Six teacher-researchers (three elementary school teachers, one teacher of hearing-impaired, one Chapter One teacher, and one university researcher) investigated how their membership in a community of writers affected their perceptions of themselves as writers. Three themes emerged in transcriptions of biweekly meetings held over one school year:…

A study examined and described a program for implementing a writer's workshop to increase the literacy skills of reading and writing. The targeted population consisted of early childhood special education, kindergarten, and first-grade students in a growing, middle class community located in northern Illinois. The problems of poor reading…

A study investigated the effect of word processing on the quality of children's writing. Subjects were 32 fifth-graders in a public school in the suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey. One sample had access to computers in their classroom everyday for writing. The other sample group used computers once a week in the lab; their daily writing…

Many educators are concerned with how writing should be taught, especially in the elementary grades. Many teachers are under the impression that when they have their students write simple sentences using vocabulary words and punctuation marks, they are teaching their students that this is writing. In traditionally taught classes, the elementary…

A study investigated the writing done by third graders and the processes used when learning to use writing as a meaning-making activity. Four focal students were followed through composing episodes. The classroom was located in a suburban, upper middle class area in Ohio. Less than 3% of the school district population were members of a minority…

This report describes the development of a learning community in a fifth-grade writers' workshop across one school year and two girls' participation in the learning community. The report examines ways in which teacher-researchers' and students' notions and actions regarding collaboration changed; it also describes the curriculum in the writers'…

A study examines teacher's and children's interactions with the use of the writing journal in a pre-k classroom (ages 3 to 4). Eight pre-school children and three teachers in a university lab school were observed twice a week for 1-hour sessions over a 6-month period. The use of the writing journal was a part of the total learning environment…

A study examined the masculinity/femininity attitude of students toward reading and writing. Subjects, 91 young adults and adults in high school, adult high school, and community college remedial classes in the fall and spring of the 1994-1995 school year, completed the Mazurkiewicz Masculine Feminine Attitude Survey. Results indicated no…

A study determined how exposure to learning writing as process through writing workshops would affect the attitudes of fifth grade students. Subjects had no experience with writing as process. At the outset of the school year, the participants, 23 fifth-grade students in a northeastern New Jersey school, were administered the "Emig-King…

A study investigated whether computers would enable students to develop individual working writing environments. The programs that the fourth-grade students used were Hypercard, Clip Art, and MacWrite. Students worked with each of the programs and talked about what they were thinking while using the computer. A constant flow of teachers, staff,…

Acting as a team, a graduate research methods class at Florida State University studied a first-year imaginative writing course, "Writing from Life," designed to help students write autobiography, fiction, and poetry. In the course of this study, intriguing differences became apparent between the attitudes and approaches in this class…

The development of written language is intertwined with children's experiences with diverse symbolic media. During their second year of life, children begin to use symbolic tools to invest meaning in drawn marks. The evolution of drawing is linked in complex ways to dramatic gesture and speech, sometimes combined in social play. Exploratory play…

Colleges are still designed for 18 to 22 year old students, even though that category includes only about 20% of the total population seeking degrees. Because of this fact, the term "andragogy," or how to teach adults, should become a more recognizable concept in education. A study was conducted in which 25 first-year adult women at…

A study investigated whether students who are given experience in writing would improve the quality of their writing over the course of an academic year, and whether the amount of improvement would be associated with the amount of instructional writing experience across the curriculum. A 50-minute essay exam designed to assess writing skills was…

A practicum implemented a program of writing instruction using computers, and measured its effectiveness in helping eleventh-grade remedial students meet the district's ninth-grade writing proficiency requirements, and in improving students' attitudes toward writing. Subjects were 13 eleventh-grade students in a C-track (remedial) English class. A…