AERA 2012 Revision and the Pedagogical Implications of Teachers as Digital Writers
1. Revision and the Pedagogical Implications of
Teachers as Digital Writers
Shelbie Witte, School of Teacher Education
American Educational Research Association
2012
2. Overview
• Revision and the Pedagogical Implications of
Teachers as Digital Writers
• The pedagogical implications of teachers as digital
writers
• An analysis of the impact of revision in digital
writing environments
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3. Purpose of the Study
1) teachers use revision in their own writing
2) 2) digital writing environments impact revision and
revision instruction
3) 3) the revision process is implemented into
teachers’ classrooms
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4. Research questions
• In what ways do teachers of writing use
revision in their own writing?
• What are teachers’ perceptions of revision in
their own writing and in writing instruction in
the classroom?
• How do digital writing environments impact
revision and its instruction?
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5. Study Participants
• Tier One-Summer 2009
• 253 study participants from a random sampling of
NWP sites participating in the 2009 NWP E-
anthology
• Two surveys, writing posted to the E-anthology,
responses, and revisions posted to the E-
anthology
• Tier Two-Fall 2009
• Focus group
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6. Participants
• Sampling frame of 150 participating sites of the National
Writing Project Summer Institute E-Anthology (NWP E-A).
• Thirteen sites were randomly selected to participate, yielding
approximately 250 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.
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7. Tier One Study Participants
English Language Arts 45%
Elementary 20%
Special Education 5%
Foreign Language 4%
Reading 4%
Science 4%
Social Studies 4%
Math 4%
Other 10%
(Speech, Composition, Literacy Coach, ELL,
Arts/Humanities, Music, FACS, Counselor, Principal,
Careers, Curriculum Specialist)
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8. Tier One Study Participants
K-5 31%
6-8 27%
9-12 37%
Univ. 4%
Other Less than 1%
Age Range of Participants
20-29 34%
30-39 32%
40-49 17%
50-59 14%
60-69 2%
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9. Tier One Study Participants
Teaching experience:
Less than three years 26%
Three to five years 20%
Six to ten years 16%
Eleven to fifteen years 17%
More than fifteen years 22%
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12. In their own words….
“I look for internal consistency of ideas within the paper as
a whole and then in smaller parts”
“I put it away and wait until I find it again”
“I revise very little, but if I do, it is from peer suggestion”
“I revise as I write”
“I use spellcheck”
13. Teaching Revision
The most common activities in the classroom to facilitate
revision included:
• teacher revision directly on students’ papers
• peer revision groups and feedback face to face
• independent revision and rewriting
• read aloud strategies
• examining student work as a class to offer suggestions
for revision
14. In their own words….
“we read backwards paragraph by paragraph”
“have students revise for specific things such as Noden’s
Brush Strokes or Lane’s snapshots and thoughtshots”
“check to be sure words are written, illustrated picture
reflects”
“we never get to revision”
“I don’t teach revision. I teach Math”
“Students hate to revise and so do I”
15. Revision Strategies in the SI
• Peer groups
• E-Anthology feedback
• Add, move, change, or delete (words,
sentences, paragraphs)
• Re-read or read aloud
• Digital tools (E-Anthology, Ning,
Google Docs, Wiki)
• Incubation
• Editing (many mentioned strategies
usually recognized as editing)
• Mentor texts
• Rubrics
• Simultaneous revision
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16. Key Findings
– many teach revision and don’t realize that they do
– a significant percentage of participants believe that they
are teaching revision, when in fact they are teaching
only editing and proofreading strategies
– the division between revision and editing is becoming
increasingly blurred as revision becomes increasingly
simultaneous
– teachers often do not “preach” what they “practice”;
meaning that the very strategies teachers use in their
own revisions are not the strategies they teach in the
classroom
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18. How do digital writing environments
impact revision and its instruction?
• 77% of participants said E-anthology participation increased
their willingness to teach revision
• Importance of audience in writing
• Collaboration/community that can develop in responding
to others
• Importance of using digital writing environments, even in
F2F classrooms
• Use of technology as motivator for student participation in
revision
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20. Tier II Emerging Themes
• Audience
• Genre
• Self-efficacy, motivation
• Teachers as writers (NWP influence)
• Effects of Technology
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21. Audience
• Having an authentic audience for whom to write enhances
the revision process for students. When they know that their
writing is going to be viewed by someone other than the
teacher, the final product begins to matter more.
• Rowen (2005) argues that “when students know someone
other than their teacher will see their writing, it becomes
easy to help them with process and mechanics.”
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22. Audience
• When asked if she could have any resource for
teaching revision to her students, what it would be,
she responded with, “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.” She reiterates that her
students “are totally different when they have a real
reason” to write.
Latham & Gross / CAIS 2010 22
23. Genre
• Students today are writing more than ever; however, the
formats they use differ vastly from their ‘in school’ writing.
Students still produce academic writing: essays, research
papers, and literary analyses. They sometimes compose
poems, stories, and plays. But most of their writing is done in
forms that have yet to be recognized as ‘writing’ by the
majority of classrooms and curricula.
• “Writers now compose through new media like e-mail,
listservers, and creative software packages. Writers use
digital technologies to write many new kinds of texts, such as
Web logs, hypertexts, and electronic portfolios” (Yancey,
2004).
Latham & Gross / CAIS 2010 23
24. Genre
• “Students are certainly much more interested in digital kinds
of writing now in new ways – podcasts and video casts and
those kinds of things.” She, therefore, is incorporating this
technology into her classroom. Her students create “digital
stories, which they love. . . . that particular kind of writing
that marries their love of image and sound and all those
textures.”
• Williams (2001) explains, “Because digital technology
increases student access to a diversity of expressive media,
we as composition instructors must model our engagement
with the multiple forms of literacy that constitute students’
lives.
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25. Self-efficacy and Motivation
• For many students, the word revision has little impact. They
have written their draft and either they put everything they
had into it the first time and cannot possibly improve it or
they have always gotten good grades on their papers and
they do not need to revise.
• Teachers are finding that the attitude of students about
revision is affected by many things, but one very specific
influencing factor is the attitude of teachers about the
revision process.
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26. Self-efficacy and Motivation
• Participant 1 says about revision that her students “hate
it. . . . I say revision, and they go, ‘Ugh’. You know, they’re
squeamish about it.”
• Participant 2 explains that she sees a change in students’
interest in revision that “I’m sure is a direct result of my
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
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27. Teachers as Writers (NWP)
• Participant 1 acknowledges that “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 some degree.”
As teachers evolve in their attitudes about revision, so do
their students.
• Participant 2 reflects, “I think certainly most everything that I
do about revision comes from a summer institute. Certainly
even the model of writing workshop . . . comes from what I’ve
experienced participating in multiple summer institutes.”
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28. Teachers as Writers (NWP)
• From creating the norms for the writing groups to planning
how to effectively respond to others’ writing, teachers
continue to incorporate the NWP techniques into their
writing instruction.
• For students, the impact of the NWP is clear. They are
experiencing writing instruction in new ways. Because so
many teachers experience the summer institutes, more
students, according to Participant 2, “go through a number of
teachers who are writing project TC’s.” She also comments,
“As we have TC’s who are trained in the schools . . . there’s a
big change. I’ve noticed a shift in the last decade over how
students think about revision.”
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29. Effects of Technology
• One of the most important purposes for using many digital
sites is for students to have an immediate audience. Teachers
seek out places to publish student writing, and the internet
provides a multitude of these. From track changes to digital
writing groups, student writers can receive feedback on their
documents and then revise for a new draft.
• When asked how often their students write in digital
environments, Participant 1 said, “Every day. Every class
day. . . .the Elmo and the internet and things to do research,”
and Participant 2 also says, “yeah, daily. . .We use email all
the time. We are constantly emailing each other.”
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30. Effects of Technology
• Participant 1 states, “If we create the environment and give
them time . . . ultimately they become more sophisticated
users of technology and more sophisticated writers.” The use
of digital writing environments also has changed the students’
attitudes about revision. They are more motivated to revise
when they know they have an audience.
• Participant 2 says that her students are “much happier to
revise in a digital environment, and they’re much happier to
revise for digital publication.”
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31. Acknowledgements
• Florida State University Office of Creativity
and Research, First Year Assistant Professor
Grant Program
• National Writing Project
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32. Key References
• Applebee, A.N. (1981). Writing in the secondary school: English and the content areas. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
• Atwell, N. (1998). In the middle: New understandings about writing, reading, and learning. Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann.
• Bishop, W. (1999). Places to stand. College Composition and Communication. 51 (p. 14).
• Bridwell, L. (1980). Revising strategies in twelfth grade students’ transactional writing. Research in the Teaching of English,
14(3), 107-122.
• College Board (2003). Report of The National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges. Retrieved
September 15, 2008 from http://www.writingcommision.org
• Emig, J. (1971). The composing process of twelfth graders (Research Report No. 13). Urbana, IL: National Council of
Teachers of English.
• Faigley, L. & Witte, S. (1981). Analyzing revision. College Composition and Communication, 32, 400-414.
• Graham, S. & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high
schools. Alliance for Excellence in Education.
• Greene, J.C., Caracelli, V., & Graham, W. (1989). Toward a conceptual framework for mixed-method evaluation designs.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 11(3), 255-274.
• Keyes, R. (2003) The courage to write. New York: Henry Holt.
• Kirby, D. & Liner, T. (1980). Revision: Yes, they do it. Yes, you can teach it. English Journal. 69(3), 41-45
• Murray, D. (1978). Internal revision: A process of discovery. In C. Cooper and L. Odell (Eds.) Research on Composing: Points
of Departure. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
• National Assessment of Educational Progress (1977). Write/rewrite: An assessment of revision skills: Selected results from
the second national assessment of writing.
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33. Key References
• National Assessment of Educational Progress & Educational Testing Service (1986). The writing report
card: Writing achievement in American schools. Princeton, NJ: National Assessment of Education
Progress.
• National Council of Teachers of English (2008) Policy brief on writing. Retrieved www.ncte.org
• National Council of Teachers of English, Conference on College Composition and Communication position
statement on the preparation and professional development of teachers of writing (1982). Retrieved from
http://www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/123789.htm
• National Writing Project and Nagin, C. (2006). Because writing matters. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
• Sneed, J.H. (1988). The teaching of revision: Case studies of three eighth-grade language arts teachers.
National College of Education, 1988, 186 pages; AAT 8921518
• Sommers, N. (1980). Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers. College
Composition and Communication, 31, 378-388.
• Yancey, K. (2008). 2008 NCTE Presidential address: The impulse to compose and the age of composition.
The National Council of Teachers of English Annual Meeting. Retrieved from www.ncte.org
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