a project demonstrating what they learned.

You Are the Product In this lesson, students will explore the concept of “going viral” and how advertisers use social media to promote their products and identify potential customers.

Digital Tools as a Mechanism for Active Citizenship In this lesson, students will explore how technology can be a useful tool for active citizenship.

Return to the Digital Literacy Framework Landing Page

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Shifting landscapes of digital literacy

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This paper explores how changing digital literacy practices in educational contexts require that we continually revisit conceptualisations of digital literacy education. We begin by analysing the positions taken by stakeholders who contribute to digital literacy discourses in Australia, exploring how competing interests produce effects which manifest in ways that differently consecrate social and cultural practice in the digital age. We advocate the need for pedagogic frameworks that support digital literacy education. Existing approaches tend to privilege the operationalisation of digital technology. By contrast, teaching is needed which focusses on meaning-making and creating. However, the ‘datafication of everyday life’ (Barassi, 2018 , p.170) has included extraordinary interventions into schooling that have significant implications for teachers and students. We argue that preparing young people for digital citizenship must include a focus on critical digital literacies that are responsive to contemporary digital forces (e.g. platformatisation, artificial intelligence, edu-apps, algorithms) as well as those digital technologies that are yet to make their way into formal schooling.

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Developing Digital Literacy for Teaching and Learning

Re-thinking Critical Digital Literacies in the Context of Compulsory Education

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Digital literacy

It has become a truism to observe that the world has been radically changed by the digital and to note the pervasiveness of digital platforms and technologies in everyday lives, and the effects of these technologies on users. Prior to COVID-19, the importance of digital literacy, and the need for young people to become effective and agential users and makers of digital forms, texts and practices was already widely recognised (Knobel & Lanskear, 2008 ; Jenkins, 2009 ), and embedded in state and national curricula (e.g. Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2016 ; ACARA, n.d. ). With the advent of COVID-19, the need for digital literacy has been thrown into high relief (Gourlay et al., 2021 ; Karagul, Seker and Aykut, 2021 ). As Karagul, Seker and Aykut ( 2021 ) put it ‘The abrupt transition from face-to-face to online education has created the need for some specific abilities, such as digital literacy on the side of the learners at all educational levels’ (p.1).

A great deal has been achieved in identifying key features of multimodal literacy, from which semiotic accounts of digital literacy grew. Perhaps the most influential of these was the concept of literacy as design (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 ). Literacy as design entails ‘the transformative use of available representational resources in the production of new meaning’ (Lam, 2000 , p.1193) including linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial and multimodal modes, with multimodal ‘the most significant as it relates all the other modes in quite remarkably dynamic relationships’ (New London Group, 1996 , p.80). Within these frames, meaning making is understood as being situated and socially constructed, encompassing a wide range of semiotic elements and resources (Gee, 1996 ). This way of thinking about literacies creates space for the conceptualisation of digital literacy (Bawden, 2008 ; Buckingham, 2006 ; Bulfin & McGraw, 2015 ), recognising the ubiquity of the digital in everyday life and the need to prepare young people for a lifetime of digital practice. Yet as Pangrazio ( 2016 ) notes, ‘[d]efining what is meant by digital literacy has proven complicated as the spaces, texts and tools which contextualise such practices are constantly changing.’ (p.163). She points to distinctions between broad definitions whereby digital literacies are defined as ‘semiotic activity mediated by electronic media’ (Thorne, 2013 , p.192) through to more narrowly focussed definitions, emphasising on the one hand mastery and operational proficiency, and on the other, evaluation, creativity, and critique (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011 ).

Our concern with the composition and enactment of digital literacy education can be captured by questions such as the following: what do we want young people to know and be able to do with digital technologies? What does the curriculum say about the knowledge and skills that underpin such an education? How prepared are teachers to support this work? What do students already know about the digital world and how are they navigating digital spaces? The challenge of determining what exactly constitutes a ‘good enough’ digital literacy education is further complicated by the stratification of the field into sub-fields of inquiry. Much like Gee’s ( 1996 ) assertion that we never read generally, but are always reading specifically, digital literacy practices are always situated within specific discourse communities, and specific in nature; be they platform literacies (Williamson, 2017a , 2017b ), digital game literacies (Bourgonjon, 2014 ), social media literacies (Pangrazio & Cardozo Gaibisso, 2020 ), data literacies (Pangrazio & Selwyn, 2019 ), media literacies (Burn & Durran, 2007 ), consumer literacies (Elms et al., 2016 ), and many others. Do we expect students to finish their schooling as masters of each of these domains, or do we need broad concepts that can be applied across the fields?

In this paper, we explore how digital literacy education might be reconceptualised so as to represent a constantly evolving body of knowledge and practice that is responsive to the changing digital literacy landscape. We begin by analysing the positions taken by stakeholders who contribute to digital literacy discourses in Australia, exploring ways in which competing interests produce effects which manifest into practices that differently consecrate social and cultural practice in the digital age. We argue conceptual thinking about what constitutes digital literacy must be broadened beyond the imperatives of operationalising digital technologies, and engage rather with understandings and practices of contemporary digital literacies. Through a focus on two examples of such literacies, platformalisation and edu-apps, we hope to show how preparing young people for digital citizenship must be constantly responsive to the critical imperatives of contemporary digital forces.

2 Stakeholder positions and digital literacy discourse

The pathway forward for literacy educators seeking to engage in digital literacy education is characterised by conceptual multiplicity. While curricula go some way to outlining the desirable knowledge, skills, and dispositions we hope learners will take from their time in primary and secondary education, the literacy landscape has created a context whereby teachers are facing push and pull factors that are almost impossible to reconcile.

Analysing the positions taken by those stakeholders contributing to digital literacies’ discourse in Australia reveals some of the conceptual multiplicity within which teachers are expected to work. These positions, advocated by stakeholders including the state, industry groups, academics, and the media, are neither ideologically neutral nor coherently and consistently communicated. Each represents an interest in the field of literacy education. In the Bourdieusian tradition of mapping the positions in the field which shape the field (Bourdieu, 1993 ), examining how these interests — themselves a product of history, and, simultaneously, through their continued reproduction, producers of history — compete and struggle with each other over influence of the ‘truth’ of the field, may uncover pathways forward.

The state, including the government officials charged with creating and enacting the policies of elected representatives, has presented confusing and contradictory messages regarding the relationship between young people and the literate practices, digital and non-digital, that are communicated as important for school and post-schooling success. On the one hand, digital literacy is subordinated to more important ‘basic’ literacy. Through decades of state and nationally mandated high-stakes literacy testing, coupled with an indefatigable ‘back to basics’ discourse, what counts as literacy is what can be tested, and what can be tested is what counts. As the Minister for Education recently claimed, to improve literacy standards, we must, ‘de-clutter their curriculums and get back to basics’ (Tehan, 2019 ). It is towards this goal that schools are told they must work, prioritising decontextualised operational functions that deprofessionalise the teacher, reducing their autonomy, while simultaneously subjecting them to increasing regimes of accountability. The constant emphasis from political leaders on school performance on these testing regimes legitimises narrow conceptualisations of literacy, and reasserts the state’s authority over all other actors, an example of states’ execution of what Bourdieu calls their prerogative as the ultimate arbiters of acts of consecration ( 1998 , p. 51), and determining what counts and who will enforce what counts.

At the same time, teachers and schools are expected to respond to the rapidly changing technological environment and create space for the development of knowledge and skills associated with information and communication technologies. Government programmes that deploy computers into every school across the nation, coupled with a rhetoric which ties digital competencies with national economic interests (Council of Australian Governments Education Council, 2019 ), have been supported by state and national curricula, which suggest these new skills and knowledge should be embedded into every discipline area. Ignoring the long history of organising schooling according to strict discipline areas (Yates et al., 2017 ; Young, 1998 ), this has required teachers to ‘square the circle’, finding places in highly specialised subjects areas to also do the work of the digital curriculum. The ‘basics’ which so often dominate government discussions around literacy now appear insufficient for a future of work.

Industry groups interested in the skills and knowledge of graduates who enter the workforce have also presented contradictory positions regarding desirable literacy outcomes, including digital literacy skills and competences. On the one hand, the reports produced by these groups reference standardised testing to establish the under-performance of Australian students in terms of literary testing, especially in contrast to other OECD nations (Australian Industry Group, 2016 ). The conclusions they draw suggest that this is negatively impacting Australia’s international competitiveness. In doing so, they further legitimise this narrow and highly contested notion of literacy, and, through their interactions with government, place further pressure on teachers to spend more energy in this area.

On the other hand, reports also advocate for graduates with more diverse and complex digital literacy-orientated capabilities, with an emphasis on communication and creativity (NSW Business Chamber, 2017 ). Work is prioritised as the most important outcome of schooling, and successful workers are those who possess a range of flexible and adaptable digital literacies. However, there is also an emphasis on developing digital literacy skills for life beyond work. The importance of supporting young people to promote and demonstrate ethical, productive, and socially cohesive uses of digital technology is tied to the responsibilities of good citizens (NSW Business Chamber, 2017 ). Digital skills, it is argued, provide access to full participation in modern life, including giving adults access to many basic services. Digital skills, in the context of young people, should also include the capacity for them to understand their digital presence and how they consume online (NSW Business Chamber, 2017 , p. 28).

An alternative and diverse series of positions are taken by the many academics and literacy theorists interested in school-based literacy instruction. The emergence of new conceptualisations of literacy, such as new literacies, critical literacies, media literacies, digital literacies, and multiliteracies, challenges the notion of literacy as a singular concept. Teachers are left to determine which approach best suits their context, and whether they can do justice to those they cannot authentically address.

Those working in initial teacher education have significant influence over which of these positions, and their associated ways of thinking and doing, graduates will take with them to placement and post-training teaching. Novel approaches to twenty-first century forms of literate practices are increasingly being theorised in terms of pedagogical interventions, producing innovative practices that conflict with school contexts that privilege maximising measurable student-achievement. The tensions must ultimately be resolved by the teachers themselves, as they are expected to balance the pressure for local measurable ‘basic’ literacy improvements with the goals of ‘new literacies’ thinking. At times technology is presented as a panacea for the challenges of contemporary schooling (for example, supporting over-worked teachers through new software, minimising geographic challenges, and improving youth mental health via ‘smart apps’). At other times technology is seen as the cause of all the social ills of today’s youth. A two-dimensional view of youth interactions with and through digital technologies has continued throughout the pandemic, with digital technologies lauded for their ability to keep students learning during times of school closures, but also criticised for distracting young people from more worthwhile pursuits.

Framed within a mythologisation of a golden age not hindered by ‘all-consuming’ digital technologies, a discourse emerges which holds digital devices, the Internet, and video games as obstacles to the growth of a generation ready for the literacy challenges of life. The confusion regarding the relationship between digital practices and literacy is understandable given the public has been positioned to think about ‘the literacy crisis’ in terms of digital technologies as both a cause, and simultaneously the tool to mitigate the crisis.

Each of the above positions represents a stake in the game. We refer here to Bourdieu’s metaphorical use of ‘the game’, which he draws on to examine the games of culture which are inherently tied to education systems and their imposition of cultural practices (1993). These practices matter greatly as they become internalised as dispositions for future action. The different stakeholders discussed above, as well as many others that space does not allow us to explore here, bring with them a specific interest in the game, implied by their participation. This interest, illusio , captures their investment in the game and is tied to beliefs about the field and the investments which should produce distinction in such a field. Digital literacy education has come to represent many forms of knowledge, skills and practices because of the distance between those positions discussed above, as they struggle to consecrate particular cultural dispositions.

Our concern is that despite the incongruent nature of many of these positions, there is an expectation that literacy educators can navigate this landscape unproblematically with their students. This expectation ignores what sociology has taught us about the origins of people’s dispositions and their ability to perceive the field as a field of possibilities. All dispositions are associated with certain social and cultural origins (Bourdieu, 1993 , p. 70), and the construction of digital literacy education as a space for multiple practices is no different.

Adding to the challenge is the incorporation of digital technologies into schools at such a rapid rate that digital literacy education is now bound to a range of new sociomaterial entanglements. The rise of digital literacies associated with datafication, AI, platformatisation, algorhythmic learning, and big data, to name a few, raises further questions about the very nature of digital literacy in schools, what should constitute a digital literacy education, and what role teachers should have in preparing young people for a future digital citizenship.

3 A shifting conceptual landscape

There has been evolution of conceptual thinking in terms of how educational institutions might address digital literacy education. Early interest in digital literacies tended to focus on the provision of computers and the skills necessary to operationalise this technology (Molnar, 1978 ). As iterations of digital technology have emerged, the emphasis on productive capacities has continued. Researchers and educators alike have continued to address the pedagogic task of supporting learners to engage in literacy practices of production: a task made all the more challenging given the rapid rate of digital technology innovation and the constant emergence of new tools for design. Students need to know how to use the available digital media tools to access, produce and circulate texts in a dynamic communications environment. For example, as Burn and Durran ( 2007 ) argue, student control over the representational resources tied to software and hardware is an essential aspect of digital text composition. Production always involves choices about the medium of distribution, the networks through which to share, and many others, which form ‘part of what makes the text mean what it does and can affect the process of textual production’ (p. 19). A lack of technical knowledge about ‘how digital texts work’, on the part of teacher or student, can make digital literacy projects more complicated and time consuming in comparison to a writing project (DePalma & Alexander, 2015 ; Sheppard, 2009 ). At the same time, a number of models have been proposed to support educators in this area.

The development of visual grammar and design as conceptual frames for textuality has informed teachers’ approaches to digital and non-digital production. The visual grammar partially developed in the Australian Curriculum is informed by Kress and van Leeuwen’s ( 2006 ) visual grammar, which uses a systemic functional approach based on the linguistic work of Halliday (Halliday, 1978 ). In this context, a grammar is understood as a central system for organising ‘all the meaning-making resources in a mode’ (Collerson, 1997 , p.2) and as a suitable overarching term for describing the regularities of a particular mode (Kress, 2003 , p.65). A grammar provides users with a shared and systematic way to organise and talk about different meaning-making systems and the available semiotic resources. At the same time, grammars should not be seen as rigid and prescriptive (Halliday, 1978 ; Kress, 2003 ; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 ).

Classroom focused work exploring teaching visual design drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s ( 2006 ) visual grammar of still image (Callow, 2006 ; Edwards-Groves, 2011 ; Zammit, 2007 ) has expanded to include moving image (Buckingham & Willett, 2009 ). Research in this area shows the need for well-conceptualised models and a viable shared metalanguage for teaching and assessing meaning-making (Chandler, 2017 ; Cloonan 2011 ; Edwards-Groves, 2011 ; Unsworth, 2010 ).

Some of this need has been met by models for learning such as that advanced by multiliteracies learning by design pedagogy (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012 ; New London Group, 1996 ). Through these we can see how conceptual advances in semiotics and literacy education have become entangled with the conceptual evolution of digital literacy, again raising questions about the requisite knowledge and skills for those engaged in digital literacy education.

One conclusion that we offer from our research work navigating these entanglements (Bacalja, 2021 ; Beavis, 2022 ; Chandler, Unsworth and O'Brien, 2012 ) is that as others have noted (Bulfin & McGraw, 2015 ) skills-based approaches alone are insufficient if the goal is for young people to leave schooling as creative and critical users of digital technology, and an understanding about the ways their digital practices are tied to other cultural, social and economic conditions. Teaching orientated towards critical digital literacies offers one way to move practice beyond production. As the London School of Economics establish in their description of critical digital literacy, it is:

not only about evaluating online content but also understanding the internet’s production and consumption processes, its democratising potential, and its structural constraints. Critical digital literacy should be understood as essential in protecting people of all ages from misinformation, as well as in fostering social inclusion and the civic and political empowerment that comes from engaging reflexively with digital media…In order to be digital, critical digital literacy needs to incorporate understandings of the internet and the digital environment. (London LSE, 2015 ).

Given that the digital world will continue to evolve, whether we like it or not, digital literacy education also needs to progress, albeit in ways that might initially be uncomfortable for some.

3.1 Data literacies for the digitally literate citizen

It is not enough for teachers to enact a version of digital literacy pedagogies that are limited to supporting students to design through digital media. We need to expand digital literacies to include data literacies. The rapid expansion of digital technologies into every aspect of contemporary life has contributed to what Barrasi calls ‘the datafication of everyday life’ (2018, p.170). Well beyond the use of apps to regulate a wide range of services that were once offered ‘in-person’, the intrusion of the digital now includes ‘the datafication of childhood’ (p.171), where children become datafied citizens as they are coerced into participating in society through digital means which leave digital traces. Lupton and Williamson ( 2017 ) refer to these young people as the ‘datafied child’, arguing that formal education systems are at the heart of monitoring and collecting data about learners as they move through schooling. The datafication of contemporary society does not stop at the school gates. As Williamson puts it, ‘A vast apparatus of measurement is being developed to underpin national educational systems, institutions and the actions of the individuals who occupy them’ ( 2017a , p.4). We should be concerned that the mass proliferation of digital devices, codes, software, and algorithms in education has gone largely unnoticed and unproblematised (Williamson, 2017a , 2017b ). A brief look at two examples of the influence of the digital in schools, platformatisation and edu-apps, helps focus our attention on what a reconceptualised digital literacy education might constitute.

Platformatisation is the process of using digital platforms to offer digital services and encourage online participation. In the context of formal schooling, concerns have been raised about the extent to which such platforms shroud what they do with data collected about users’ activities. Kumar et al.’s ( 2019 ) investigation of teachers’ use of technology platforms found that the platformatisation of the classroom promoted surveillance and positioned teachers as surveillant consumers, gathering information for use in future decision making. Kerssens and Van Dijck ( 2021 ) exploration of the platformatisation of primary education in The Netherlands reported similar concerns about the impact of the increasing presence of platforms and data-driven services on classrooms. The integration of these digital systems into schools has been found to do more than just offer choices. They also impact pedagogical principles, social practices, and student interaction (Beetham & Sharpe, 2019 ). Pangrazio and Sefton-Green’s ( 2019 ) interest in how such platforms shape relationships for teaching and learning is particularly relevant for educators. They demonstrate how platforms form and inform relationships of learning. It is a reminder for those who believe teaching work is relational work, that technologies that interfere with such work also have the capacity to interfere with relationships, and that there is value in considering what knowledge students and teachers alike need if they are to be critically and digitally literate in their participation with these platforms inside and outside of schooling.

Another example of educational technology reshaping the digital literacies of schooling is the ubiquitous edu-app. While critical approaches to the study of educational apps have received only modest attention (Decuypere, 2019 ), the many ways these apps reorient the literacy practices of formal schooling require consideration. Decuypere’s ( 2019 ) analysis of one app, Grasshopper, an app designed to teach learners to code, challenges any notion of apps as neutral devices. As Decuypere explains, these apps ‘attempt to make students think in particular desired ways, seek to understand themselves and the world in certain predefined manners, and consequentially inscribe particular visions about education and learning and what it means to learn and be a learner today’ (p.3). Rennie et al.’s ( 2019 ) study of privacy and app use in Australian primary schools also demonstrates how important it is that professional learning programmes include an emphasis on digital technologies designed for school contexts. Rennie et al. found that privacy considerations were inconsistently apparent, and that the cost of apps often led to free apps being implemented despite the problematic issues around targeted advertising and the collection and selling of data from within the apps. They suggest that there is room for a more critically rigorous evaluation of privacy when it comes to selecting and using apps in classroom settings. They argue that when it comes to educational technology, Internet governance plays out in unique ways that are sensitive to the dispositions of individual teachers and schools.

We offer these examples as catalysts for asking questions about what teachers and students need to know, and be able to do, in response to the widespread incorporation of such technologies into formal schooling. Operationalising these technologies does not appear to be a challenge for most users. For the most part, platforms and apps are designed in ways that make their operation almost seamless. However, the risk is that this only contributes to their uncritical use. Approaches to digital literacy education that are limited to pedagogies supporting students to be digital makers and designers are not enough.

Importantly, work is already underway which considers digital citizenship in light of the issues caused by the expansion of digital literacies into almost every aspect of contemporary life. Emejulu and McGregor ( 2019 ) articulation of a ‘radical digital citizenship’, where ‘individuals and groups committed to social justice critically analyse the social, political, and economic consequences of digital technologies in everyday life and collectively deliberate and take action to build alternative and emancipatory technologies and technological practices’ (p.140), offers one set of approaches to helping teachers rethink the kinds of digital literacy practice in their classrooms. The centring of principles of justice, ethics and power represent a marked shift from skills-centric approaches. Similarly, Pangrazio and Selwyn’s ( 2021 ) case for ‘critical data education’ promotes the need for children to be taught how their data are collected and used, and what they can do to take control over their personal data. But multiple case studies undertaken by Pangrazio and Selwyn seeking to achieve such goals found that shifting young people’s digital practices was difficult given how deeply intertwined these are with ‘contemporary socialities’ (p.445). If the aim is for young and old alike to make more critically informed decisions about their participation in the digital world, then we should be prepared for a long and complex journey.

4 Conclusion

This paper raises core questions about what constitutes digital literacy education. What, if anything, is the relationship between using digital texts and possessing the knowledge to critique such texts? Should students be aware that they are generating data as they use edu-apps and social media, and of the ways in which platforms and technologies make use of these? Should data literacy be included as part of critical digital literacy conceptualised as an expansion of traditional literacy terms? What are the implications for pedagogy and curriculum?

Some of the issues we raise reprise longstanding debates within the field. One set concerns conceptions of curriculum, and of the organisation of school learning, and what Green calls ‘the representation problem’, led by questions: what knowledge is of most worth? What should the schools teach? (Green, 2018 , p.21).

Another issue relates to the great need for teachers to have access to specific knowledge about digital technologies, both hardware and software, and their features, and about how they might teach and work with them. Building knowledge in this field, and providing preservice and practising teachers with information, strategies and resources is patently a clear task for literacy educators, as for the profession as a whole.

As always, actions and possibilities are complex, often contradictory. Digital technologies and communication have massive roles, amongst them disseminating information and misinformation on the one hand, and enabling social cohesion and creative forms of meeting and relationships on the other; threatening or supporting mental health; facilitating workplaces and practices of some kinds, while limiting and risking others. One thing is sure. Now, more than ever, young people — and all of us — need to be critically and digitally literate, astute, and informed.

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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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Barbara Bush Foundation Joins PLA and AT&T in Promoting Digital Literacy for Adult Learners

by Andri Moloney-Kitts, Programs Coordinator, Barbara Bush Foundation on May 14, 2024

In today’s world, digital literacy is not just a skill; it’s a necessity. As technology continues to be at the forefront of our daily lives, the ability to navigate the digital landscape effectively and safely is becoming increasingly crucial. From communication and education to business and entertainment, skills are needed to leverage technology effectively and help close the digital divide.

AT&T is making significant strides addressing this issue through their AT&T Connected Learning  program. One component of this program provides targeted digital literacy learning modules through the DigitalLearn.org site. DigitalLearn.org is The Public Library Association’s (PLA) curated collection of free digital literacy courses and training materials. Recently, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy (BBF) joined AT&T as a collaborator in this effort by providing training to PLA sites on the use of BBF’s resource guide, Promoting Digital Literacy for Adult Learners as a supplemental resource to their digital literacy skill-building workshops. Through this work, BBF has deepened the impact of these shared materials by providing digital literacy resources, delivering customized training on the materials for facilitators to select sites, and providing technical support. Data was collected by all pilot sites to track participation and measure the efficacy of the program.

One PLA site that had significant success throughout the pilot was the Charleston County Public Library in South Carolina. Two instructors in particular, John Strasburg, Adult Services Librarian, and Lily Perez, Technology Librarian, discussed how using the shared materials was helpful in promoting digital literacy skill building for library patrons. With materials offered in English and Spanish, the libraries saw a large impact on learners and instructors throughout the duration of the pilot.

Using the Tools and Resources for Trainers section on DigitalLearn.org , instructors were able to select lessons that met the needs of their patrons and communities, and also offered opportunities to use the asynchronous learning modules . The digital literacy resource guide then provided an opportunity to explore how to best support learners using a whole learner approach with instructors implementing research-based strategies to deepen the impact of the digital literacy skill-building.

Learner Impact

Based on discussions with Charleston instructors, it is clear that this pilot had a positive impact on learners. One of the most important things mentioned by instructors throughout this pilot was the encouragement of a growth mindset. When teaching technology, especially to adults, it is easy for learners to become overwhelmed and discouraged.

Strasburg shared the following story as an authentic example of working with learners: “… I wanted to dispel the myth that I was ‘a world’s foremost expert.’ I shared with the learners that I owned an Android and had little experience with the iOS platform. The point I was trying to convey was, like everything else, learning takes work, or as the guide eloquently puts it, ‘…effort, mistakes, reflection, and refinement of strategies and skills’ (page 37). I told the learners that not only did I have to study the course material, but I researched online websites and magazines to better acquaint myself with iOS. I saw some heads nodding and suspect my modest sentiment was received.”

Additionally, instructors were encouraged to help learners set a goal for themselves at the beginning of the pilot. Perez noted, “going forward, I will make changes by giving [learners] learning objectives to help them set a goal. Without them knowing, they set a goal for themselves just by showing up. This pushes them more towards the goal and makes the program a better learning experience.”

Post-surveys were provided to learners after the completion of each module. After reviewing this data, it was clear that these modules were helpful and effective in digital literacy instruction. Everyday digital literacy skills that most take for granted, such as searching for information online or other computer basics, turned out to be essential skill development for learners, thus making strides in empowering individuals in their digital skills.

Instructor Impact

While this pilot was intended to have a large positive impact on learners and library patrons, feedback showed the benefits and lessons provided to instructors as well. The large variety of resources and teaching strategies provided by the Digital Literacy Resource Guide and DigitalLearn.org were a critical component of this pilot study. One of the key points in the resource guide is “knowing to develop requirements for technical solutions based on user needs” (page 28). Perez states: “I found the most impactful part of the pilot was that there is no correct way to instruct. There are so many different things you can add to your program.” Instructors having the ability to implement their own interactive and engaging activities promoted enhanced learner participation and retention.

Additionally, providing resources to instructors promotes effective instruction and engagement. Strasburg highlighted that the DigitalLearn.org materials were visually appealing, and he plans on using some of the graphics in his lesson planning and presentations. He also mentioned that “the Promoting Digital Literacy for Adult Learners Resource Guide is a thoroughly helpful resource and contains a lot of information for the effective delivery of instruction. One point made me pause and reflect as I prepared the lesson; it was about bias. I found it helpful to remember that learners attend a workshop with varying levels of experience and that, in most cases, at a level below the instructor. While this dynamic is mentioned in several areas of the guide, I liked one particular passage: ‘Yet what feels like second nature to you now was once totally new… [the instructor will] need to assume one’s beginner mindset by putting themselves in their shoes’ (page 15).”

In conclusion, these resources provided by AT&T, PLA, and BBF, used in combination with passionate instructors and library support, provided an opportunity for more enhanced digital literacy learning. Teaching digital literacy is a fairly new concept, and by providing resources, instructors can find different strategies and lessons to help assist learners and patrons, regardless of their own digital literacy skills. Strasburg points out that, “while librarians/adult educators have had some type of instructor training in library school or other means, the content in the guide is fresh and will help many people brush up on some old skills.”

Additionally, it is important to highlight the pivotal role libraries play in promoting digital literacy and bridging the digital divide. With access to resources, technology, and staff, libraries serve as an essential hub for digital learning and skill development. By offering digital literacy workshops, libraries are working to help individuals of all ages and backgrounds navigate the digital world with dignity.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the need for effective and interactive digital literacy instruction will only increase. This collaboration (AT&T, BBF, and PLA) highlights the importance of investing in digital literacy education and adopting innovative approaches to meet the diverse needs of learners. By embracing digital literacy instruction, we can empower individuals to thrive in an increasingly digital world, unlocking new opportunities for all.

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Using Generative AI for Reading and Writing Instruction

During the next few weeks, we will explore how to use Generative AI tools like ChatGPT for reading and writing instruction. I will share some things I have learned and invite the community to contribute too. 

I understand Generative AI like having a conversation with someone who wants to help you. The clearer I am about my needs, the better Generative AI will be about meeting them. Experts suggest using a prompt framework like RACEF (Role, Action, Context, Examples, and Format) for best results. It is not necessary to use all five parts of RACEF for each prompt we create. 

Last summer, Rachel Riggs from World Education lead a team that created the Open Prompt Book . This is a great place to start to see how to craft more effective generative AI prompt frameworks. 

Improving Prompt Results

“Pro tip: Remember that ChatGPT works best when prompts build upon each other. This means you can ask follow-up questions or add more details in the same conversation thread, helping the AI to provide more specific answers and responses to your prompts” ( Stivers and Lehrman ). We train AI tools every time we use them!

Also, the bad response and regenerate tools can be helpful too:

What has helped you create better generative AI prompts?

Thanks for being part of our community,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group 

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