Journal of curriculum & instruction

              Journal of Curriculum and Instruction
Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
Celebrating Six Years of JoCI
Diane D. Kester
Sharilyn C. Steadman
Chan Evans
East Carolina University
Patricia Bricker
Western Carolina University
After six years of publishing the Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, it is
time to reflect on the past, report on the present, and look to the future. As a new
editorial team, we have spent time this year learning about JoCI’s inception and
original vision, while simultaneously reviewing policy and procedures and
assembling articles and reviews for this issue. Beginning this spring, we are
implementing innovations that we hope will keep JoCI fresh and relevant. Here,
we share a brief history of JoCI and its growth over the last six years as we
celebrate its original mission to provide free quality research and practitioner
articles for higher education faculty, PreK-12 teachers, graduate students in
education, pre-service teacher education candidates, school administrators, and
educational policymakers.
2004 - 2007 JoCI is Born
The Journal of Curriculum and Instruction began with an idea that evolved
into a reality. In 2004, Drs. Terry Atkinson, Sue Steinweg, and Katherine
O’Connor, three professors in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at
East Carolina University (ECU), had a vision to publish an electronic peer-reviewed
journal that would be available to teachers and teacher educators who
might not otherwise have access to peer-reviewed professional literature about
PreK-12 education. They were encouraged by their chair to explore the
possibilities – the need, the support, and the logistics – for launching such a
journal.
The three founders first investigated resources on the ECU campus and
identified what was being published locally and what server resources might be
available to them. Because nothing was available on campus, they approached
the Office of Academic Outreach, a unit that has pioneered many technology
innovations at ECU. They found the Public Knowledge Project, an organization
that was developing open source software programs that are available free of
charge and can be edited to meet the design needs of the users. Open Journal
Systems (OJS) was selected as the program that best fit the original goal to
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Kester, Steadman, Evans, and Bricker 1
Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
produce a free journal. Housing the journal on a local server provided for
customization of the appearance and features of an online journal. Every phase
of the process including submission, peer-reviewing, and publication is
electronic. In 2007, the editors registered with the Library of Congress for an
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). Later, the application for a Digital
Object Identifier (doi) was obtained to store metadata of the articles in the digital
environment.
The original editorial team made decisions concerning all aspects of the
editorial process, including the submission and publication timeline and sections
and type of articles they wished to include. They determined that issues would be
published twice a year in pdf and audio (mp3) formats, and they identified a
series of special topics and invited experts for each. They planned for rotating
editorship with one new editor joining and one current editor leaving the team
each semester.
The inaugural issue of the electronic open-access Journal of Curriculum
and Instruction was launched in July 2007. It included three peer-reviewed
sections, Research Forum, Practitioner’s Platform, and Perspective. It also
contained one invited article from a national leader in the themed area and an
introductory piece by a guest editor that provided an overview of the issue and
each article. In the fall of 2007, an executive editor (first author) was added as a
permanent member of every team. She provides constancy and bridges the
editorial board with the management of OJS and technical assistance.
2008 – 2012 JoCI Comes of Age
The original format of the journal and the editorial board configuration
continued over the next five years with few changes. Beginning in 2009, the ECU
team was joined by editors from sister universities, including the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville; St. John’s University; and Western Carolina University. To
see a list of members from each editorial team over the past six years, visit
http://www.joci.ecu.edu/index.php/JoCI/about/editorialTeam
In 2010, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
(AACTE) selected JoCI’s editorial team as the recipient of the prestigious Edward
C. Pomeroy Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teacher Education. The
award recognizes distinguished service to the teacher education community for
the development and promotion of outstanding practices in teacher education at
the collegiate, state, or national level.
Currently, production of the journal involves the executive editor and three
co-editors, two graduate assistants, reviewers and proofreaders, and resource
support from the Department of Literacy Studies, English Education, and History
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Kester, Steadman, Evans, and Bricker 2
Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
Education (formerly one of the programs in Curriculum and Instruction), the Dean
of the College of Education, and the Provost of the University.
Publication Acceptance Rate and Themes
During these six years and 11 issues, 337 manuscripts have been
submitted to JoCI for blind-review. Forty-seven were accepted for publication,
with an overall acceptance rate of 14%. Three issues have been open topic.
Special theme issues have included
 Literacy: Best Practices in an Age of High-Stakes Assessment
 Social Studies Teaching & Learning: Preparing Citizens for a Global
Society
 Addressing the Needs of All Learners
 Using Action Research to Improve Educational Practice
 Transformative Leadership
 Recruiting and Retaining Teachers in High-Need Content and Geographic
Areas
 Preparing Students with 21st Century ICT Literacy in Math and Science
Education
 Diversity and Global Learning
Readership
Between June 2007 and December 2012, readers of the journal have
come from 169 countries around the world. Outside the US, the highest number
of visits has come from Indonesia, Malaysia, Canada, the Philippines, Romania,
and the United Kingdom.
 73,985 visits with 319,177 page views
o 50,168 visits from the US
o 1,452 visits from the UK
o 21,365 visits from 167 other countries and territories
 1,221 visits via mobile devices
 54,182 (73.23%) new visitors; 19,803 (26.77%) returning visitors
 1,231 registered subscribers
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Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
Figure 1: Site visits to JoCI from data recorded by Google Analytics.
In This Issue
In “What knowledge is of most worth: Divergent content knowledge filters
in social studies education,” Thomas Misco (2013) identifies the complex and
broad nature of the field of social studies education and explores the impact that
such complexity and lack of specificity have upon program area students, who
may be called upon after graduation to teach classes of history, geography,
political science, economics, sociology, and more. In this study of one program’s
undergraduate and graduate students, Misco examined teacher education
students’ perceptions of their coursework to identify which courses students
believed better prepared them to take the Praxis II exam and/or to teach middle
and high school courses. The results of the study suggest that students found
fault with all types of courses. They viewed their content coursework as lacking
the depth they needed for effective lesson planning and teaching and identified
their upper level courses, which focused on specific time periods or topics, as
being too narrow to effectively prepare them for the Praxis II. Further, they
complained that education courses needed to be more responsive to the realities
of middle and high school settings. The author concludes with suggestions of
how to refocus and reconfigure social studies programs to more effectively
address the needs of future social studies educators.
In her study, “Preaching what we practice: A study of revision,” Shelbie
Witte (2013) explores the disparity between the revision practices that teachers
employ in their own writing and those that they teach to their classroom students.
Over the course of three years, Witte conducted a multi-tiered study of 181
0
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20,000
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30,000
35,000
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Visits to the JoCI Site per Year
Number of Unique Visitors Number of Visits
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Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
National Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute participants with data
including pre- and post-surveys, focus groups, follow-up questions, and analysis
of writing samples. Her results identify eight themes that collectively highlight
both challenges and possibilities, including a recognition that prior to the NWP
professional development and associated involvement with the NWP’s Electronic
Anthology, study participants identified revision as a critical skill in their own
writing, yet as a group and individually, they offered inconsistent definitions of
revision and revision strategies. Further, only 30% of participants spent more
than two hours per month on revision in their classrooms, and most failed to
incorporate the strategies that they normally used when revising their own work.
After the teachers participated in the NWP professional development, however,
their practices reflected significant shifts: a greater alignment between teachers’
personal revision strategies and the revisions strategies they incorporated into
their writing instruction, a greater likelihood that they would provide students
opportunities to access digital writing environments in the classroom, and a
greater emphasis on the importance of authentic audiences.
In the perspective piece, “The use of game dynamics to enhance
curriculum and instruction: What teachers can learn from the design of video
games,” Curtis Chandler (2013) discusses the possibility of using specific
aspects of game design to plan academic instruction at the secondary level. He
endorses the belief that students are hard-wired to learn and to play, and he
describes how implementing the tools of game design may tap into both. First, he
reviews research findings of the benefits of using video games in classroom
instruction, exploration, and practice. These include increased levels of
motivation and engagement and improved visual and spatial skills, mathematic
achievement, problem-solving, and higher order thinking. Next, Chandler
identifies five game dynamics that will help teachers think like game designers as
they plan lessons and activities. Each design element – narrative context, explicit
interconnectedness, well-ordered problems, control and choice, and
customization and co-design – is defined. Classroom examples in language arts,
science, and social studies are offered to illustrate how the design elements can
be incorporated into an enhanced learning experience for students. Chandler
also includes cautions for educators who are willing to consider using game
dynamics in curriculum planning. He calls for further research and collaboration
between game designers and educators to develop more effective and engaging
educational experiences for students.
This issue marks the return of book reviews to JoCI, and two are included
here. In Knowing and Writing School History: The Language of Students’
Expository Writing and Teachers’ Expectations (2011), Luciana C. de Oliveira
explores writing and the components that signal successful composition in high
school and middle grades history classes. The author offers novice and
experienced teachers new ways to consider their students’ writing, and through
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Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
systemic-functional linguistics, she makes a valuable contribution to disciplinary
literacy. The book was reviewed by Sarah Drake Brown.
In Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement (2012), Lucy
Caulkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman offer a detailed, logical,
and clearly structured exploration of the new Common Core State Standards and
how they might be implemented. The authors divide the text into strand-specific
chapters, an approach that allows readers to easily find sections that relate to
their specific questions or interests. While the authors acknowledge that
questions and concerns about the CCSS linger, they highlight that this effort has
the potential to promote significant positive change within education. The book
was reviewed by Sharilyn C. Steadman.
Looking Forward
As we look to the future of JoCI, we continue the pursuit of providing free
online access of the journal to readers across the globe. To this end, we
encourage readers to consider JoCI as an outlet for their scholarship. We accept
submissions of empirically-based manuscripts related to teaching and learning
from researchers and practitioners from PreK-12 schools, colleges, and
universities. Manuscripts will be evaluated on innovation, quality of scholarship,
and contribution to the field of curriculum and instruction. The original three peer-reviewed
sections include:
 Research Forum – Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research
studies. Literature reviews are current and focused on research questions.
Methods sections include detailed descriptions of participants,
instruments, and procedures. Discussions draw conclusions from extant
literature and research findings and state implications for future research
or practice.
 Practitioner’s Platform – Descriptions of action research and
professional practice supported by research-based literature and
implemented in academic setting.
 Perspective – Commentaries, position papers, and policy analyses based
on current empirical research. Manuscripts provide an empirically-based
point of view on topics that may include current issues in curriculum and
instruction.
Two new peer-reviewed sections are being added to JoCI.
 International Investigations – Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed
methods research studies with an international focus. Literature reviews
are current and focused on research questions. Methods sections include
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Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
detailed descriptions of participants, instruments, and procedures.
Discussions draw conclusions from extant literature and research findings
and state implications that may focus on specific geographic locations, but
that contain an element of generalizability for future research or practice.
 Book Review – Book reviews for theme and open topic issues will be
considered. Reviewers are requested to submit a proposal that includes
the book title, author, relevance to JoCI readership, and a brief (100-word)
overview of the book.
Upcoming Issues
We are currently accepting manuscripts for two future issues,
Performance Assessment of Pre-Service and In-Service Educators (deadline
October 15, 2013) and Open Topic (deadline March 15, 2014). The special
topics issue will focus on high-stakes performance assessment of practitioners at
both pre-service and in-service levels. Suggested topics for research studies and
practitioner articles include how, when, and why teacher performance
assessments are initiated and implemented; the relationship of performance
assessment and practice; the impact of teacher performance assessment on
teaching communities; issues of validity and reliability; the role of non-teaching
stakeholders in performance assessments; and ways to address confounding
factors, such as regional and cultural differences.
Final Thoughts
Please join us in celebrating JoCI’s sixth birthday. As we continue the
mission of the original editorial team to provide a free open-access journal
focused on disseminating quality innovative research, practice, and issues
relevant to teaching and learning, we look forward to many more years of
publication. We readily recognize the solid foundation that has been set for us by
earlier editors, and we acknowledge that JoCI can only maintain the quality of the
past six years through the skills, efforts, dedication, and imagination of our
contributors. We thank all our readers for their loyalty, our writers and
researchers for sharing their work, and our peer-reviewers for their professional
expertise and support.
Here’s to the next six years!
References
Brown, S. D. (2013). [Review of the book Knowing and writing school history:
The language of students’ expository writing and teachers’ expectations,
by L. C. de Oliveira]. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 6(2), 76-78.
doi:10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p76-78
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Kester, Steadman, Evans, and Bricker 7
Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p1-9
Chandler, C. (2013). The use of game dynamics to enhance curriculum and
instruction: What teachers can learn from the design of video games.
Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 6(2), 60-75.
doi:10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p60-75
Misco, T. (2013). What knowledge is of most worth? Divergent content
knowledge filters in social studies education. Journal of Curriculum and
Instruction, 6(2), 10-32. doi:10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p10-32
Steadman, S. C. (2013). [Review of the book Pathways to the Common Core:
Accelerating achievement, by L. Caulkins, M. Ehrenworth, and C.
Lehman. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 6(2), 79-82.
doi:10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p79-82
Witte, S. (2013). Preaching what we practice: A study of revision. Journal of
Curriculum and Instruction, 6(2), 33-59. doi:10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p33-59
About the Authors
Diane D. Kester, PhD, is Associate Professor Emerita in the College of
Education at East Carolina University. She is the former chair of the
Department of Library Science where she also taught courses in
librarianship and instructional technology. She has served as Executive
Editor for the Journal of Curriculum and Instruction since 2007. Her
research interests include applications of technology in teaching and
learning – for people of all ages. E-mail: kesterd@ecu.edu
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March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 1-9 ISSN: 1937-3929
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Sharilyn C. Steadman, PhD, is an assistant professor in the
Department of Literacy Studies, English Education, and History
Education in the College of Education at East Carolina University. Her
research focuses on pre-service teacher development and effective
means of supporting the transition from teacher candidate to classroom
teacher.
E-mail: steadmans@ecu.edu
Chan Evans, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of
Special Education, Foundations, and Research in the College of
Education at East Carolina University. Her research interests include
academic and behavioral support for students with
emotional/behavioral disorders across educational environments,
teachers-as-researchers, and universal design for learning.
E-mail: evansru@ecu.edu
Patricia Bricker, EdD, is an associate professor in the School of
Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Allied
Professions at Western Carolina University. She began her career as
an environmental educator and taught both elementary and middle
school prior to becoming a teacher educator. As an elementary
teacher, she was an active participant in Columbia University’s
Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Leadership Institute.
Her current research interests include inquiry-based science education,
integration of science and literacy, experiential education, Farm to
School programs, and teacher professional development. E-mail:
bricker@email.wcu.edu
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Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pp. 10-32 ISSN: 1937-3929
http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi: 10.3776/joci2013.v6n2p10-32
What Knowledge is of Most Worth?
Divergent Content Knowledge Filters in Social Studies Education
Thomas Misco
Miami University
Abstract
This study explored the divergent content knowledge that pre-service social studies teachers
negotiate during their collegiate experience. Given the array of competing canonical forces,
including university departments, state departments of education, the Praxis II subject test, and
local content standards, as well as the variability of social studies content course requirements
within different universities, I explored student perceptions of content courses as they relate to
these forces. The findings revealed that students perceive their content preparation to be overly
general and disconnected from the Praxis II exam. Yet, students suggested that university
courses helped prepare them to teach, and they expressed a desire for more content courses
and fewer education courses. Finally, in response to the problem of canonical divergence, this
article suggests blurring the divisions between university content departments, departments of
teacher education, and K-12 schools, as well as teaching some content courses in teacher
education.
This study explored the intersection of content knowledge across different
institutions and intellectual spaces as it relates to pre-service social studies education.
In particular, I explored different kinds of knowledge and the contested canonical
pressures of content knowledge needed to teach secondary social studies as it relates
to the university coursework and its measurement as found within the Praxis II subject
test. In short, this study examined the problem of content knowledge divergence as it
relates to pre-service teachers in social studies education programs.
Ideally, teachers should enjoy content knowledge that is “abundant to the point of
overflow” (Dewey, 1933, p. 274), much wider and deeper than that of the textbook and
covering collateral ideas in order to fully respond to emergent questions and incidents.
This abundance enables teachers to understand the content field in both broad and
particular ways (Sowders, 2010; Wilson, Shulman, & Richert, 1987), as well as find the
“productive points of access for different pupils” and therefore be responsive to a
diverse set of student needs (McDiarmid & Clevenger-Bright, 2008, p. 141). But what
should be the role of content in a pre-service social studies education program
(Fantozzi, 2012) and which content should be privileged? A variety of institutions and
agencies, such as a university’s history department, state departments of education,
local content standards, school textbooks, curriculum guides, and other fountainheads
of knowledge often have unique and competing visions of “what knowledge is of most
worth” (Spencer, 1891, p. 21). Pre-service social studies teachers have to negotiate
these canonical forces not only within the macrocurriculum of pre-service university
experiences and the public school in which they work, but in a broader context as well.
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Recent studies have addressed a variety of present-day problems and concerns
in pre-service social studies teacher education, but emphasis is typically placed on the
methods or teacher education experience and how it influences teacher beliefs as they
transition to “real world” teaching (Doppen, 2007; Patterson & Luft, 2004). Other studies
have explored the commonplace duality of teacher education and practice (Meuwissen,
2005) or the Praxis II Principles of Learning and Teaching (Thompson & Smith, 2005),
but not the Praxis II subject test. Also well-represented are the related topics of content-intensive
methods courses (Fehn & Koeppen, 1998), compartmentalized thinking about
historical knowledge and teaching (Fallace, 2007), using methods courses to build on
content courses (Yaeger, 1997), pre-service teachers’ difficulties employing primary
source documents (Seixas, 1998), in-service teachers’ use of primary sources (Hicks,
Doolittle, & Lee, 2004), ontological beliefs about social studies teaching (Crowe, Hawley,
& Brooks, 2012) and historical thinking while student teaching (Hauessler-Bohan &
Davis, 1998).
This study responds to a gap in the field’s understanding of different kinds of
content knowledge as it relates to university courses, the Praxis II Social Studies
Content Knowledge Test, and actual classroom practice. It also responds to the
persistent concerns voiced among pre-service teachers, typically when they evaluate
their cohort experience and the macrocurriculum of the teacher education program. I
primarily focused on the scope, depth, and topics of content as they relate to pre-service
social studies teachers’ Praxis II subject test and perceived preparedness for
teaching. In short, social studies content knowledge, as it relates to teacher preparation
and eventual practice, constitutes a practical problem for many pre-service students as
they try to negotiate the often competing and inadequate unity of content forces from
the university to enacted K-12 curriculum and points between.
Traditionally, a disjuncture has existed between the content pre-service teachers
learn and the content they ultimately teach in schools (Thornton, 2005). Research in
pre-service teacher education programs has largely neglected this duality, perhaps due
to content’s axiomatic role in the school experience (Grossman & Stodolsky, 1995). For
example, a meta-analysis funded by the U.S. Department of Education (Wilson, Floden,
& Ferrini-Mundy, 2002) revealed a paucity of studies concerning secondary social
studies teachers and content knowledge preparation. Others have noted how little we
know about the actual courses in the social studies disciplines pre-service teachers are
required to take (Adler, 2008). Of the tangential studies outside of social studies, some
have demonstrated a positive connection between student achievement and high-level
content knowledge preparation among pre-service teachers (Howard & Aleman, 2008).
Writ large, however, pre-service teachers’ content knowledge preparation inadequately
prepares them to teach to high standards in the classroom (Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-
Mundy, 2002).
Strong content knowledge persists as a major issue related to teacher quality
(Lasley, Bainbridge, & Berry, 2002). As of 2003, 66% of the states in this nation used a
test of content knowledge when making licensure decisions, the most prominent of
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which is the Praxis II series of tests (Youngs, Odden, & Porter, 2003). In over 30 states,
pre-service teachers need to pass the Praxis II test to gain admission to a cohort,
student-teach, or apply for licensure, but there is great variability across states for what
constitutes proficiency in terms of Praxis II cut scores. Yet, there is no evidence that
gate-keeper testing of this kind has raised the quality of teachers (Angrist & Guryan,
2004). Moreover, the use of such a measure creates further content knowledge
divergence by adding an additional and unique lever to the contested terrain of
determining what content knowledge is of most worth. Given the array of competing
canonical forces, including university departments, state departments of education, the
Praxis II subject test, local content standards, and the variability of social studies
content course requirements within different universities, this study sought to
understand student perceptions of content courses in relation to these forces.
Conceptual Framework
The idea of content knowledge in this article precedes the issue of pedagogical
content knowledge (Shulman, 1987), whereby teachers also understand how their own
students will engage the content through the various ways of thinking within the
discipline. Since Shulman’s (1987) seminal work, much of the attention given to content
knowledge has been within the context of pedagogy. But the different types of
knowledge, including knowledge of the subject matter, other content, curriculum,
learners, educational aims, and general pedagogy, constitute a range of epistemological
domains requiring careful consideration (Wilson, Shulman, & Richert, 1987).
Content knowledge enjoys a comfortable position within the design of the
curriculum, and it is often heavily privileged as it represents humanity’s accumulated
wisdom (Hlebowitsh, 2005). Content knowledge is often the ostensible aim of the
learning experience as it provides the “spiritual food, possible nutritive material” for
students (Dewey, 1902, p.187). Although Dewey (1902) warned about treating content
matter as a fixed end, prepared a priori of student experiences and interests, he did
note how critical it was for teachers to employ content as a usable and vital part of
students’ development. The teacher acts as an intermediary between the fruits of the
discipline and the ways the discipline might be leveraged so as to be usable for
students as future democratic citizens. In addition, inadequate subject knowledge
among teachers can undermine their ability to diagnose the instructional side of
teaching or properly plan for the concomitant learning objectives outside the subject
matter (Hawkins, 1974).
I frame content knowledge in terms of the five types of knowledge Banks (1993)
outlined while engaging different domains of content knowledge. Similar to Foucault
(1972, 1989), Banks (1993) asserted that knowledge is socially constructed and is
embedded with interests, norms and values. The five domains are personal/cultural
knowledge, popular knowledge, mainstream academic knowledge, transformative
academic knowledge, and school knowledge. Personal and cultural knowledge includes
“the concepts, explanations, and interpretations that students derive from personal
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experiences in their homes, families, and community cultures” (p. 6). School knowledge
consists of “the facts, concepts, and generalizations presented in textbooks, teachers’
guides, and of the other forms of media designed for school use” (p. 11). Mainstream
academic knowledge houses “the concepts, paradigms, theories, and explanations that
constitute traditional and established knowledge in the behavioral and social sciences”
(p. 8). Transformative academic knowledge “consists of concepts, paradigms, themes,
and explanations that challenge mainstream academic knowledge and that expand the
historical and literary canon” (p. 9), and popular knowledge “consists of the facts,
interpretations, and beliefs that are institutionalized within television, movies, videos,
records, and other forms of the mass media” (p. 8).
The five domains suggest that content knowledge in the social studies may not
always be located within one domain of knowledge and that certain institutions will draw
upon and privilege some kinds of knowledge over others. In many cases, these
domains of knowledge are divergent and at times they disadvantage socioeconomic
and ethnic groups. For example, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) found that low-income
African American students often experienced conflict between community and school
knowledge, resulting in academic challenges (Banks, 1993). Banks’ epistemological
typology complicates the idea of content knowledge in this study and suggests we be
mindful of where subject matter is located in terms of university content courses, state
curriculum standards, school textbooks, and district curriculum.
The Uniqueness of Social Studies Content Knowledge
No other subject area in K-12 education is as expansive in terms of content as
the social studies. The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS, 2010) does not
prescribe standards in traditional disciplinary forms of content, but rather offers ten
thematic strands as an organizational tool to encourage interdisciplinarity and
integration of domains cross-cutting the typical subject area divisions. In short, social
studies might chiefly correspond to history (Whelan, 1997), given the all-inclusive nature
of that discipline, but it also necessarily invites other disciplines to its citizenship-oriented
mission. NCSS clarified this point by establishing the essence of the field as
“the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence”
(NCSS, 2008, para. 3). The content for this aim is drawn from the disciplines of
anthropology; archaeology; economics; geography; history; law; philosophy; political
science; psychology; religion; and sociology; as well as, when necessary, humanities,
mathematics, and natural sciences. Given the focus of the social studies on issues,
most prominently those which are civic in nature, a multidisciplinary approach is an
essential content premise (NCSS, 2008). Ultimately the field encourages the confluence
of the different knowledge types (Banks, 1993) in order to understand and resolve
contemporary social issues.
The present orientation of social studies content toward a civic aim closely
resembles the original intent of social studies, which sought to marshal content that
“relates directly to the organization and development of human society, and to man as a
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member of social groups” (Nelson, 1994, p. 9). Since the field’s inception, competing
definitions have placed different emphases on civics, history, and contemporary
problems, thereby making it difficult to arrive at a commonly accepted set of content
standards (Grossman & Schoenfeld, 2005). For example, the difference between history
education or geography education and social studies education is really a question of
ends versus means. In social studies classes, even those that are ostensibly “history”
classes, the ends concern civic efficacy. All content is marshaled toward that end, rather
than focusing on mastery within the particular discipline, a distinction that implies that
we educate citizens rather than nascent historians. While the discipline of social studies
is often referred to as history, the complexity of the subject matter that comprises the
field of social studies extends far beyond one confined field. Because credentialing and
licensing is most often in social studies, however, and because universities and
students alike strive toward graduation in four years, the result is often a lack of
opportunity for both depth and breadth in content coursework experiences.
Content Courses for Pre-Service Teachers
Teacher education programs struggle with normative debates of what and how to
teach. Traditionally, the content departments (e.g., history, geography, sociology) have
been set apart from the concerns of educating K-12 students and have, at times, held
contemptuous attitudes for teacher education departments. Teacher educators, after all,
spend tremendous amounts of time on how to teach, a seemingly facile task if one
knows what to teach. But even when students major in content departments, such as a
double major in history and social studies education, it is still quite difficult to gain
exposure to the range of historical topics found in school curricula. Moreover, university
professors in social science disciplines are typically not cognizant of content needs of
the secondary teachers (Thornton, 2005). This basic schism impacts both teacher
education and content departments as they suffer disassociation with one another
(Dewey, 1900).
We are therefore left with the decades-old question of how a pre-service social
studies teacher, majoring in education, might get the breadth and depth in an array of
disciplines while also completing the long list of required courses in teacher education
and the university macrocurriculum requirements and simultaneously developing
knowledge proficiency in line with the expectations of real classrooms. One challenge to
breadth and depth concerns the kinds of courses students take to complete content
course requirements. For example, I requested curricular programs from colleagues at
peer teacher education programs in one Midwestern state (See Table 1). Analysis of
the macrocurricular expectations of these programs revealed a great deal of latitude in
social studies content coursework, both in terms of disciplinary emphasis and credit
hours required.
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Table 1
Required Social Studies Content Courses within Four Midwestern Universities
Subject
Hours
University
A
University
B
University
C
University
D
Economics 6 6 5.2 8
American
History
6 12 5.2 10
World
History
6 12 13.0 14
Geography 6 3 5.9 4
Political
Science
4 6 10.4 8
Behavioral
Science
6 6 5.9 4
Other
History
12 0 7.8 * 18
Electives 9 9 2.6 0
Note. The number of credit hours presented here are in semester hours. University C and D
have been converted from quarter hours.
* Electives must come from one of the following categories: The Contemporary World, Women’s
History, History of Latin America, History of the Middle East, History of Asia, or History of Africa.
Certification requirements in history and social studies education are highly
variable among U.S. states (Brown, 2006). The lack of a nationally mandated curriculum
for social studies teachers, or even a state-mandated set of courses, affords students
significant flexibility and autonomy in their plans of study, allowing them to pursue their
particular interests and to focus on content for which they have specific passion. Thus,
the degree of academic freedom inherent in higher education and the inability of
institutions, including the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE), precludes a rigid curriculum within teacher education.
One of the hazards of this flexibility is the opportunity to select “one course from
the following.” For example, at University A, students have the option of taking Ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia or Ancient Rome. This choice speaks to the time limitations
inherent in pre-service social studies education programs, to be sure, but it also brings
to light the problem of bailiwicks. At University B, students are required to take a
nonwestern history class from a range of options including China along the Silk Road
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before 1600 and Gender and Third World Film. There is certainly nothing undesirable
about courses such as these, but they highlight the content knowledge focus of
university courses, which seems incongruous when juxtaposed with the Praxis II Social
Studies Content Knowledge Test and teaching in public schools. Thornton (2005)
offered some insight into the waning commitments to general education content at
universities, as well as the increased rewards for research and specialization among
content faculty to the point where the content has little connection to K-12 school
curriculum. If a pre-service teacher has too much depth and not enough breadth, or too
much breadth and insufficient depth, then the knowledge privileged in the other two
realms become incompatible.
Content as Taught in Schools
As a field, social studies education has faced the problem of “too much to teach”
(McGuire, 2007, p. 621), which has often resulted in disconnected and cursory
treatments of facts and little focus on concepts and generalizations (Hunt & Metcalf,
1968). In addition, the practice of extracting content from the social studies disciplines
related to developing pragmatic citizenship is often overlooked in favor of cursory
treatments of wide-ranging topics with the hope of preparing students for high stakes
exams. The difficulties associated with answering Spencer’s question of what is of most
worth is heightened in today’s educational testing and standards leitmotif.
Most secondary teachers receive the bulk of their education within the discipline
that they teach (Grossman & Stodolsky, 1995). For example, pre-service teachers have
exposure to most of the allied social studies disciplines at the university level, but often
the focus is history. As a result, when pre-service teachers enter the profession and
begin teaching geography, for example, a number of trajectories can unfold. First,
teachers may simply lack general content knowledge, and in response, they may
attempt to use knowledge they have to fit within the established curriculum. This
approach marginalizes the required content and gives short-shrift to content items the
state or district might honor. Alternatively, teachers might take the path of least
resistance and primarily teach the content as articulated in textbooks. This approach
provides a better chance of covering required content, but it may be unimaginative,
given teachers’ lack of content knowledge far beyond that of the student. Finally,
teachers might choose to remediate their deficiencies in this new subject area focus and
become teacher-scholars who apply agility and motivation to new content knowledge
outside their area of expertise. Teacher educators hope for the final trajectory, of course,
but this is a daunting task in light of the topical mastery required of a new social studies
teacher.
In sum, quite a few forces are at work in determining content knowledge
competency and preparation. State standards, the Praxis II Social Studies Content
Knowledge Test, curriculum mapping, textbooks, and university coursework can all
serve as divergent filters for what pre-service social studies teachers learn and are able
to do. These relationships (Figure 1) are arranged in two separate streams of
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coursework: one stream focuses on content areas, and the other highlights courses
within teacher education. In the case of the former, different types of knowledge (Banks,
1993) serve to filter or alter the university coursework’s application in actual classroom
instruction. Although each student’s case will be different, based on his or her teacher
education program and where he or she choose to teach, this concept map offers a
general heuristic for thinking about the different content forces which determine the level
of incongruity pre-service teachers might face, as well as a tool for data collection and
analysis in this study.
Figure 1. Social studies content knowledge concept map
Research Methodology
Context
Late in the spring semester at a large Midwestern public university with an
undergraduate population of approximately 18,000, located in a semi-rural town, I
surveyed secondary social studies methods students after a two-semester methods
sequence. Among the 42 students in two sections, 40 responded to the questionnaire,
including 35 undergraduate students and five graduate students. All of the graduate
students were initial certification students and therefore took the methods courses with
undergraduates, but for graduate credit. The respondents included 22 males and 18
females, all of which were Caucasians and between 21 and 26 years of age. The
Content
Coursework
Education
Coursework
Content
Instruction in
classrooms
Praxis II
Subject
Praxis
PLT
State
Standards
District/School
Curriculum
Mapping
Textbooks
Subject Matter Filters
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respondents provided handwritten questionnaire responses in a coded IRB system that
preserved their anonymity.
Within the methods sequence, the each respondents had a two-week field
experience in a middle school and a two-week experience in a high school. All
respondents were in their penultimate year of the program and began student teaching
in either the subsequent fall or spring semester. At the time of the study, students
generally had one semester of social studies content or education coursework left to
complete prior to graduation, as well as one semester of student teaching. In addition,
students had for the most part taken the same program of study in terms of basic
content, including 34 credit hours of economics, U.S. history, world history, geography,
political science, and psychology, as well as 12 credit hours of additional history
electives and nine credit hours of social science electives. The primary requirement for
entry into the secondary social studies teacher education program is a 2.5/4.0 grade
point average in both content and education related coursework.
Data Instrument, Collection, and Analysis
In order to understand student perceptions of content knowledge divergence, I
designed a questionnaire that included five open-ended response questions and 14
Likert items with a 1-5 response range (see Appendix) in order to broadly plumb
complex opinions (Slavin, 1992). By employing a questionnaire containing constructed
(open-ended) response questions and scaled items, I collected data which provided an
initial impression of how pre-service social studies teachers make sense of often
divergent fountainheads of content knowledge. Given how little we know about content
knowledge in pre-service social studies teacher education experiences (Adler, 2008), I
formulated the research question in terms of how pre-service social studies teachers
perceive university content coursework as it relates to other content knowledge domains.
In addition to achieving a balance of description and interpretation, I chose to use
within-case comparative content analysis (Patton, 1990), whereby themes emerge
through recursive identification, coding, and categorizing of data. Comparisons within
the case of macrocurricular change adhered to the recommendations of Glaser and
Strauss (1967), which suggest taking a “proportioned view of the evidence, since during
comparison, biases of particular people and methods tend to reconcile themselves as
the analyst discovers the underlying causes of variation” (p. 68). Rather than compare
incident to incident among students, I chose to compare the incidents to emergent
categories that resulted in uniform and higher level concepts of what occurred.
Comparisons of incidents to the emergent categories thus helped to “fill in gaps” (Miles
& Huberman, 1994, p. 50) and keep alive competing explanations given data that failed
to fit within emergent themes. Ultimately categories underwent constant revision as
discrepant data, redundancies, and outliers required new sifting and comparison
(Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995).
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Findings
The findings of this study are organized within three sections. The first section
addresses student perceptions of their content courses for preparing them for the Praxis
II Test. The second section reveals three themes related to content courses as
preparing students for teaching secondary social studies. The third section provides
students’ perceptions of individual content areas and the degree to which courses in
these disciplines were unified with the demands of Praxis II and teaching secondary
social studies.
Content Courses and Praxis II
Three main themes developed when recursively examining student responses to
the relationship of content coursework and the Praxis II Social Studies Content
Knowledge Test.
Generality. First, students felt that their content coursework was too general or
inadequate in terms of credit hours. For example, one student who failed her first
attempt at the exam felt that “I took all of my history classes the first two years and have
not been able to take anymore; all of the classes take up time and don't allow me to
take other classes that would help me prepare.” Others noted that the exposure to a
broad offering of social studies disciplines provided adequate preparation and good
exposure. Yet, one student felt “my problem is that with so many subjects being covered,
it is hard to recall specific information, but easy to recall more broad connections and
themes.” Another student who failed to pass the test on the first attempt pointed out that
“our coursework here has us look at overall issues and Praxis is full of specific and
detailed questions.”
Specificity. The second theme concerns the issue of specificity. Although some
students commented that content coursework helped prepare them for Praxis II, others
suggested that upper level classes include a level of specificity that fails to prepare
them for the exam. Because these courses “don’t give enough detail necessary to really
prepare students for the Praxis test,” many students relied on their coursework from
high school as being the most informative for the exam. One student recalled that:
I do not feel like any college coursework prepared me much for the Praxis II. I did
well mostly due to knowledge I already had from high school or personal
investigation. I was lucky to have taken a modern Chinese history class just prior
to the test--that did help a bit, but this was just a lucky pick. As a result of coming
into college with large amounts of AP credits in history and government I was
exempted from the few survey courses in which the material may have been
useful.
Another student who passed the exam on the first attempt noted that political
science and history were helpful for broad themes, but “I thought that many of the test
questions were very specific and I came across a few questions that I had absolutely no
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clue about.” One student remarked that both the economics and political science
departments “concern themselves with intricate details that are often lost after the
classes have been completed.” Others pointed to their world history subscores that
were lower than other areas because “it had been a very long time since I had taken a
survey course about this--upper level history classes are far more specific than many of
the generalized Praxis questions.” In short, similar to problems of generality mentioned
earlier, students are often frustrated with the kind of specificity they mastered as this is
often at odds with the different specific content knowledge they found on the test.
Lack of responsiveness. Third, students underscored the divergence of
different kinds of knowledge by indicating that university content courses do not have
pre-service social studies teachers in mind. For example, one student who passed on
his first attempt suggested that “courses haven't prepared me all that well for the Praxis
II Test. Those classes aren't geared for pre-service social studies teachers and they are
just the general courses anyone can take. The world history classes were a joke.”
Another student found relevance of content coursework for teaching to be “hit or miss”
and that “most of the courses I took were aimed at producing historians, economists,
political scientists, etc. These courses do not focus on material that must be covered in
middle or high school history courses.” Another student explained:
I don’t think that the content classes prepare you enough for Praxis II because
the classes are geared for all students, not just education majors. The test asked
for specifics that content courses just don't have time to cover in detail.
Because content courses are, as one student suggested, “not concerned with education
majors” and the Praxis II Test was not a representative appraisal of what they actually
knew in the content areas, some students felt they had gained understandings which
were incompatible with the test. Instead, students suggested that there should be an
emphasis on the content as found in schools.
When asked if the Praxis II Test was an accurate appraisal of their social studies
content knowledge, 33% disagreed or strongly disagreed, while 44% were neutral. Only
22% agreed or strongly agreed with that statement (see Table 2). Taken together,
these responses highlighted the disjuncture many feel about coursework and the exam
they are required to pass for licensure. Given the breadth, depth, and lack of course
design for pre-service teachers, one student indicated that there was “no real
preparation for that test; questions were so specific that you either remembered reading
that exact thing or you didn't.” Others felt that they needed to take more courses and
have the methods class address more content. One student mentioned his assessment
class and suggested that it “helped me learn to take the tests” and another student who
failed in her first attempt felt the department and university as a whole “does not design
their classes to help prepare students for Praxis II,” which posits the question of the
degree to which social studies programs and content courses should mindfully do so.
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Content Courses and Teaching in Schools
Respondents were a bit more sanguine about the relationship of content courses
and their future teaching as opposed to the preparation for the Praxis II Test. Although
students had only four weeks of field experiences on which to base their assumptions
about university content courses connecting to their future teaching, they were still able
to articulate some sense of unity or fragmentation which was borne out in three main
themes.
Generality and specificity. Similar to the connection of coursework to the
Praxis II Test, students noted the tension of generality and specificity. One student
indicated that “teaching in the public schools requires a wide breadth of knowledge,” but
that “once we get into the upper university courses, the focus is on analysis of specifics”
and “I have also taken some very specific history courses that are not helpful.”
Alternatively, one student did not feel the “course work gave this deeper understanding
or detail,” at least not the topical areas privileged in schools. Consistent with the
connection of content and Praxis, respondents indicated the material covered in these
classes is not aimed at social studies education majors and “much of the material we
will teach was not covered.” One student presented a foil for the discrepant comments
about breadth and depth. He felt well-prepared to teach, with the necessary content
knowledge, but he will “read more about the topic I will be teaching once I know what it
is. Some of the areas I taught while in the field were not very familiar to me, but I read
materials and prepared myself to teach the lessons.”
Content courses versus education courses. This issue also brought forth
programmatic suggestions that placed value on taking more content courses and fewer
education courses, as well as more history courses in general. For example, the data
suggested that economics courses generally helped prepare students for the Praxis II,
but that only 34% of the respondents believed those courses helped prepare them to
teach secondary economics classes (See Table 2). One student indicated that “much of
the general history information I feel I have obtained before college,” and because he
received AP credit for American history and macroeconomics, he did not take those
courses at the university. Another student felt “that my coursework has only done a
moderate job in preparing me for teaching.” He preferred this study plan because
“content courses have provided background information but nothing that I can take into
my classes and teach specifically” and given the sentiment that “we are prepared in
theory, but there could have been more emphasis on exactly what we will be asked to
teach.” In short, students indicated that it is in K-12 environments that “you really
become prepared.”
Lack of unity. Finally, some students noted a lack of unity among all their
content courses. One student suggested that “social studies education majors take
random content classes from each department, I think I would have benefited from
content courses designed with teachers in mind” and “severely altering the methods
block to better prepare students for teaching.” Students pointed to assessment,
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educational psychology, and other courses that they felt were quite removed from what
they felt they had to know to teach. For example, one student who initially did not earn a
passing score on the exam felt that given her field experience, “which was miserable
because I spent hours trying to make my lessons interesting and they [students] didn’t
care--they refused to do anything. I felt they [The School of Education] failed to prepare
me for this at all.” Given this problem of harnessing the value of the subject matter for
challenging teaching situations, perhaps programs do need to offer, in the words of a
student, “another semester of methods, just to review tons of content as potential
teachers rather than as students.”
Specific Content Courses as a Matter of Preparation
Finally, respondents rated specific content coursework on the degree to which it
helped prepare them for the Praxis II Test and for teaching in public schools, based on
their perceptions during field experiences (See Table 2). In many cases, the
respondents collectively rated their content coursework similarly for both sections: the
Praxis II Test and the secondary classroom setting. For example, 40% agreed or
strongly agreed that their behavioral science coursework helped prepare them for
Praxis, while 36% indicated a similar sentiment for secondary social studies instruction.
In the case of economics, 34% agreed or strongly agreed that their coursework helped
prepare them for teaching, yet 50% were in agreement for Praxis II Test preparation.
These differences might relate to the aforementioned problems of specificity, whereby
they view economics coursework and the Praxis II Test as distinct from actual
instruction. A counter example is U.S. History, which garnered 43% agreement for
preparing students to take the Praxis, yet yielded 58% in terms of preparation for
teaching secondary social studies.
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Table 2
Degree to which content courses helped prepare for the Praxis II Subject Test
and for teaching
Course A great
deal
Some Neutral Not very
much
Not at all
US History
Praxis
Teaching
13% 30% 20% 30% 7%
22% 36% 11% 17% 14%
World History
Praxis
Teaching
17% 27% 23% 27% 7%
22% 28% 22% 22% 6%
Government
Praxis
Teaching
10% 40% 30% 17% 3%
31% 28% 19% 19% 3%
Geography
Praxis
Teaching
10% 34% 24% 17% 14%
17% 26% 23% 26% 9%
Economics
Praxis
Teaching
27% 23% 20% 17% 13%
17% 17% 31% 14% 22%
Behavioral
Science
Praxis
Teaching
13% 27% 43% 7% 10%
14% 22% 39% 11% 14%
Discussion and Conclusion
This study sought to explore the interplay and intersection of content knowledge
across different institutions and intellectual spaces as it relates to pre-service social
studies education. The primary limitations of the study relate to the variability of required
content coursework nationwide, as well as the dynamic nature of state content
standards, certification requirements, and curricula. In short, a consolidated picture of
social studies teacher education does not exist, and the canonical divergence creates
moving content knowledge targets with each states, as well as each teacher education
institution representing unique contexts. Further, the time that the study participants had
spent in classroom settings at the time of the study, two weeks in a middle school and
two weeks in a high school, may have precluded a deep, rich understanding of
classroom settings.
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Acknowledging the limitations of the study, the findings nevertheless offer insight
on students’ perceptions of the factors that influenced their performance on the Praxis II
and within the middle and high school classrooms. Students felt content coursework
was too general or inadequate in terms of depth of study. They also suggested that
there was some connection between content courses and the Praxis II, but felt upper-level
courses contained too much specificity on esoteric topics. As a result, students
revisited high school content knowledge to prepare for the Praxis II Test. In short,
students needed depth and specificity within a particular type of content knowledge: that
which was aligned with the Praxis II. This divergence was highlighted most prominently
when students suggested that university courses were congruent with the needs of
future teachers. Students also suggested that their content courses lacked unity that fit
within the interdisciplinary aim of social studies itself (Sowders, 2010). They also cited
the shortcomings of education courses, which need to be more responsive to the
realities of schools, including how to modify lessons for reluctant learners.
Complaints abound when we funnel teachers into classrooms with poor showings
on the Praxis II Social Studies Content Knowledge Test (Albers, 2002), but exactly
whose fault is this? Along the aforementioned content knowledge trajectory (Figure 1),
where do some students, or we in teacher education, go wrong? Many students insisted
on having a class solely dedicated to Praxis II Test preparation taught by their methods
professor. Others called for more content treatment within teacher education for teacher
education majors. Perhaps the most important distinction is that, collectively, these
content knowledge filters represent divergence whereby the Praxis II Social Studies
Content Knowledge Test reflects the state standards, textbooks written to enable state
standards released in the school, and district standards. Certainly some cultural
reproduction (Apple, 1990) is at work here, but the significant difference seems to be
between the topics taught in university content courses and what is honored and
privileged in state standards. Sometimes these are in alignment; often they are not.
Eroding School/University Barriers
One solution to this vexing problem would be placing topics found in public
schools at the center of the pre-service content experience, not unlike the content
courses found in the teacher’s college model (Thornton, 2005). This would require
professors in the social sciences and humanities to invest in new courses dedicated to
K-12 canonical topics or social studies education faculty devising alternative courses to
bailiwicks across campus. In these courses, content experts could add significant value
to teacher education by more specifically modifying their approaches to better serve
future teachers (Fantozzi, 2012). An alternative approach is the blurring of lines
between content departments, schools of education, and public schools. In short, by
having exchanges of personnel from these three institutions and by treating the
methods course as a cooperative intersection of the three, a stronger and more
practical content structure could better prepare future teachers (McKee & Day, 1992).
By consciously infusing these three, often distinct, content orientations, students might
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have a better grasp of different kinds of knowledge, including the content they need to
know as they enter the profession.
At the same time these approaches are limiting, for they have a binding effect on
the school curriculum. The creative-generative teachers, by virtue of focusing on what
states honor or privilege as content, may not have as much wide ranging knowledge or
perspective of the discipline. Although Foucaultian geography might still seem irrelevant
for teaching, by missing out on bailiwicks at the expense of content aligned to state
standards and schools, students might not be exposed to Kantian ethics, economic
interpretations of history, and the nuances of cartography—topics outside of the
standards but of substantive importance. Although these topics might seem abstruse for
K-12 instruction, great value exists in preparing teacher-scholars to complicate the
inevitability of linear narratives and content kidnapped of any real meaning.
Content Courses Housed in Teacher Education
There is some justification for housing some content courses in teacher
education departments, most particularly from Educational Testing Services (ETS),
which suggests that the highest scoring Praxis II-takers are not education majors. ETS
suggests schools of education should focus more heavily on content than pedagogy
(Blair, 2000), an approach which could also bridge the schism of subject and method
that has not always been existent (Thornton, 2005). Given how critical some
components of content understanding are, they may need to be addressed within the
courses focusing on the teaching of content (Grossman & Schoenfeld, 2005), most
likely in the methods experience. Finally, methods professors could coordinate the
content in terms of the aforementioned demands of forces and filters and different kinds
of knowledge, especially considering the evaluation practices that focus on unified
content directed towards NCSS aims, not limited to traditional academic disciplines
(Curry, 2010). Knowledge of the particular state, standards, textbooks, and other
features could certainly help shape the learning process of content knowledge
preparation in practical ways.
The cost of such changes, however, could largely outweigh any benefit. It is
difficult to imagine education professors with the training necessary to credibly teach so
many different content areas with the same sense of integrity. After all, professors of
social studies education focus on research and pedagogy, even if infused with content
knowledge, to better release the power of instruction to bring about effective and
knowledgeable citizens. Redirecting professors away from educational problems and
toward content mastery seems to be a distraction rife with unintended consequences. In
addition, who from a college of arts and sciences has the background to accomplish this
task? Even if the subject area were further narrowed and clarified for future teaching,
we would be hard-pressed to assemble the appropriate faculty. Moreover, would we
really want a course titled “Economics for Teachers?” Taking this route would most
certainly undermine the idea of the teacher-scholar and de-professionalize the field; yet
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it may be responsive to the content knowledge component underlying teacher quality
(Lasley, Bainbridge, & Berry, 2002).
Whatever the solution, numerous obstacles await reconceptualization and
reconfiguration. Goodlad (1990) pointed to the legacies of many antiquated
departments, which are complex and cluttered, lack unity within the teacher education
macrocurriculum, and are disjointed from reform in both schooling and teacher
education. With NCATE now firmly rooted in many departments, restructuring content
courses faces even more difficulty. Perhaps the first step is making connections and
having conversations among school curricularists and university content professors so
that each institution is aware of the possible disjuncture in content. This initial step might
spark generativity and ultimately resolve Thornton’s (2005) call to “rethink the kinds of
subject matter that teachers need and how this can better be aligned with professional
coursework, especially the methods course” (p. 8). We might then also have a more
clear direction of determining which knowledge should be “abundant to the point of
overflow” (Dewey, 1933, p. 274).
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About the author
Thomas Misco, PhD, is an associate professor of social studies
education in the Department of Teacher Education at Miami University in
Oxford, OH. Dr. Misco’s research focuses on how assessment,
curriculum design, pedagogical strategies, sociocultural contexts, and
other factors inhibit or encourage the treatment of controversial issues in
social education.
E-mail: miscotj@miamioh.edu
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Appendix
Questionnaire
Have you taken the Praxis II Social Studies Subject Test? _____ Yes _____ No
Have you passed? _____ Yes _____ No
How many times have you taken the Praxis II Subject Test? ______
Are you a(n): _____ Undergraduate Student _____ Graduate Student
Which areas of the test did you feel well-prepared for?
Which areas of the test did you not feel well-prepared for?
Please list any organizations, meetings, or preparation materials that helped you
prepare for the test:
To what extent do you believe your content coursework (including university courses,
transfer credit, online classes, etc.) has prepared you for the Praxis II Subject Test?
Please be as specific as possible.
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Based on your experiences in the field, to what extent do you believe your content
coursework (including university courses, transfer credit, online classes, etc.) has
prepared you for the teaching social studies in public schools, grades 7-12? Please be
as specific as possible.
Please rate the degree to which content courses have helped prepare you for passing
the following areas of the Praxis II Subject Test (1: A great deal; 3: Neutral; 5: Not at
all):
United States History 1 2 3 4 5
World History 1 2 3 4 5
Government/Political Science 1 2 3 4 5
Geography 1 2 3 4 5
Economics 1 2 3 4 5
Behavioral Sciences 1 2 3 4 5
Based on your field experience, please rate the degree to which content courses helped
prepare you for teaching social studies content in schools, grades 7-12
(1: A great deal; 3: Neutral; 5: Not at all):
United States History 1 2 3 4 5
World History 1 2 3 4 5
Government/Political Science 1 2 3 4 5
Geography 1 2 3 4 5
Economics 1 2 3 4 5
Behavioral Sciences 1 2 3 4 5
Please respond to the following statements with the extent to which you agree with the
statement
(1: Strongly Agree; 3: Neutral; 5: Strongly Disagree):
The Praxis II Subject Test asks questions 1 2 3 4 5
that are too specific
Overall, the Praxis II Subject Test was an 1 2 3 4 5
accurate appraisal of my social studies
content knowledge
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Preaching What We Practice: A Study of Revision
Shelbie Witte
Florida State University
Abstract
In this article, a three-tiered nationwide study of the pedagogical implications of teachers’ revision
practices in digital writing environments is discussed. The study investigates the use of revision in
the personal and professional writing of teachers and the teaching of revision in their own
classrooms. During a three year period, data were collected from a sampling frame of 150
National Writing Project Summer Institute sites, resulting in 181 study participants, and included a
longitudinal pre- and post-survey (including Likert survey items and open-ended questions), focus
group and follow-up questions, and analysis of writing/revision samples. Results indicated that
the strategies that teacher-participants historically used when revising their own writing were not
the strategies they used with students. After attending the National Writing Project (NWP)
Invitational Summer Institute (ISI) and participating in the associated Electronic Anthology (EA),
however, the practices that the study’s teacher-participants embraced while teaching writing
revision to students in their own classrooms aligned more closely with the practices that they
employed in editing their own writing.
Legend has it that in 2003, Billy Collins was giving a poetry reading in a
bookstore in New York City. A fortunate group of graduate students had enrolled in a
poetry class that semester at Lehman College, CUNY, and were dumbfounded to find
that their instructor was none other than the poet laureate of the United States. Students
in the class were often asked to attend poetry readings in lieu of attending traditional
classes at Lehman and were on hand to hear Collins recite lines from “Litany,” “Dharma,”
and “On Turning Ten,” among others. After thanking guests for their attendance, the
class observed Collins as he walked up to a shelf, pulled down a copy of his published
collections of poetry, turned to a specific page, took the pen from his pocket, and began
writing on the page.
“Another autograph?” a student asked, as Collins considered the page again,
scribbled once more, and placed it back on the shelf.
Collins shook his head. “No, a revision. I’m always revising.”
We live in a world of revision. Whether it be the ways in which we approach our
lives, alter a recipe, accessorize an outfit, or modify our golf swings, our world evolves
because of the revision that happens within it. Our writing, too, evolves as we consider
ways to add to our prose, remove words from our poetry, reorganize our arguments in
analyses, and substitute better words for almost-right words (Elbow, 1973; Murray,
1980; Sommers, 1980; Yagelski, 1995).
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In a culture of faster, instantaneous, right here right now, at your fingertips living,
the idea of revisiting a task seemingly already completed is a daunting one. Such an
important function of writing pedagogy, revision is one of the most difficult things to
teach (Applebee, 1981; Kirby & Liner, 1980; McCutchen, Francis, & Kerr, 1997; Sneed,
1988). Unfortunately, true revision is also rarely taught (Bridwell, 1980; Emig, 1971;
Fitzgerald, 1987; Saddler, 2003).
The Teaching of Revision
Revision proves a difficult process to teach and model (Bisallion, 2007; Kirby &
Liner, 1980; McCutchen et al., 1997; Saddler, 2003; Sneed, 1988; Sommers, 1980).
Revising is a slow, arduous, laborious, and complex task in which one must reflect over
time on the piece of writing and the changes that might be needed. Students may
revise, but “they may settle too quickly on a particular choice without trying other
possibilities to determine if another way exists” (Saddler, 2003, p. 21). Frequently,
students do not know how to or do not want to take the time needed to consider the
many possible ways of improving a piece of writing or assume that revision is completed
when surface errors, such as spelling and grammar, are corrected. An aversion to the
word revision has developed perhaps because it has yet to be clearly defined
(Sommers, 1980). For the purposes of this study, revision is defined as a sequence of
changes in a composition, in which ideas, words, and phrases are added, deleted,
moved, or changed throughout the writing of the work (Sommers, 1980).
Teachers of writing must take on several different roles: they must guide students
through the writing process, act as audience to students’ writing, and evaluate or assign
a grade to student work. Teachers are torn between these roles causing feedback that
tends to fall on a continuum between evaluative feedback, which tells students how well
they met the requirements of the assignment, and formative feedback, which asks the
writers to clarify and reshape their pieces to effectively communicate their points
(McGarrell & Verbeem, 2007). Teachers need to help students realize that revising is
not about just fixing grammatical and surface errors, but also refers to the strength of an
argument and overall structure of the piece, including content (Sommers, 1980). How
teachers see their role and their relationship to students’ writing affects the feedback
they give.
When teachers or peers focus their feedback on marking grammatical or
syntactical errors, student writing suffers. A focus on grammatical errors or a concern
for correct form over the development of content and ideas can quickly cut off the
excitement of composing (McGarrell & Verbeem, 2007; Perl, 1979). On the other hand,
teacher feedback on idea development and content can effectively help students
improve content. Feedback on content is
based on the rationale that writers will be motivated to revise if they are confident
that the intended audience will treat their work seriously, will want to know what
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writers have to say, and will respect their authority as writers to make decisions.
(McGarrell & Verbeem, 2007, p. 231)
Lack of Revision in the Curriculum
The lack of revision, both in assessments and explicit instruction, has led to
students overlooking or gravely underemphasizing the revision process in their writing.
Revision is a central and important part of writing and more competent writers show
signs of prolific knowledge of revision strategies, whereas beginning writers make
surface edits to their papers and believe the revision is complete (Graham & Perin,
2007; Lehrer & Comeaux, 1987).
Composition as a field does not lend itself easily to specific defining of its
processes. Researchers, philosophers, and authors alike have been attempting to
pinpoint a specific definition of writing processes, specifically revision, since the start of
the field (Flowers & Hayes, 1981; Murray, 1978; Wray, 2004). Writing process models
that have been and continue to be most prominent in education are the linear model of
pre-writing, writing, and post-writing. Linear writing models tend to direct away from
revision in writing and break up a nonlinear, recursive process into discrete stages
(Sommers, 1980).
In summary, the recursive and problem-solving nature of revision is clear. The
existing scholarship describes the lack of or uncertainty of revision instruction in the
classroom, the unwillingness for students to revise, and the types of revisions students
make when they do revise. Little is understood, however, about the relationship
between the personal use of revision in teachers’ own writing and the teaching of
revision in their classrooms (Dutro, 2006; Gere & Stevens, 1985; Murray, 1978; National
Assessment of Educational Progress & Educational Testing Service, 1986; Scardamalia
& Bereiter, 1986). An exploration of the dichotomy between what we practice as writers
who revise and what we preach as important in our teaching of writing in our
classrooms was warranted.
Method
The purpose of this longitudinal mixed-method study (Greene, Caracelli, &
Graham, 1989) was threefold and was designed to investigate ways that 1) teachers
use revision in their own writing; 2) digital writing environments’ impact on revision and
revision instruction; and 3) the revision process is implemented into teachers’
classrooms. Therefore, the research questions guiding the study were:
• In what ways do teachers of writing use revision in their own writing?
• How do digital writing environments impact revision and its instruction?
• What are teachers’ perceptions of revision in their own writing and in writing
instruction in the classroom?
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Participants
The accessible population for this national study was a sampling frame of 150
participating sites of the National Writing Project Summer Institute E-Anthology (NWP
E-A). A professional development network, The National Writing Project (NWP)
supports teachers of writing in all subjects and at all grade levels to improve school and
student achievement through research-based writing pedagogy. The NWP network is
comprised of nearly 200 local sites hosted in universities and colleges in all 50 states,
the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (National Writing
Project, 2013). Each summer, NWP sites host NWP Invitational Summer Institutes (ISI)
for thousands of teachers interested in learning more about writing and the teaching of
writing, following the core principle that the best teachers of writing are writers
themselves. Teachers meet daily face-to-face for several weeks to write, research,
collaborate, and demonstrate pedagogical approaches to the teaching of writing. One
facet of participation available to connect NWP sites to one another is the NWP E-A.
The NWP E-A is an online, collaborative digital environment provided to summer
institute sites to encourage active participation of the ISI participants. The NWP E-A,
facilitated by experienced writing project teacher-consultants (those that have
completed summer institutes), provides participants a safe online space to share,
reflect, revise, and receive comments from a national audience of teachers on their
writing and reflections during the institute. Forums available in the NWP E-A included
(a) “Open Mic,” an open forum for all genres, forms, and topics of personal writing and
(b) “Classroom Matters,” a professional writing forum focusing specifically on
professional writing, advocacy writing, and pedagogical approaches to writing in the
classroom. Feedback is given by E-A participants to the writing posted based on the
type of feedback requested from the participant: Bless, Address, or Press. Participants
who want more constructive feedback on their writing for positive reinforcement (Bless),
ask specific questions of those giving feedback (Address), or ask for a critical review of
their work (Press). Participants have the option of posting revisions to the original
pieces after they consider the feedback received.
Of the 150 participating sites, a multistage cluster sample of ten NWP sites were
randomly selected to participate in the study, yielding 181 study participants. This
random sampling was determined by the constraints that the participants (a) post-writing
to the “Open Mic” forum and “Classroom Matters” forum of the NWP E-A, (b) ask
for Press or Address feedback from NWP E-A participants, and (c) post a revision of the
piece to the “Open Mic” forum.
Data Collection
Data were collected in three tiers (see Table 1). Tier 1 of the study, enacted
during the summer of 2009, involved 181 E-A participants from a random sampling of
150 NWP sites participating in the 2009 NWP E-A (see Table 2). After obtaining
consent, participants completed a pre-survey (Appendix A) at the beginning of the
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summer institute and post-survey (Appendix B) at the conclusion of their summer
institute. The survey included demographic information as well as open-ended
questions related to the research study goals. Additionally, all pieces of writing posted to
the E-A by the study participants were collected.
Table 1
Tier Summary
Data Collection Cycle Data Collected Participants
Tier One Pre-survey
Post-survey
E-A postings of writing
E-A postings of revisions
181
Tier Two Focus group
One-on-one follow-up
interviews
27
Tier Three E-A postings of writing
E-A responses to writing
E-A postings of revisions
16
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Table 2
Snapshot of Tier-One Study Participants, n=181
Demographics
Teaching Assignment
English Language Arts 45%
Elementary 20%
Special Education 5%
Foreign Language 4%
Reading 4%
Science 4%
Social Studies 4%
Math 4%
Other* 10%
Instructional Level
K-5 31%
6-8 27%
9-12 37%
University 4%
Other* 1%
Classroom Experience in Years
<3 26%
3-to-5 20%
6-to-10 16%
11-to-15 17%
>15 22%
* Other is from one of the following subjects: Speech, Composition, Literacy Coach, ELL,
Arts/Humanities, Music, FACS, Counselor, Principal, Careers, Curriculum Specialist
Tier 2 of the study included a focus group for 2009’s E-A participants, which was
held at the NWP Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following participation
in the NWP E-A, participants were asked questions related to the teaching of revision in
their classrooms, digital writing environments, and computer access for students. One-on-
one follow-up interviews were conducted with E-A study participants who were
interested in continuing with the study, but who could not travel to the annual meeting.
Tier 3 of the study, conducted in summer 2010, focused on the writing and
revision within digital writing environments, specifically the ways in which revisions by
summer institute participants were coached and encouraged by responders on the 2010
NWP E-A. Sixteen study participants from Tier 1 participated as respondents in Tier 3.
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http://www.joci.ecu.edu doi:10.3776/joci.2013.v6n2p33-59
Survey
The pre-survey and post-survey developed for use in this study included
demographic questions, open ended questions regarding revision and writing in digital
environments, a twenty-item, seven-point Likert scale regarding teachers’
understanding of and use of revision in their own writing and teachers’ pedagogical
approaches to the teaching of revision in the classroom. Validity on each survey was
established through three phases. In the spring of 2009, an initial draft of the pre- and
post-survey was distributed to 15 area K-12 classroom teachers not in the study
population. Based on their recommendations, changes were made to the surveys to
improve the phrasing of questions and the format of seven items. The revised surveys
were independently reviewed by university experts in four of the following areas: 1)
professional development, 2) research methods, 3) rhetoric and composition, 4) English
education. Revisions to the surveys were made until consensus was achieved. Finally,
the surveys were distributed to 20 National Writing Project consultants not in the study
population. Feedback was solicited on the ease of use, question order, clarity of
questions in the context of the NWP ISI experience, and word choice. Final revisions
were made to the surveys for use in this study.
Analysis
Data collection for the study was completed in September 2010 and analysis of
all three tiers concluded in early 2012. Each artifact and data set was analyzed and
evaluated independently by tier. Analysis methods employed during Tier 1 included
content analysis of the open-ended survey questions and coding of drafts and revisions
posted to the E-A. The focus group transcripts and follow-up interviews collected in Tier
2 and the postings of writing, revisions, and constructive feedback in Tier 3 were
analyzed using discourse analysis and open coding. Findings from each tier were
ultimately combined for a longitudinal comprehensive overview in relation to the
research questions. Viewing the data set as a whole enabled the researcher to identify
patterns in teachers’ use of revision in their own writing and in their classroom
instruction.
Results
Analysis of the survey, focus group and follow-up interviews, and E-A writing,
revisions, and feedback resulted in eight themes (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1. Emerging themes from data analysis.
Theme One: Revision Confusion
One of the primary questions asked of all E-A study participants was “What IS
Revision?” Approximately half of the participants cited a definition based on the
etymology of the word revision, which is from the Latin “to visit again, to look at again.”
Several cited definitions similar to Murray (1980), reporting, “writing in itself is revision,”
while others referred to revision in a manner similar to Elbow (1973) in that they “look
for awkward places within the writing.” The remainder of the study participants were not
exactly sure how to define revision. A 2nd grade teacher reported that revision “was
looking for capitalization and punctuation,” while a middle school math teacher reported
that revision “was writing a fresh copy of a draft so that there aren’t red marks on it.”
Survey results clearly indicate that there were many E-A study participants who
did not know the differences between revision and editing. While some participants
likened revision to fixing the car and editing to painting the car, a significant number of
participants believed revision and editing were the same process or did not
acknowledge revision at all, defaulting to a common definition of proofreading as editing.
Interestingly, a few participants wondered why it really mattered anyway. A high school
English teacher commented, “Maybe they used to be separate, but in the world of
synchronous composition in digital environments, aren’t we revising and editing at the
Teachers' Revision
Usage and
TeachingPractices
Confusion
Critical Skill
Teaching and
Non-Teaching
Aversion Professional
Development
Time
Scaffolds
Digital
Writing
Environments
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Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (JoCI) Copyright 2013
March 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2, Pg. 33-59 ISSN: 1937-3929
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same time?” With such a varied degree of understanding of the definition and concept
of revision, an investigation was needed into the ways in which the participants used
revision in their own writing and how revision was taught in their classrooms.
Theme Two: Revision as Critical Skill
It is no surprise that when asked about revision, more than 95% of E-A study
participants (pre-institute) said that they use revision strategies in their own writing. Text
manipulation (add/move/change/delete) and questioning the purpose and audience of
the writing were the common revision activities noted by the participants. Reading the
piece of writing aloud to one’s self was a popular strategy among the study participants.
An elementary school teacher noted, “I read aloud to look for internal consistency of
ideas within the paper as a whole and then in smaller parts.” A middle school reading
teacher noted, “Reading the paper so that I can hear it helps get me out of my head and
see the paper in a way another person might see it.”
Additionally, incubation, putting the writing away or walking away from the writing
for a given amount of time, was the second most common act of revising. While some
participants “put it away and wait until I find it again,” others needed only a few hours “to
clear my head and find my way back to where I began.” Regardless, the freedom to
walk away and allow the writing to incubate was a valuable revision strategy.
Other participants suggested that they only revise when prompted to do so by
their peers. One participant confessed reluctance to revise, stating, “I revise very little,
but if I do, it is from peer suggestion.” “I revise as I write,” said another, “and only go
back to a piece to rewrite it if a colleague suggests that I do so.” Overwhelmingly, pre-institute
participants saw the importance of revision in their personal and professional
writing.
Theme Three: The Teaching and Non-Teaching of Revision
When asked if they teach revision in their classrooms, 70% of the E-A study
participants (pre-institute) said that they spent any time on revision with their students,
with only 30% of participants spending any consistent or significant amount of time
(more than two hours per month) on revision discussions and writing time.
Of those participants that indicated they taught revision, most focused on
independent revision and writing time instead of modeling revision strategies for the
class. Also, teacher revision suggestions written directly on students’ papers were
commonly referenced in the pre-institute survey.
Some conventional and unconventional approaches were also mentioned. “We
read backwards paragraph by paragraph,” explained an Advanced Placement Literature
and Language teacher, “to catch or identify places that need help.” Another participant
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noted, “We use rubrics to compare with our students’ writing. Students self-assess on
the rubrics and identify what they need to work on independently.”
Perhaps some of the most telling data related to the teaching of revision came
from the participants who do not or rarely teach revision in their classrooms. A
secondary English teacher claimed, “We never get to revision. We spend so long
getting the drafts down that before we know it, it’s time to move on to the next thing.” A
middle school social studies teacher shared that “students hate to revise and, frankly,
so do I. We are ready to move on.” And finally, a high school teacher shared bluntly, “I
don’t teach revision. I teach math.”
Theme Four: Revision Aversion
It is clear from the data that for many students and teachers, the word revision
has a negative connotation. Many teachers reported in the focus group and follow-up
interviews that after students have written their drafts, they do not see a way to improve
it or they do not want to invest the time and energy into revising it. One high school
English teacher stated, “I say revision, and they go, ‘Ugh’. You know, they’re squeamish
about it. Squeamish maybe because in the past they have revised (or so they thought)
and received that paper back with all those red marks. So what’s the use?” After all, for
many students, revision is about correcting the surface errors in the writing. A high
school history teacher noted, “My seniors are very much caught up in editing mechanics
and grammar, as opposed to really rethinking a piece of writing or thinking about what
that vision for that piece of writing is.”
Theme Five: Revision and Professional Development
As they immersed themselves in writing during the summer institute and actively
posted their texts and responded to the writing of others on the E-A, teachers engaged
in many writing activities that encouraged the use of revision strategies. In prompting
the professional development of teachers, these activities overcame previously held
concepts and identities. For example, one high school choir teacher explained, “As a
writer myself, it took me a while to get to that point [practicing revision] . . . . And I think
the summer institute helped with that to a great degree.” Another participant described
her own change, saying, “I never had the confidence to teach revising. Being able to
experience myself in a collaborative environment was exactly what I needed in order to
teach revision in my classroom.”
The impact of the experience can be seen in Table 3. A comparison of the
revision strategies used by teachers in their own writing pre-institute to the revision
strategies taught by teachers in their classrooms pre-institute reveals a lack of similarity,
with the exception being peer workshop. Further, a comparison of revision strategies
used by teachers in their own writing post-institute to the revision strategies taught in
their classrooms post-institute highlights alignment, particularly in the areas of digital
writing environments.
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Table 3
Most Commonly Mentioned Revision Strategies (Pre- and Post-Summer Institute)
Used by
teachers in their
own writing
(pre-institute)
Used by
teachers in their
teaching in
classrooms
(pre-institute)
Used by
teachers in their
own writing
(post-institute)
Used by
teachers in their
teaching in
classrooms
(post-institute)
Questioning Independent
writing time
Writing workshop/
conferencing
Writing workshop
Reading aloud Teacher
comments on
student work
Digital tools (E-A,
Ning, Google
Docs, Wiki)
Digital tools (Wiki,
Google Docs,
Ning)
Incubation Proofreading or
editing
Incubation Teacher/student
conferencing
Text manipulation Rubrics Conferencing Mentor texts
Peer workshop Peer workshop Mentor texts Incubation
One study participant, who said she bought into the same revision attitude as a
writer, took a while to get to that point where revision mattered. During the summer
institute, she had to “overcome my own obstacles” and realized that even good writers
need to revise. Another participant, after attending the summer institute and taking her
experience back to the classroom, stated that she saw a change in students’ interest in
revision and was convinced that it “was a direct result of [her] enthusiasm for it as well.”
Acknowledging the importance of revision and finding practical and comfortable
ways to teach it are practices that teachers of writing need to adopt. One teacher
commented, “Learning to help my students be revisers and to be a reviser for myself
has been about ... having really great models.” She was keenly aware that “what I’m
excited about as a teacher I can sell to them. They get excited about it as well.”
Motivating students to revise can be a difficult task, but teacher attitude is a key factor in
accomplishing this.
Theme Six: Revision and Time
Overwhelmingly, study participants saw the benefit of revision in their own writing
and in their classrooms. More than 95% of post-institute participants said participating in
the summer institute and the E-A greatly increased their willingness to spend time on
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and teach revision strategies in the classroom (see Figure 2). The same participant that
claimed, “I don’t teach revision, I teach math” came to the realization that “Everything
we do in my class is about revision. We revise formulas. We revise our calculations. We
revise our answers to critical thinking problems. Being able to stand back and evaluate
one’s answers, with the opportunity to revise it, is at the heart of my work in the
classroom.” A middle school band instructor agreed:
I think certainly most everything that I do about revision in my work is based on
work from my participation in a summer institute. We became a community of
learners, depended on one another for feedback and advice, and gave critical
guidance when needed. This certainly transfers over to my work with students in
my classroom. Although we aren’t always writing when we revise, we are
certainly composing text in an auditory sense. The same concepts that apply to
the written word apply here to my work.
An elementary teacher also agreed, saying, “If we create the environment and
give them the time and offer the critical thinking skills, then ultimately over time, they
become very sophisticated . . . writers and thinkers. . . .” These attitudes about writing
that teachers gain from the summer institutes transfer directly to the students in not just
writing classrooms, but in classrooms of all subject areas.
Figure 2. Teaching revision in the classroom.
Theme Seven: Scaffolds
E-A study participants recognized that important scaffolds were needed in order to
implement the revision strategies they learned in the summer institute into the 21st
century classroom. By providing a real audience, access to digital writing environments,
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0-10 11-20 21-40 41-60
Percentage of Study Participants
Number of Minutes per Week
Time Spent on Revision Strategies in the Classroom
Pre-Institute
Post-Institute
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and a sense of community based on the writing groups of the National Writing Project,
the study participants entered their classrooms with a renewed dedication to the
teaching of revision.
When asked if study participants could have any single resource for teaching
revision, a middle school Language Arts teacher responded “real audiences for every
single thing that we do. . . . I struggle to find that audience that provides my students
what they really need to get invested in the writing.” He reiterated that his students “are
totally different when they have a real reason” to write. Other study participants agreed,
adding, “The key [to revision] would be to find the authentic audience.” A high school art
teacher shared, “The audience dictates so many of the choices writers make; students,
many for the first time, become aware that they are actually making choices about their
writing. The audience is in the mind of the writers when they make choices on content,
organization, word choice, and so much more.”
Theme Eight: Revision and Digital Writing Environments
The access and ability to use digital writing environments, even in face-to-face
classrooms, was critical to the implementation of increased revision time in the teachers’
classrooms. Not only was the access to the digital writing environment of the E-A a
critical aspect of the participants’ growth as writers and teachers, serving as a motivator
for participation in revisions throughout the institute, an appreciation for the digital
writing environments accompanied teachers into their own classrooms after the institute
ended (see Figure 3). As one participant explained, “We now use Google Documents to
upload our pieces . . . we use blogs. . . . our writing project has a website, and we
certainly share student work there.” Another participant noted, “ I put a little bit of each
student’s writing up on the Elmo so that we can talk about it and revise.”
Recognizing the impact of such opportunities on students, one participant
remarked, “If we create the environment and give them time . . . ultimately they become
more sophisticated users of technology and more sophisticated writers.” A literacy
coach affirmed that students in her school are “much happier to revise in a digital
environment, and they’re much happier to revise for digital publication.” Another
English teacher stated:
[going] to Wikipedia and participating in the editing of that, or going to Nings and
Facebook and all that, I think that’s really transforming attitudes about digital
publishing. They love to produce things for the Internet, so they’re invested in
their revision because they want their good pieces to go out there.
Such comments reflect an understanding of the ways that out-of-school and in-school
writing can inform each other.
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Figure 3. Classroom use of digital writing environments before and after ISI and E-A.
The data indicate teachers’ attitudes about the use of digital writing environments
can do much to propel students into the practice of revising. Teachers reported that the
use of these environments are motivating to most students and encouraged an
environment of and expectation for revision in student writing. A middle school social
studies teacher explained:
They are certainly more likely to [revise] at a time that is convenient for them. . . .
Kids are awake at 2:00 a.m., and I can track their times when they’re doing that
kind of stuff. I think that leads, for many of them, to their enthusiasm to [revise].
Teachers like this, who believe that not all writing and revising have to take place in the
classroom, do much to motivate their students to revise. What happens in the
classroom can be enhanced by allowing students “time to digest it and process it”
before making revisions. Allowing students to have access at their convenience can
make them more able and willing to engage in true revision as opposed to editing.
Discussion
The purpose of this research study was to investigate the ways that teachers of
writing used revision in their own writing processes, to study how the practice of revision
was implemented in the teachers’ pedagogical practice, and to understand how the use
and availability of digital writing environments impacted the revisions teachers made in
their own writing.
Clearly, study participants are using revision in their own writing processes.
Whether through incubation, text manipulation, reading aloud, or working with peers,
these teachers implement a variety of strategies in their own writing and revision
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Before After
Percentage of Study
Participants
Use of Digital Environments Before and
after ISI and E-A
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practices. When study participants focused on the teaching of revision in their own
classrooms, however, several inconsistencies arose.
Confusing Revision and Editing
First and foremost, many study participants believed they were teaching revision
strategies when, in fact, they were teaching only editing and proofreading strategies.
Additionally, many study participants did not recognize that they were teaching revision
when, in fact, they were. This confusion of terms and actions influences student learning
and caused a lack of common understanding from teacher to teacher. Ultimately, if
teachers are confused about what revision is and what purpose it serves, so, too, will be
the students.
This study’s results echo a trend in the field. Whitney et al. (2008) found that
teachers in their study gave students revision activities that were really editing activities,
resulting in student writing that was never revised. Teachers must make clear to
students the differences between revising content and editing for grammatical and
syntactical errors. Additionally, in teaching students how to revise, we must teach
students why they need to revise and how revision is used to clarify their meaning and
strengthen their arguments (Saddler, 2003). Students who are unable to see revision as
a strategy for clarifying and improving content will struggle when working to improve
their writing.
Inconsistency in the definition of revision and increased demands for classroom
instructional time coupled with a lack of student engagement and motivation to revise
result in an inconsistent focus on revision in K-16 classrooms. Often left to the
independent work of the student alone, revision is rarely effective. The key to fixing
confusion between editing and revising lies with clear and consistent instruction and
modeling by teachers.
Digital Writing Environments
As teachers evolve in their attitudes about revision, they offer their students
greater and more varied opportunities for revision. Most of the study participants are
now using face-to-face or digital writing groups in their classrooms. Further, the results
from the data indicate that strategies that include revision in digital writing environments
are used more prevalently in the classroom when teachers use the same digital
environments in their own writing practice.
While new digital technologies and pedagogical tools have emerged to help
teachers in the teaching of revision, the new tools are still severely lacking in today’s
revision instruction, and study participants made strides, large and small, in the
implementation of digital writing environments in the classroom. Technology and
digitalization should encourage teachers to incorporate revision into their instruction
more explicitly and with greater significance, as writers will not truly become competent
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until they become greater revisers (Rowan, 2005). In teaching writing, technology
provides not just audiences and purpose, but it also changes the motivation to revise.
Study participants agree that students are much more likely to revise for content as well
as surface errors when writing in a digital environment.
Building Authentic Audience through Community
Writers need an audience. The nature of writing demands it. Often times for
students, the teacher is the audience and the grade is the purpose. This design lacks a
sense of classroom community, where the audience for student work is embraced,
mentored, and shared. The sense of community fostered in the NWP ISI and the NWP
E-A can be recreated within the classroom among teachers and students. Experiencing
the revision strategies explored and developed in the summer institutes clearly changes
how teachers perceive their own writing and the writing of their students.
When teachers can build an authentic audience into an assignment, even if the
audience is just other classmates, students begin to see themselves as writers with an
audience rather than students with teachers. Previous studies have emphasized the
importance of using digital environments to motivate students to revise because they
provide an authentic audience. When they know that their writing is going to be viewed
by someone other than the teacher, the final product begins to matter more (DeVoss,
Eidman-Aadahl, & Hicks, 2010).
Making the Time for What We Value
Data from the study revealed that students are rarely asked to revise their work
and do little revision without peer group or teacher support. Without the knowledge of
how to revise or the clear instruction to revise, students can neglect the process of
revision completely. To be able to guide students into more successful revision
practices, teachers must both ask students to revise their work and explicitly teach how
to revise (Graham & Perin, 2007; Karlström, Lindström, Cerratto-Pargman, & Knutsson,
2007). The first step in embracing revision may lie in addressing the terminology itself.
For students, the word revision is frequently viewed as a word that their teachers use, a
word belonging to the world of academic language, and not a word they themselves
would ever use. By encouraging students to recognize that these terms do not live only
in schools’ classrooms, but rather are commonly used to describe changes students
make in their lives, we may break down some student resistance. Doing so may help
them be both more open to learning different revision strategies and to the revision
process in general (Ghezzi, 2010).
Additionally, some students are also less open to the revision process because
they focus so much on the general writing rules and typical editing behaviors. Often,
students feel that if they have not violated any of the mechanical, usage, or grammar
rules, then revision is not necessary, even though there are other reasons to revise a
piece of writing. Experienced adult writers do use the terms revising and rewriting, but
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the general strategies are the same. While the actions taken are similar, the intent
behind them differs from that of a student writer.
Many teachers of writing recognize they have a reluctance to revise; it pervades
the classroom. Teachers find that many things affect students’ attitudes about revision,
but one very specific influencing factor is their teachers’ attitudes about the revision
process. Teachers must show a respect for revision; they must pra