This article explores the practice-linked identity resources offered to preservice ELA teachers as they moved through a teacher preparation program. Nasir and Cooks's (2009) concepts of ideational, material, and relational resources are used as a frame to analyze the way preservice teachers talked about teaching writing at three points during…

Learning to teach writing is a complex process influenced by many factors. Formative assessment holds promise as a place for preservice teachers to gain a better understanding of students' unique struggles as writers and of writing as a complex, challenging skill. The authors of this article describe how working with a dialogic method of formative…

We explore the ways in which preservice teachers (PSTs) develop a practice "in" practice (Darling-Hammond, 2010) with diverse learners when placed in classrooms with college writing mentor teachers. Analyzing survey data and instances of stated confidence in PSTs' activity logs, we share results that reveal a significant increase in the…

Responding to students' writing is integral to English teaching. However, preservice secondary English teachers (PSETs) often have few opportunities to practice this skill or to see how experienced teachers respond to diverse writers. I built an online database of students' writing, teacher feedback, and teacher interviews; 32 PSETs in my English…

University teacher education programs are the "foremost settings for learning how to teach" (Smagorinsky et al., 2003). Yet, how to prepare preservice teachers to teach writing has received little attention from literacy researchers. Despite research reviews for reading teacher research, currently one does not exist for writing teacher…

This article examines the outcomes of an eight-month professional development initiative, designed to support six Writing Project teachers' classroom inquiry projects, each focused on improving an aspect of student writing. We begin by introducing the genesis of these classroom research projects as well as the structure and content of the support…

The notion that "teachers of writing must also write" has been pervasive since the 1970s. But "what" should they write? In the National Writing Project (NWP), a professional network focused on the improvement of writing instruction and featuring summer institutes in which teachers engage in writing of their own as well as demonstrations of…

Shares personal experiences as a writing teacher, including advice he received and advice he now gives to beginning teachers. (MG)

Examines critical incidents in the author's own teaching to consider the concept of "teacher" and to explore the complicated subject positions teachers occupy. Examines how the professional literature helped to produce and validate this "splintered" subjectivity. (SR)

This past summer fifteen teachers from the Detroit public schools and the metro Detroit area participated in Wayne State University's first Invitational Summer Institute as part of the Wayne State Writing Project. As the director of a brand new National Writing Project site, the author was apprehensive about what she could expect from herself, the…

Discusses experiences with preservice teachers and models for writing instruction. Describes a tutorial component which shows that preservice teachers can change their teaching practices but at a rate and in a sequence determined by their beliefs about, attitudes toward, and experiences as writers and writing teachers. (MG)

Preservice teachers often enter English language arts teacher preparation courses with untapped fears of writing and teaching writing due to null or bad experiences as K-12 students. In this article, I follow two preservice elementary teachers through a semester long methods course and reveal how they developed positive, clear images of themselves…