This study was situated at Mountain Middle School (Pseudonym). Students at Mountain Middle School often engage in collaborative compositions embedded within week-long multidisciplinary and multiage units of study called Odysseys. These units of study and the collaborative composition projects are classified as formal cooperative learning. Johnson…

Disarticulating conceptions of writers and good writing from the academy and elevating conceptions of writers as reflecting communities, as intellectuals with important ideas and images to share no matter their academic pedigree is of paramount importance to developing a sense of writerly self-efficacy, or "students' self-perceptions of their…

This study investigated how English language writers in a Chinese university were able to paraphrase following instruction with an online module. Participants were separated into two groups: Group A (Individuals) and Group B (Dyads). They were then trained and assessed in their ability to complete paraphrasing tasks with a pre and posttest.…

Children are experiencing life at a time of rapid technological development. They increasingly utilize new technologies, navigate, and create multimodal forms of communication. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) evolve, reshaping the nature of literacy. Meanwhile, state, federal, and professional organizations are rewriting the…

In recent decades, a plethora of empirical work has indicated that collaborative writing (CW) affords more opportunities for collective scaffolding and language negotiation (Li & Kim, 2016; Li & Zhu, 2013; Storch, 2019) and promotes the development of second language (L2) writing skills (Bikowski &Vithanage, 2016; Storch, 2013; Strobl,…

This dissertation reports on the evaluation of a computer-mediated collaborative animation description task, where synchronous corrective feedback (SCF) serves as the primary source for grammar learning. The evaluation was conducted in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing program at a large research university in the United States. Using…

In order to create a 21st century pedagogy of learning experiences that inspire the engaged, constructive, dynamic, and empowering modes of work we see in online creative communities, we need to focus on the platforms, the environments, the microworlds that host, hold, and constitute the work. A good platform can build connections between users,…

This design-based research study explored how collaborative writing activities can be used in support of ELLs' writing development in the context of a culturally and linguistically diverse first-grade classroom. Using qualitative methods, I examined two focal ELL students' participation across four iterations of collaborative writing activities,…

Computer-mediated collaborative writing has drawn attention from second language researchers and instructors for a few decades, and due to recent developments in Web 2.0 technologies, the possibilities of wikis for collaborative writing have increased enormously. However, few studies have explored the nature of wiki collaboration and interaction,…

The development of expertise in writing is a complex but important achievement for young children as they become literate. Writing is a critical component of literacy development, yet there are few accounts of change over time in early writing development that attend to both changes in writing behaviors, the complexity of written messages, and the…

This doctoral study investigated the use and implementation of interactive writing as an instructional method for primary teachers in Texas Educational Service Center Region 2. The descriptive study involved 152 survey respondents and eight interview participants. The primary instrument was a questionnaire (Interactive Writing Survey) that…

Important to issues of writing instruction are the ways in which teachers, specifically those who teach in the discipline of language arts and English, understand and see themselves as writers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how secondary English teachers positioned themselves and were positioned by others as writers through…

This dissertation uses theoretical explorations and participant conversations to consider the constitutive possibilities of ethnographic writing that works between students, faculty, and communities and uses those possibilities to describe the philosophy and key elements of an ethnographic composition pedagogy. The project begins with an…