The 2012 EPSB Writing Study Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board Terry Hibpshman

1. The 2012 EPSB Writing Study Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board Terry Hibpshman Kim Walters-Parker

2. SB1 requirement: “Analyze current requirements at the pre-service level for writing instruction and determine how writing instruction for prospective teachers can be enhanced or improved.”

3. Two-Part Task: • Analyze current requirements at the pre-service level for writing instruction. • Easy enough to survey programs. • Determine how writing instruction for prospective teachers can be enhanced or improved. • Far more challenging task. • Recommendations could not be based on the published literature alone, so we conducted an empirical study.

4. Four Writing Study Questions: • What is known about writing instruction? • How is P-12 writing instruction conducted? • What is going on in P-12 classes? • What is the professional context? • How are teachers being trained in Kentucky? • Pre-service • Graduate programs • Professional development • Can we identify specific effective practices? • Had to operationalize “effective”

5. Study Components • A review of research and other published literature on writing instruction • A value-added study to identify effective teachers of writing • A survey of teachers of writing • A survey of teacher preparation programs

6. The Value-Added Study • Used data from KDE and EPSB • Challenged by the lack of same-student writing data in back-to-back years • Successfully sorted teachers by performance level • Identified five performance levels suitable for this study’s purpose

7. Results of the teacher survey (n=461): • Teachers were more likely to be effective if they had participated in National Writing Project activities • About half were satisfied with preservice training • Less than half had at least one pre-service course in writing instruction • Nearly two-thirds had attended at least one highly-valued PD program • Most teachers were satisfied with administrative support for writing • Effective teachers were more likely to be satisfied with school administration

8. Results of the teacher survey, continued • More than two-thirds were confident in their ability to teach writing • The most commonly reported strength of the school writing program was collegiality among staff • The most commonly reported weakness was lack of cooperation by content teachers

9. Results of the teacher survey, continued • Five professional practices were associated with teacher performance levels: • Collaboration with content teachers • Responding intermittently throughout the writing process • Use of peer reviews • Allowing students to read, listen to, and create texts in a variety of genres • Use of graphic organizers

10. Results of the institutional survey • IHEs are generally aware that literacy instruction is an issue • IHEs efforts are generally incorporated into literacy • Four IHEs require at least one course in writing for some candidates: more have literacy course • A few programs emphasize writing across the curriculum • Two IHEs do not appear to address skills for teaching writing

11. Results of the institutional survey • Some IHEs confuse teachers as writers with teachers as teachers of writing • Most do not emphasize a particular theory or approach • Four programs reported strong relationships with the Kentucky Writing Project