The 2012 EPSB Writing Study

Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board

Terry HibpshmanKim Walters-Parker

SB1 requirement:

“Analyze current requirements at the pre-service level for writing instruction and determine how writing instruction for prospective teachers can be enhanced or improved.”

Two-Part Task: • Analyze current requirements at the pre-

service level for writing instruction. • Easy enough to survey programs.

• Determine how writing instruction for prospective teachers can be enhanced or improved.

• Far more challenging task. • Recommendations could not be based

on the published literature alone, so we conducted an empirical study.

Four Writing Study Questions:• What is known about writing instruction?• How is P-12 writing instruction conducted?

• What is going on in P-12 classes?• What is the professional context?

• How are teachers being trained in Kentucky?• Pre-service• Graduate programs• Professional development

• Can we identify specific effective practices?• Had to operationalize “effective”

Study Components

• A review of research and other published literature on writing instruction

• A value-added study to identify effective teachers of writing

• A survey of teachers of writing• A survey of teacher preparation programs

The Value-Added Study

• Used data from KDE and EPSB• Challenged by the lack of same-student

writing data in back-to-back years• Successfully sorted teachers by performance

level• Identified five performance levels suitable for

this study’s purpose

Results of the teacher survey (n=461): • Teachers were more likely to be effective if they had

participated in National Writing Project activities• About half were satisfied with preservice training• Less than half had at least one pre-service course in

writing instruction• Nearly two-thirds had attended at least one highly-

valued PD program• Most teachers were satisfied with administrative support

for writing• Effective teachers were more likely to be satisfied with

school administration

Results of the teacher survey, continued

• More than two-thirds were confident in their ability to teach writing

• The most commonly reported strength of the school writing program was collegiality among staff

• The most commonly reported weakness was lack of cooperation by content teachers

Results of the teacher survey, continued

• Five professional practices were associated with teacher performance levels:

• Collaboration with content teachers• Responding intermittently throughout the

writing process• Use of peer reviews• Allowing students to read, listen to, and

create texts in a variety of genres• Use of graphic organizers

Results of the institutional survey• IHEs are generally aware that literacy instruction is

an issue• IHEs efforts are generally incorporated into literacy • Four IHEs require at least one course in writing for

some candidates: more have literacy course• A few programs emphasize writing across the

curriculum• Two IHEs do not appear to address skills for

teaching writing

Results of the institutional survey

• Some IHEs confuse teachers as writers with teachers as teachers of writing

• Most do not emphasize a particular theory or approach

• Four programs reported strong relationships with the Kentucky Writing Project