The National Study of Writing Instruction - University at Albany

Pre- and Post- Observation Questions. These questions, which were asked informally of
teachers during classroom observations, focused on the purposes of the lesson, the role of
writing, planned versus actual activities, levels of student engagement, things that in hindsight
might have been done differently, and what will come next for this class.
Survey of Writing and Learning Activities. An online survey was designed using
SurveyMonkey, for teachers at all grade levels and teaching all subjects. The survey asked
teachers to select a specific class that was typical of their teaching responsibilities, and to
answer the questions that followed with respect to that particular class. After some general
background questions about the class, questions asked about the influence of high stakes tests;
types of writing important for the class; importance of discipline-specific vocabulary and types
of writing; instruction focused on discipline-specific vocabulary or types of writing; uses of
technology for writing and for instruction; written work completed in the past 5 days; reasons
for asking students to write; types of longer writing required; specific instructional techniques
related to writing or the teaching of writing; responsibility for teaching writing (English versus
other subjects); sources of knowledge about the teaching of writing in the subject area; general
quality of student writing; amount of writing during a full grading period; description of a
typical writing assignment; teaching experience; and supervisory responsibilities.
Procedures
Site selection and district and school agreements to participate were completed during the
spring preceding the year of data collection. At this time a local site coordinator was also
chosen in each school, to help in scheduling interviews and observations and to coordinate
collection of focal student work. Each site coordinator was paid a modest stipend for their role
in the study. One member of the project team was also chosen as the lead field researcher in
each of the 3 districts.
At the beginning of the year of data collection, the lead field researcher at each school worked
with the English department chair/ team leader to gather nominations for focal students at
each grade level. The field researcher met with potential focal students to explain the study
and judge the level of interest in participation. Each participating student received a $20
bookstore gift certificate at the end of data collection.
Working with their site coordinators, field researchers scheduled observations and interviews
with administrators and with selected teachers at each of the targeted grade levels (6, 8, 10,
12) in each of the core academic subject areas: English, science, social science/ history, and
math. Teachers selected for interviews and observations tended to be ones who felt that
writing was of some importance within their subject area; all were volunteers. Interviews with
students were scheduled at the end of each semester, after the majority of their written work
had been collected to serve as the focus of the interviews.
10