The Impact of Recent Research Trends on the Teaching of Writing in the Middle Grades
This was a descriptive study which measured the attitudes and practices of teachers in the middle grades concerning the teaching of writing. Subjects were 42 teachers of writing in grades five through eight in four small rural school systems. The data gathering instrument was a questionnaire devised by the researcher which employed a Likert scale format. One open-ended item was included as well as several background questions. Results indicated that the majority of these teachers do not teach writing as a process with extensive editing and revising with the teacher participating in the process. Rather, the teaching of grammar and correct usage is a regular activity and is believed to increase writing skills, and, while two-thirds of those responding would fail a paper for organizational, development, and sentence errors, one-third would fail a paper for punctuation, agreement, and spelling errors. These teachers think their students rarely write well, and they perceived few of their students as enjoying writing. Although no major differences were found when the perceptions of less experienced teachers were compared with the perceptions of more experienced ones, changes in teaching practices and attitudes were found in those teachers who had received more training in writing instruction compared with teachers who had not received such training.
Rural School Systems, Writing, Teacher Training, Grammar, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research, Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching, Language and Literacy Education
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