The purpose of the study was to describe teachers' perceptions and experiences in implementing whole language activities in their kindergarten and elementary classrooms. Ten teachers who were part of a pilot whole language program participated in the study. Throughout the 1989-1990 school term, data were collected through teacher questionnaires…

Changes in the teacher's authority structure as well as changes in the content of student talk during peer response sessions occur over the course of a school year in a first-grade classroom. In the beginning of the year, the teacher, a beginner in the Teachers College Writing Project, dominated the talk during share sessions, while the students'…

This report evaluates the Writing to Read (WTR) program instituted in 1988 in 13 West Virginia elementary schools as the result of a partnership between the IBM Corporation and the federal Appalachian Regional Commission. The WTR labs, also installed in 42 Kentucky and Virginia schools, use a computer-based instructional system to develop the…

Recent research has suggested that teachers' beliefs about subject matter influence what they choose to teach and how they choose to teach it. The findings suggest that educational reforms need to take teacher' beliefs into account. This study examines teachers' beliefs about two school subjects, mathematics and writing, and their beliefs about…

For a community college business communication teacher, a whole new world has opened in her field and in her city, a city which has changed from a major industrial economy to a service economy. The changing environments require adjustments for class size and location (to retrain laid-off mature workers), in types of examples and vocabulary…

This report presents first year (1984-85) findings of The Writing Project, a 2-year school-based study of the use of word processing to improve learning-disabled children's writing skills. Emphasis is on how remedial teachers can integrate computers into their writing activities in resource rooms and classrooms. Based in three Massachusetts school…

A 7 month study evaluated a parent education program designed to inform parents of second- and fourth-graders about the writing process and the teaching of writing. A secondary goal was to evaluate the effect of teaching writing as a process upon the children's attitudes toward writing. The participants (37 parents, 15 second-graders, and 17…

A study was conducted to determine the extent of implementation of the Bay Area Writing Program (BAWP) and how the extent varied for different components of the program or for the elementary versus secondary level. The role of staff development in helping teachers use the program--which emphasizes prewriting, writing, and rewriting phases--was…

A study investigated the effects of direct instruction in the process of revision on students' knowledge of the revision process, their ability to make revisions on paper, and the quality of their writing. Subjects, 30 sixth grade students, were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received instruction in the…

The investigation of peer response groups in a basic college writing class was one method of charting the development of students' writing skills over the span of a semester to see if collaborative learning was beneficial to the writing process. Response groups were tape-recorded and observed, and members were interviewed. By the fourth week of…

The instructional practice of imitation works most effectively as a developmental and remedial instrument within a writing-centered, student-centered pedagogy. In this context, imitation can accelerate natural language acquisition and encourage language competence and control, thus enabling student writers to focus their attention on particular…

When writing is taught through conferences between a student and teacher, the authority of the teacher profoundly influences what students think and say about writing. Also, as students learn to deal with their teacher's authority, they develop strategies for talking about writing tasks in voices that are authentically their own. An examination of…

Many of the concepts that English teachers traditionally deal with are too "fussy" and inappropriate for the kinds of children who currently fill American schools. These minority students and latchkey kids find the archaic vocabulary and concern over grammatical niceties baffling--to them teachers are like "Doily People," people who are so nice…

The film "Pieces of a Puzzle" (part of the series "Writers Writing" that was coproduced by WNET and Learning Designs and televised by WNET in 1985), helped students become better writers and facilitated the discovery of material and techniques appropriate to academic writing. First, students were introduced to reader response…

A study investigating collaborative computer use for writing at the primary level was conducted at a Catholic school in Toronto through videotaping and observation in a first grade classroom over a period of 3 weeks. It was found that the differentiation of tasks by the computer into two types of acts--inputting signs and arranging text--was…