EE0483Instruction
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Instruction Matters: Secondary English
Preservice Teachers’ Implementation of
Cognitively Demanding Writing Tasks
Susanna L. Benko
The findings suggest that preservice teachers’ instruction appears to align with expectations for good writing instruction (e.g., using models), but that they often struggle to enact these practices in a way that supports the complexity of the tasks.
O f writing instruction, the National Council of Teachers of English argues,
Longitudinal studies on writing instruction suggest that teachers use process-based approaches (Applebee
& Not all tasks are created equally; some researchers argue that cognitively demand-ing writing tasks—tasks which require students to evaluate, synthesize, analyze, or otherwise construct knowledge—are the most important kinds of tasks in a secondary writing classroom, even though they are not always present in classrooms (American Institutes for Research, 2005, 2007; Clare
& In examining the kinds of writing assign-ments completed by middle school and high school students across English, math, science, and social studies, Applebee and Langer (2011) found that
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Given that students are likely not regularly exposed to cognitively demanding writing tasks, and given
These two things, then—effective that much of the teaching of writing in schools
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teaching and high-quality tasks— |
is often described as “assigning” writing rather |
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are of critical importance to |
than teaching it, it is critical to understand what |
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students’ learning opportunities |
tasks, and instruction for tasks, look like when |
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in secondary English classrooms. |
These two things, |
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then—effective teaching and high-quality tasks— |
This study investigates how preservice teachers enact writing instruction for tasks that require substantial intellectual work and provides insights to how English educators might prepare preservice teach-ers to support secondary students’ writing.
Tasks, Teaching, and Learning to Teach
Finally, I present relevant literature about learning, specifically the kinds of knowledge necessary for teaching writing and preservice teachers’ concept development of how to teach writing.
Cognitively Demanding Writing Tasks
While researchers have used different terms for these tasks, they can generally be categorized as tasks that require students to
Re-search is clear that these tasks are the exception rather than the norm in an ELA classroom: When collecting more than 600 assignments from schools in Chicago over a period of three years, Bryk, Nagaoka, and Newmann (2000) noted that 52 percent of sixth-grade and 45 percent of eighth-grade writing
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(2008) studied 64 assignments provided by 16 ELA teachers and found that only one quarter of writing assignments in sixth grade and seventh grade prompted analysis or interpretation or required students to use evidence in their writing.
For example, Langer and Applebee (1987) argue that tasks that demand more effort, such as analytic writing, “lead students to complex manipulations of the material about which they are writing, while other tasks lead them to move more rapidly (and more superficially) through larger quantities of material” (p. 136).
Additionally, cognitively demanding writing tasks may be of critical importance as they can provide the opportunity to engage in higher-order thinking in cases where teachers choose to use texts that are appropriate for their students but whose lower-than-recommended Lexile levels require justification for their inclusion in the curriculum.
Writing Instruction and Cognitively Demanding Tasks
The studies listed above focus on the presence Below, I review research about writing instruction, both broadly and in respect to cognitively demanding writing tasks.
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Research on Writing Instruction
However, while these practices are useful insights into effective writing instruction, the practices are not at all connected to types of writing assignments that students were to complete.
Modeling, then, is a practice that involves both modeling final products and also thinking processes so that students can understand what they need to accomplish and also how and why they can accomplish it.
Research on Writing Instruction for Cognitively Demanding Writing Tasks
For example, in her case study of two African American middle school teachers who had been shown to be effective based on stu-
A task may begin at a high cognitive level, but a teacher’s instruction may reduce the demands of the task, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
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dent test score gains, Alston (2012) found that both teachers used a variety of teacher-directed instructional strategies aligned with best practices (e.g., strategy instruction, modeling, a process approach to teaching writing), and that the use of these strategies supported students’ successful completion of cognitively demanding writing tasks.
However, one teacher provided better opportunities to support students’ writing development by scaffolding writing opportunities for students and using instructional
The students of the teacher who provided
Although ample research exists to suggest that challenging tasks matter, and some research discusses practicing teachers’ instruction for such tasks, more research is needed to understand how teacher educators might best prepare preservice teachers to provide instruction for cognitively demand-ing writing tasks.
Considerations for Learning to Teach Writing
It is important to think about instruction, then, as it is just as much part of the task as the task itself.
Types of Knowledge
Hillocks (1986b, 2005) argued that a writer
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De-clarative knowledge is naming things and can be directly transmitted from one person to another, whereas procedural knowledge is doing Knowledge of substance is knowing about the content to be included in a written work, for example, understanding the text well enough to write the introduction.
Developing all of these types of knowledge, then, may be critical for supporting responses to challenging writing tasks, and especially difficult for new teachers.
Teachers’ Concept Development
However, Smagorinsky, Cook, and Johnson (2003) argue, “Focusing on theory and practice as separate things misses the point on how people learn; the development of an approach to teaching stands in dialectical relation to one’s development of a concep-tion of teaching, which comes through principled activity in social context
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Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1987) notion of concept, they define concepts, pseudoconcepts, and complexes, all of which are important in learning to teach. Concepts When using models of final product, she would be able to select models that are appropriate to the task and accessible to her students.
Vygotsky (1987) also argues that sometimes people have underde-veloped understanding of concepts called complexes and pseudoconcepts Conceptual understandings often begin as complexes Although this action may, on the surface, appear to be modeling, in this case, the teacher is confusing the concept of modeling with the action of copying already-written work. Pseudoconcepts In the case of the previous example, a PST may understand that copying and modeling are not the same thing, but may also be uncomfortable with writing on the spot with her students, and therefore prepares notes or an
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Vygotsky (1987) describes the process to developing concepts as a “twisting path” (in Smagorinsky et al., 2003, p. 1401), suggesting that the process to truly understanding and enacting new understandings about teaching is one that is nonlinear and difficult.
Method
Context of Investigation
From these data, three preservice teachers who demonstrated a strong conceptual understanding of cognitively demanding writing tasks and also had the opportunity to teach such tasks in their student teaching placements were selected to participate in observations of and interviews about their teaching.
Overview of Program and Writing Methods Course
This course was guided by concepts of inquiry and multiple perspectives, and the first course goal
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The two primary texts for the course focused on designing instructional units and on a “structured process ap-proach” to teaching writing, and helped PSTs understand how to sequence activities to support students’ completion of writing tasks (Smagorinsky, 2008; Smagorinsky, Johannessen, Kahn, & McCann, 2010).
All observations of PSTs in the study took place after they had completed the activities above.
Participants and Their Internship Contexts
During my observations of his teaching, I often noted that he had written short lines of Farsi, almost as doodles, in his planning notebook.
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Each teacher was responsible for developing his or her own curriculum; the school did not work under a standardized curriculum system.
She felt that students needed to understand the purpose for writing so that, regardless of how much they “liked” writing, they could “at least learn to appreciate what they are doing.”
So we are going to keep the question.”
Melissa grew up on the East Coast and began her university studies in education at
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Since Melissa’s major was in Women’s Studies, rather than English Literature or writing, she spent a year taking prerequisite classes before entering the MAT program.
The final task that Melissa presented to her students was modified significantly from the end-of-unit task as it was written in the curriculum; Melissa’s mentor teacher had made other modifications to her instruction, including the final task, so Melissa felt comfortable making many changes in the curriculum, including the instruction and final task.
Researcher’s Role
Primarily, these conversations oc-
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curred after the interviews took place, but it is important to note that these preservice teachers undoubtedly saw me not only as a researcher but also as their teacher and as someone from whom they felt comfortable asking advice .
Data Collection
Below, I describe my process for collecting and analyzing audio-recordings and interviews, which were the primary data sources.
Audio-Recordings and Observations of Lessons
Table 1 provides a summary of the total instruction observed and interviews conducted.
To supplement the audio-recordings, I took careful jottings while I observed instruction and subsequently wrote up these jottings as field notes
Table 1. Overview of Instruction Observed
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Andrew |
Susan |
Melissa |
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Grade level taught |
8th grade |
7th grade honors |
8th grade |
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Total periods of instruction observed |
5 periods |
4 periods |
4 periods |
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Total minutes of instruction observed |
235 min |
336 min |
304 min |
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Total interviews |
7 |
6 |
6 |
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In these observations, my attention was primarily focused on the instructional moves of the PST, looking specifically for things that could not be captured via the audio-recordings, such as the way a PST physically set up the space of a writing conference.
Interviews
Finally, after all instruction for the task was complete and after student work was submitted, I asked PSTs to reflect on their instruction over the course of the entire writing task.
Classroom Artifacts
Other collected items included copies of the tasks given to students, graphic organizers used during planning, and handouts for students.
Data Analysis
Between observations of PSTs, I reviewed the early set of data (transcripts from observations and interviews, field notes, teaching artifacts) in their entirety to come up with a preliminary coding
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I coded interactions using grounded theory, focusing on bottom-up, open coding (Charmaz, 2002; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to help identify emerging patterns from the data.
Coding Instruction
When coding in this way, I was especially drawn to episodes of instruction where PSTs were enacting a best practice, but their instruction was difficult for them.
Coding Interviews
I used these moments as an analytical tool, as a means of documenting, representing, and interpreting what seemed to be important factors in PSTs’ instruction, and as a way to triangulate the observation data to validate my findings.
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Findings
The end result was a five-paragraph essay where students discussed whether they thought the families were realistic; instead of using the author’s craft for evidence, students relied on their opinions of the families and their opinions on what was “realistic.”
Melissa’s students also had 4 days of in-class instruction—3 consecutive
Table 2. Overview of Writing Tasks
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Andrew |
Susan |
Melissa |
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After studying many kinds |
Students were asked to |
Students were asked to write a |
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students |
of logical fallacies, students |
express an opinion about |
speech, letter, or journal entry from |
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were given four quotes from |
whether (author) Edward |
the point of view of a character |
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Inherit the Wind and asked |
Bloor created effectively real- |
from the novel Chain of Fire. In their |
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to |
to select two quotes to (a) |
istic families in Tangerine . |
response, they were to choose three |
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identify the type of fallacy |
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of these questions to answer: |
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presented |
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being used in the quote, (b) |
Students were to discuss how |
• What does the character need? |
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explain why the character |
Bloor uses characterization, |
• How has the setting shaped the |
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might choose to use this |
plot, and setting to develop |
character? |
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as |
fallacy or argument tactic, |
the families in the story and |
• How has the character tried to |
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and (c) analyze the effect of |
use the text to justify whether |
shape or change the setting? |
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task |
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this fallacy on the play, the |
they believed the families |
• How did the plot/events in the |
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Writing |
character speaking, or other |
were realistic or not. |
story influence the character? |
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characters in the play. |
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• How has the character influenced |
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events that happened in the |
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story? |
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From the chart, it is evident that Andrew, Susan, and Melissa all used a process-based approach and used several recognized best practices in the observed instruction (Col-lins et al., 1989; Graham & Perin, 2007; Newell et al., 2007).
It is noteworthy and encouraging that all three PSTs were making strong efforts to teach However, they struggled to enact these strategies with the level of depth and understanding that the more experienced teachers demonstrated.
In examining these five critical moments of teaching, I also illus-trate how these moments align with declarative and procedural knowledge, and knowledge of form and content (Hillocks, 2005; Wilhelm et al., 2012).
Table 3. Writing Process and Instructional Strategies Used by PSTs
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Andrew |
Susan |
Melissa |
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Parts of |
Prewriting |
Prewriting |
Prewriting |
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Writing |
Drafting |
Drafting |
Drafting |
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Process |
Revising |
Peer edit |
Revising |
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Peer edit |
Clear assessment (rubric) |
Clear assessment (rubric) |
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Instruc- |
Explicit instruction |
Explicit instruction |
Inquiry activities |
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tional |
Word processing |
Provided models (teacher- |
Provided model |
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Strategies |
Time to write in class |
based and student-based) |
Self-assess with rubric |
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Writing conferences |
Self-assess with rubric |
Time for writing in class |
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Time for writing in class |
Written feedback on draft |
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Use of Models
However, there are important differences in their instruction around the models.
On the second day of her instruction, Susan used a model that closely modeled the form of the five-paragraph essay that she expected from her students about the novel Tangerine When Susan passed out the model to students, she explained that the model essay was about To Kill a Mockingbird Then, she introduced the model.
SuSAN: I’d just like to read you the introduction paragraph, and I want you to notice that at the very beginning , And you’ll see
what I mean when we read this. Reading the model essay, “In today’s society, open-mindedness is incredibly valued.” To students, That’s very broad, right? Continuing to read, “People of all ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, sexual orientations, genders, and ages are encouraged to exhibit their freedoms in both the private and public sectors.” To students, I’m talking about open-mindedness more specifically. Reading, “Those who oppose granting these inherent freedoms are considered to be close-minded and intolerant, just as readers may view certain characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird .”
To students, So there I’ve made it more specific and I’m going to be starting to talk about the book. Reading, “Many who read this may view Atticus Finch as a hero fighting for equality between races.
However, many may overlook his heroism in fighting for equality for his daughter Scout against traditionalists like Aunt Alexandra.”
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However, recall that none of the students had read To Kill a Mockingbird Although my observations suggested that students were confused by the model, Susan did not appear to attribute the difficulty to the model itself so much as her rhetorical failure to explicate it.
Melissa’s task asked students to write about the relationships between character, setting, and plot from the point of view from a character in Chain of Fire When presenting the model to her students, Melissa said:
I chose to write in a letter because Chief
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Underline or put a star next to [those places], and then we’ll talk about them.
Melissa’s instruction focused somewhat on declarative knowledge of substance—she was helping students name the content in her introduction and tried to help them make connections to how this content fulfilled the requirements of the task; she also briefly touched on procedural knowledge of form, pointing out to students why she decided to select a letter as the form she used to write from her character’s point of view (Hillocks, 2005; Wilhelm et al., 2012).
Explicit Instruction
Andrew’s teaching focused on sentence-level structures and ways to revise sentences to avoid fragments, and both Andrew’s and Susan’s teaching focused on integrating quotes into a paper.
Sentence Structure
The first “mistake” that Andrew addressed was using the word because to start a sentence or us-ing the word like Although the two topics seem unrelated
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As he worked to help students understand these concepts, Andrew explained that avoiding because and like as a mistake that was “not that hard to fix”:
ANDrEW: Grammatically ( Speaking to mentor ) You don’t want them using “because” to start a sentence?
MENTOr: It’s also convention, but it’s also “because,” “so,” “and,” any of them at the beginning like that, we just want to stay away from them.
ANDrEW: It can be So if you see one of your sentences start with “because,” just X that “because” out and start a different way.
Had he wanted students to understand how However, Andrew’s goal in this instance seemed not to be helping students understand how to use because It is also important to note that while he instructed students to “start a different way,” he offered no examples of alternative ways to begin; a student could use a word other than because After discussing the use of because at the start of sentences, Andrew continued discussion and shifts the focus to revising a sentence that begins with because , based on content from Inherit the Wind (Lawrence & Lee, 1955) . He asked students to write, “Because Mary was engaged to Cates, she was really manipulated,” then reminded students that their goal was to avoid using because and like , and asked for other ways to begin.
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STuDENT: ( suggesting an alternative to starting the sentence ) “Since”?
ANDrEW: You can start a sentence with “since,” but—( speaking to his mentor ) what do you think of “since”?
MENTOr: Let’s not put it there.
ANDrEW: “Because” and “like,” stay away from that.
At this point in the conversation, neither Andrew nor his mentor provided an opportunity for students to understand how starting with since is similar to starting with because Although Andrew’s instruction may lead to overall better quality writing in this instance, his instruction does not help students understand the purpose for avoiding because or since His instruction is focused on what to do, or, in this case, what not to do, but not why not to do it.
In the excerpt from the transcript that follows, note the students’ suggested revisions and the ways that Andrew does and does not take up their suggestions.
STuDENT 1: I would revise it first, so, “Mary is engaged to Cates, so she is—”
ANDrEW: “Mary’s engagement to Cates—”
STuDENT 1: Yeah, “Mary’s engagement to Cates means that she can be manipulated because she loves him.”
ANDrEW: ( To another student ) How would you start this sentence?
STuDENT 2: I would say something like, “Mary is engaged to Cates, ( Andrew writes on the board, “Mary is engaged to Cates, therefore . . . ”)
STuDENT 3: I have, “Mary is engaged to Cates, which leads to—”
ANDrEW: Don’t worry about that right now, it’s just an example. . . .
So take away the “because” at the beginning and don’t use “like.”
STuDENT 4: “Mary is engaged to Cates and this leads—”
ANDrEW: Or you could say, “Due to Mary being engaged—” ( He writes “Due to Mary being engaged . . .” on the board Robert?
rObErT: Since.
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ANDrEW: We’re not Jane?
STuDENT 3: Could you write it backwards, like, “Mary is easily ma-nipulated because she is—”
ANDrEW: You could just switch the sentence around. It’s not a conversation.
Second, in the examples provided by the first and third students, both students are switching the order of the sentence to begin with an independent clause and ending the sentence with a subordinate clause (e.g., “Mary is engaged to Cates, so she could be
. . .” and “Mary is engaged to Cates . In this exchange, Andrew’s focus was on phrases to avoid to help students’ essays be more academic in tone, but his instruction did not help students understand how certain words or phrases (like because However, Andrew did not take the opportunity to point this out—he even seemed to brush off Student 3’s alternative and said they are just “coming up with [examples] quickly.”
In a post-observation interview with me, Andrew explained that he identified this as an area of instructional need for students because he was “annoyed” to see students using the words because or like He acknowledged that many writers, including himself, begin sentences with because Overall, it seems like Andrew’s goal was really to have students substitute the words because and since Andrew’s emphasis here
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Although Andrew is collecting and writing possible alternatives for starting a sentence without because He did not provide the necessary procedural knowledge for students to fully understand the circumstances under which this might be possible or the ways that they might do so (Hillocks, 2005; Wilhelm et al., 2012).
Using Quotes
He gave students this example:
ANDrEW: When Brady uses the words “instructing as if he were a child,” it shows that he sees himself as blank in terms of Drummond.
STuDENT: Superior.
ANDrEW: So, notice how we’re not using the whole entire quote—we’re just saying that these few words show that Brady thinks he is superior to Drummond.
However, his instruction here is solely declarative, as it helps students understand one strategy, but it does not focus at all on the content that students might use to explain the quote, as evidenced by his use of “blank” to suggest that students would enter content (Smith et al., 2012).
However, it is noteworthy that his instruction focused
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Andrew did begin to help students understand how to explain the significance of a passage, but this instruction is not connected to the actual work that students were doing in this particular assignment—performing a close analysis of rhetorical strategies within the text and making an argument about how these rhetorical strategies influenced the outcome of the play.
Susan expected students to use quotes to support their claims as to whether or not the families in Tangerine Unlike Andrew, Susan did provide a strategy for how students could explain the content of the quote; however, the majority of Susan’s instruction about quotes focused on the number of quotes to use and how to correctly cite quotes in their papers.
Making students aware of this requirement, while useful, does not move students toward a better understanding of how to leverage quota-tions toward accomplishing a goal or build students’ procedural knowledge of substance, such as using quotes to provide details or explain a claim (Smith et al., 2012).
On the third day of instruction, Susan asked David, a student who had finished a large section of his rough draft, if the class could read his introduc-
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This instruction builds students’ procedural knowledge of how to correctly use quotes or ellipses, but, like earlier instruction, it does not help students select appropriate evidence or unpack a quote using a strategy like focusing on a few words (Hillocks, 2005; Wilhelm et al., 2012).
In other instances, Susan made more pointed efforts to show students how However, these moments seemed to be “off the cuff” Susan’s examples focused on
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Because Susan was coming up with these examples in the middle of her instruction, it was understandable that they were not high-quality examples that clearly articulated how students could use a quote to advance a claim.
Discussion
However, ques-tions remain about how their instruction would support students’ completion of their writing tasks.
Conversely, Susan’s discussion was much more focused on the highly structured form of an introductory para-graph, which afforded little opportunity for students to think about how they might approach their writing task, develop their own ideas, or organize those ideas in a coherent way.
Melissa created a model of a written response
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However, in her classroom teaching, little classroom time was dedicated to understanding the model; ultimately, students had to use the model independently.
Teachers must carefully select models that are accessible for students and clearly relate to the work of the students’ task, and teachers must also provide adequate time for students to study and understand the model so that they are able to see how the model can serve as an exemplar to guide their own writing.
In this study, Andrew and Susan provided tasks to students that required the use of
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Susan required students to use textual evidence, but her instruction neither supported students to explain why a particular quote was important nor to use quotes to advance a claim or argument—perhaps, in part, because her task as enacted did not require students to make Neither Andrew nor Susan supported students’ development of substance, of knowing what the text said (declarative knowledge of substance) or select-ing the quotes that goes in their paper (procedural knowledge of substance) (Smith et al., 2012).
Andrew encouraged his students to avoid beginning a sentence with because or since He saw his instruction about avoiding because To help students understand pos-sible reasons why they should not start a sentence with because He told students they could “switch the sentences around” to avoid beginning with because , but never explains why It seemed as though Andrew was relying on a set of individual rules that he
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Although he asked students for alternative ways of starting sentences, he did not take the opportunity to discuss how A strong conceptual understanding of these ideas to students is essential to articulating why and how language works, which is a critical component for ensuing that students leave with a lasting understanding of grammatical concepts and an ability to make informed linguistic choices in future writing.
Andrew, Susan, and Melissa seemed to be going through the right motions—knowing they
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The question for teacher educators, then, is how to provide social contexts where PSTs can develop more robust conceptual understandings of key principles of writing instruction.
Implications
Importantly, preservice teachers in this study did not In describing her influences, Melissa referred to two activities in which she had participated as a learner during her teacher education program, but not in the methods class on writing.
As teacher education is mak-ing a turn toward practice-based or clinical teacher education (AACTE, 2010;
It is a critical time for teacher educators to provide opportunities for PSTs to practice teaching writ-ing in ways that support robust, complex thinking without reducing best practices to overly simplified strategies.
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For instance, if university coursework chooses to focus on some of the practices with which Andrew, Susan, and Melissa struggled (e.g., modeling,
(2003) point out that concepts need to be reinforced over time and in multiple settings;
If a goal is truly to develop concepts over time, perhaps teacher education programs can reexamine ways to structure programs so that concepts are introduced and reinforced in multiple courses over the duration of a program, rather than relying on one course to try to accomplish everything.
From these data, it is impossible to know how students might have carried this learning over into their writing.
Future research in teacher education might look to longitudinal de-signs to better understand how PST learning in methods courses transfers
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Future research could investigate how preservice teachers try, or perhaps do not try, to include cognitively demanding writing tasks in their own teaching and the challenges they encounter in doing so, after they leave their teacher education programs.
With time, and with much practice, teacher edu-cators can help PSTs navigate the twisting path of learning to teach writing so that their instruction can truly support their students’ efforts to respond to challenging writing tasks.
references
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Susanna L. benko is an assistant professor of English at Her research interests center on writing instruction, teacher education, and educational policies that influence the
She has been an NCTE member since 2005.
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