Seeing for Ourselves: Case-Study Research by Teachers of Writing

In Seeing for Ourselves, practicing classroom teachers of English and graduate students studying to become teachers demonstrate the value of classroom-based research for themselves and for their profession. Through case studies of individuals from first graders through adults, thirteen teacher-researchers share the insights they have gained about their students, their teaching, and themselves resulting from year-long or short-term research projects. The issues they explore include:

• The uses of writing-process pedagogy in teaching a learning-disabled child.
• The dynamics of the student-teacher relationship in college-level writing conferences.
• The effects of an exposure to poetry on the language and writing of first graders.
• Sixth-grade writers' views of teacher responses to their writing.
• Ways of developing independent editing skills in eleventh graders.
• Dangers of insisting that college freshman choose their own topics.
• Intricacies of the writing process revealed by and adult writer.
• The problems of a would-be novelist.
• The learning styles and strategies of a junior high teacher and their implications for teaching.
• The possibilities of teaching art history through a writing-process approach, as seen through the development of three high school students.