All Teachers Should Teach Writing: Disciplinary Literacy
Teachers have three writing approaches to choose from: product-based, process-based and genre-based. Each exists for a specific purpose, and each can be beneficial to learn. The question then is, which approach should be taught in school? Several elementary schools use a product-based approach since it focuses more on the finished product. Elementary students are still developing their critical thinking skills, so teaching them a good foundation of how to structure papers, like where the introduction typically goes in a paper, is extremely practical and beneficial. This reasoning is also why most elementary students merely have a checklist for grading instead of a rubric like a high school student has for grading. Additionally, “teachers implement process writing differently, so it is difficult to judge this approach holistically” in general but especially in an elementary context (Munger, 2016; Graham et. al., 2012, p. 27). Middle school students usually begin to further develop their critical thinking skills and are ready for more of a challenge, which is why many middle schools choose between process-based and genre-based (Rashtchi et. al., 2019, p. 116-117). If a middle school chooses the process-based approach, they are typically focusing on developing original thoughts to articulate and support from a given text or texts. There is a lot of group work involved and sharing of ideas because this approach intends for students to interact with the writing process in a cyclical way rather than a linear way (Yang, 2016, p. 22-23). If the middle school chooses the genre-based approach, students might be required to take an additional elective creative writing class. Between their regular English class and this creative writing class, the students are then guaranteed to learn at least two to three different styles of writing for a given audience and genre.
High school seems to be the age group of greatest challenge and debate for schools across America. And oftentimes, it is the individual teacher rather than the entire school as an entity that adds to the debate. Some high school teachers assume that students should already be capable of developing their own thoughts and understand how to write and rewrite; thus, the teacher uses more of a product-based approach while expecting a higher quality paper. Other high school teachers assume that students should already know the basic structure of a paper and focus more on developing those deeper thoughts, claims, and support from texts. Rarely do high schools use the genre-based approach in a formal teaching capacity. Creative writing classes in high school tend to be more of a stress-reliever class to just free-write; or the class aims to help those students who are seriously considering becoming authors. College creative writing programs, however, tend to focus more on “employability skills” like working well with others to create a joint task, articulating strengths and weaknesses respectfully, reading different texts, giving presentations and other similar skills (University of Lincoln, 2019, p. 6). So the overall issue becomes a matter of scope and sequence. If elementary teachers are predominately using one approach across America, which approaches should the middle and high school teachers be using to achieve the greatest success? Which combination of scaffolding would work the best? Or is teaching writing limited to the English class and an additional, mandatory or elective, writing class?
How should writing be incorporated into the curriculum?
Too many people, including educators, confuse two terms: curriculum and textbook. It is this confusion that almost always places the responsibility of teacher writing on the English teacher. Math, history, and science teachers rarely have a specific section of their textbook that delineates a paper and how the students should write with an accompanying writing exercise workbook. But the term textbook is not synonymous with curriculum, even though many teachers still interpret curriculum as a textbook (Davis et. al., 2019, p. 92). Textbooks are just one part of a teacher’s curriculum. Curriculum is anything and everything a teacher uses to teach students the information or skills. So even if a task, activity or assignment is not explicitly mentioned in a textbook, the teachers still have the liberty to interpret and influence their curricular resources; thus, the “design and use of curricular resources influence users as much as the users themselves influence curricular resources” (Davis et. al., 2019, p. 93). When looking at an entire school, the micro-curriculum could describe what happens in a single class, while the macro-curriculum could describe what happens in all the classes of that school.
Micro-curriculum
When most people think of writing a paper, they immediately think of English class. According to state standards and even common core standards, students in a middle or high school English class should write at least three larger papers in any given year—informative/expository, narrative, and argumentative/persuasive (Common Core, 2020, p. 42-47). If one simply looks at this alone, it seems pretty clear that a teacher should use the product-based approach in order for the students to produce required products. No guidance is given on content, though, or even context. Are they all supposed to be literary analyses? Or is the teacher allowed to use some liberty? Not only that, but the standards also indicate that the students should be writing repeatedly throughout the year (Common Core, 2020, p. 42-47). So even if they are only required to document and prove they fulfilled the three anchor standards with three larger papers, the teacher should have still assigned smaller writing assignments leading up to the larger papers.
It is these little writing assignments in conjunction with the larger papers that truly gives the English teacher the freedom to determine which assignments are literary analyses verses other types. Once the teacher decides to use some of these writing assignments for other purposes besides a literary analysis, the opportunity exists to use a genre-based approach. The opportunity also exists to use the process-based approach since the students should be writing so frequently throughout the year, again according to the standards (Common Core, 2020, p. 42-47). Morenberg suggests focusing on one writing element at a time for each small writing assignment. Simply add the previous focal point to the next assignment and build from there. Then, by the larger paper, the student should be prepared to successfully incorporate each of the writing elements the teacher has expected the student to achieve (Morenberg et. al., 2008, p. 5).
Macro-curriculum
Of all the subjects taught besides English, history tends to be the one that most people will also associate with writing papers. Looking again at the state standards, history students are expected to analyze, synthesize and compare/contrast (NC Department of Public Instruction, 2017). So in many cases, the papers written for history classes are similar to those written for English classes; however, the focus of most history papers is different, which means the entire audience, process, and product should also be different. In a history context, the best sources are primary documents (University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2017). In contrast, an English context is free to use any sources as long as they support the claims being made. History papers typically use the Chicago or Turabian format, while English typically uses the MLA format (University of Pittsburgh, 2020). These are examples of the standardized formats that were created to help guide writers in certain contexts to make the information more easily understood by the majority of readers across the globe and generations. Another distinction between the two subjects is that while English papers allow students to develop their own ideas and claims and simply support them from texts, history papers tend to focus more on the truth of facts based on research. Only after the facts have been established from research can a history paper make any inferences, which would be the author’s ideas and claims supported from the texts.
Science is another subject that people might associate with papers. The paper typically required of students in a science class, however, is almost solely a research paper. Just like a history paper presents the facts based on research and then makes inferences, so should a science paper. The difference with science papers is the specific language authors use. For scientific writing, authors use passive voice and focus on the causes and effects. Scientific writing is the most separated from the author with no intent on building a relationship between the author and reader; it is strictly informational. Scientific writing also uses the APA format because of the way the information is structured (Henry, 2018). Again, these are some of those standards developed to help writers more effectively organize their information and communicate with their intended audience. Science papers could also include article reviews. Even though high school students may write article reviews, are they actually being taught how to write a proper one? The entire process and product are completely different from say, an annotated bibliography in English class.
Math is most likely the last subject people think of when they think of writing papers. Some math standards, though, require students to articulate formulas and the cause and effect relationship between certain functions. Math also includes proofs which require words for justification. In some math classes, dependent upon the teacher or the school’s requirements, students must write a paper that combines these two math qualities: articulation and justification. Still, math is a subject that does not require regular writing, and a larger paper might only be once or twice a year if at all.
Should students be required to take a separate writing class?
Historically, the most common writing class offered to students is a creative writing class. In many cases, this class simply allows students to practice writing more descriptively and thinking more creatively. Teachers of a creating writing class develop prompts that specifically target one of these two goals, and the students write for the majority of class as well as for homework. Only every now and then when the teacher is exceptional will the students actually be guided through a thinking pattern, a process, to help them better develop their stories. For instance, a reader of literature usually looks for the conflict of the story since the conflict is what drives the story; a writer of literature, however, usually starts with the setting of a story since the setting determines what will be feasible or not within the author’s chosen “world” (McKee, 2008).
Creative writing classes do not only focus on training the world’s future fiction writers. Some creative writing classes, depending on the school, take more of a journalistic structure or technical writing structure. With journalism, students learn the inverse triangle for structuring information, which is completely opposite of traditional MLA English papers. A journalistic structure also focuses heavily on knowing the audience, far more than a fictional author would consider. Creative writing classes, therefore, usually use the genre-based approach.
Should the English teacher be solely responsible for teaching writing?
As articulated, there are multiple approaches to teaching writing and styles of writing. These approaches and styles exist for specific purposes. Each field of study favors a certain approach and style since it pairs better with the content. By the high school level, teachers become masters of one specific content area. If they are the masters of that content area, then a different content area teacher should not be responsible for teaching students another approach or style. While a math teacher may take off points for a student misspelling or forgetting to capitalize a proper noun in their proof, the math teacher is not expected to deliver an entire lesson on grammar rules during the proof unit. Similarly, the English teacher should not be responsible for teaching students every type of format and writing style that is used in various contexts.
Teaching writing across the disciplines is not a new concept, yet educators today still discuss the theory and how beneficial it would be to implement in schools. The very suggestion to implement teaching writing across the disciplines implies that enough schools or individual teachers have not yet adopted this methodology. Janet Emig wrote a book in 1977 developing a “rationale for using writing in all courses, no matter what the discipline” (Herrington, 2015, p. 379). Not only does writing in all courses regardless of discipline reinforce that discipline’s content, but frequent writing increases the student’s chances of improving their writing skills. English teachers can help their coworkers adopt this methodology “by designing assignments linked to course objectives and [teaching them that] {by} responding to student writing in ways that stress its value as a process of discovery” naturally helps the students learn the different writing approaches and styles (Herrington, 2015, p. 380).
Writing’s complement for communication is reading. Some researchers choose to assert that teacher should thus begin with teaching literacy across the disciplines. Many “sobering statistics” reveal that teachers are “failing to provide all students with strong literacy instruction that will carry them through high school and beyond” (Rainey et. al., 2012, p. 72-73). Too often the scenario exists in which students learn solid context clues in their middle school ELA class and become masters of reading novels. But they struggle with poetry, struggle with reading the history textbook and struggle with reading the science textbook. In addition to struggling with non-fiction texts, the students demonstrate how challenging it is for them to properly incorporate the appropriate history or science terms necessary to make their disciplinary writing acceptable (Rainey et. al. 2012, p. 71-72).
Possible Solutions
How should writing be incorporated into the curriculum?
Each teacher should evaluate their discipline specific state standards and determine which would provide a feasible opportunity for a larger paper. Then each teacher needs to determine which type of paper it should be. Once the assessment has been determined based on the standards the students ought to be achieving by the end of the school year, the teacher needs to back track and ask: where could I implement smaller writing assignments leading up to this larger assignment? Once those spots in the curriculum are identified, then the teacher needs to further break down the skills required to have obtained in order to achieve success on the larger paper.
If a student in history class needs to know how to research for primary sources for the larger biography paper, then the history teacher needs to incorporate researching for primary sources at least a few times before that paper is assigned. A small, simple assignment before the large paper might be to simply require the students to practice using databases and visiting libraries; send them on miniature scavenger hunts to familiarize themselves with the channel in which they will need to use in order to find the right resources.
If a science teacher wants the students to write a paper showing cause and effect relationships based on the law of reactions, then the students first need to have been taught the law of reactions sometime before the paper is assigned; and second, the students need to have been taught how to articulate cause and effect relationships. A small, simple assignment prefacing the large paper might be requiring the students to write a paragraph for homework for each section in the chapter. Then in class, the teacher can model his or her paragraph at the board for all the students to see how theirs aligns or where theirs falls short.
If a math student needs to learn how to appropriately use the terms learned in class, then the teacher could assign weekly writing assignments asking the students to articulate what they learned specifically in one sentence and then explain it in their own words. This simple exercise helps students use the proper terms and then illustrate to the teacher that they have truly learned what the terms mean. Too often, math teachers especially will keep moving from one lesson to another using terms from the previous lesson that have not had time to fully sink into students’ brains yet. According to schema theory, “presenting discrepant information a little at a time can result in each message being blamed as it is received.” And not only presenting information but interacting with information increases the certainty of information being retained (Axelrod, 1973, p. 1264).
Even English teachers should follow the patterns stated above. Many standards today include poetry and informational text standards to ensure students are receiving instruction in those areas as well. These standards could allow for interdisciplinary opportunities. Since the English teacher’s primary academic responsibility is to teach students literacy related to literary texts, the math and science and history teachers could partner with the English teacher by offer suggestions for informational texts that would pair well with any given novel being taught. Any English teacher knows that students are much more engaged in reading the novel when they can better relate to the author or time period or setting. But English teachers are not always experts on those specifics, or at least not as well as the teachers who are masters of their content.
If elementary schools are predominately following a product-based approach to ensure mastery of grammar, following instructions and a solid structure, then middle and high schools should alternate between process and product-based approaches to writing. If schools would adopt teaching writing across the disciplines, there is not as great a need for the English teacher to consider choosing the genre-based approach. Because middle school is the bridge between elementary (rigid recall and structure) and high school (complex analysis and synthesis), middle school teachers should primarily use the process-based approach to teach and develop those critical thinking skills. The product-based approach should be integrated, though, to ensure their papers meet the criteria of a particular type and audience. By the time the high school teachers have those students, they should primarily use the product-based approach once again, yet in a more complex way. Those students should be capable of producing a specific product (product-based approach) that meets the structural, mechanical, and contextual demands outlined in any standardized rubric.
Should students be required to take a separate writing class?
An additional writing class could certainly be beneficial, but whether or not students should be required to take a separate writing class would depend on the school and the type of students attending that school. At the private school I attended, Freshman Writing was a course implemented in 2010. The focus of the class was to teach students mastery of MLA and APA format, help students practice researching sources and then integrating those sources appropriately in formal writing. That class was created because the principal paid heed to the teacher’s feedback expressing concern for the students’ inability to write more than one type of paper—a literary analysis. By 2013, the class no longer existed because those freshmen were now juniors and the lower grades had had increased writing instruction across the disciplines for the last three years.
In 2018, that same school re-evaluated the students’ overall literacy competency and decided to establish a writing class again. This time, the principal chose to make the class required of all eight grade students, and it was called Research Writing. The focus of the course is to teach students how to research, how to analyze the research materials, how to articulate claims and provide support based on the research materials, as well as how to conduct personal research. Students write article reviews, literature reviews, and even conduct their own qualitative research study (on a minor scale). Even if the concepts were far too complicated for the students at the beginning of the year, the simple exposure and repeated practice increased their general literacy exceptionally.
A creative writing class could also be beneficial, but only if the teacher is willing to treat it like a core class in intensity. Students should be reading different texts, identifying the target audience, looking for distinctions in types of writing, and then implementing those techniques into their own writing for target audiences. A creative writing class should not be a glorified study hall for students to simply express their feelings and describe their favorite video game world. The class could certainly allow for students to write those things but within reasonable limits. For instance, if one unit focuses on poetry, then the teacher should explain how one of poetry’s primary purposes is to express emotions. Then the students would have a perfect opportunity to write about their emotions in a learning environment and with a purpose. Teaching the student these techniques could even help them in their personal writing at home! Several of the world’s most famous works were found in people’s diaries and published posthumously; how do we know that couldn’t happen to a student one day?
Should the English teacher be solely responsible for teaching writing?
Based on all of the compiled information from researchers, personal teacher’s experiences, and my personal observations and experiences as a newer teacher, I do not believe the English teacher should be solely responsible for teaching writing. While English teachers experienced many of the reading and writing techniques used in other disciplines as students in high school or college, that does not mean that English teachers were specifically taught and trained to teach students literacy across the disciplines.
It has been my understanding that most American students approach English as a language class, which is one of the reasons they have a presupposition to oppose the class since their first language is English. An English course, according to the standards, predominately teaches students how to use proper grammar and vocabulary in speaking or writing, read regularly, interpret literary elements in literature, and analyze particular concepts presented in the literature (NC Department of Public Instruction, 2017). Recently, standards for informational texts are included in the English curriculum. But even then, the standards focus primarily on finding the claim, tracing the claim, and analyzing the particular concepts presented—almost verbatim of the literature standard (NC Department of Public Instruction, 2017). English teachers are not expected to teach the students all of the nuances specific to a particular discipline because they are first and foremost not equipped; secondly, they have their own standards to follow and skills to teach their students.
Writing is simply one component in the realm of literacy and the ability to communicate. In order for students to be better writers, they must also be better readers. Each discipline holds its own unique qualities, whether structure or word usage, that students must familiarize themselves with first in reading before they can in turn create the text themselves. Analytical skills are promoted more than ever before, and teachers are tasked with instilling students with the tools they need to become successful analysts and problem-solvers and collaborative workers. Students cannot become those if they have not first acquired the basic communication skills necessary to achieve each of those. Therefore, every teacher should be incorporating disciplinary literacy in their classroom. Moreover, every school should be teaching writing across the disciplines.
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