How They Do It: Examining Teachers’ Understandings And Appropriations Of Instructional Tools And Strategies Learned In Writing Methods Coursework

This formative experiment design study sought to understand the factors that appear to enhance and inhibit teachers’ understandings and appropriations of the instructional tools and strategies learned in a graduate level course for informational writing methods. Using activity theory framework (Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999), this study sought to identify the different levels at which teachers understand and appropriate instructional tools and strategies such as modeling, use of mentor texts, and scaffolding learned in the graduate course. The study explored specific features of the intervention implemented in the graduate course that benefitted or hindered the teachers’ understandings and appropriations of informational writing methods learned in the course. Results indicated that the teachers understood and appropriated modeling, use of mentor texts and scaffolding methods for informational writing instruction at varying levels of sophistication. A retrospective cross-case analysis showed that several key factors enhanced and/or inhibited the teachers’ understandings and appropriations. The major findings of this study validated and extended past research (Grossman, Smagorinksy, & Valencia, 1999; Rogoff, 1990; Schön, 1987; Wertsch, 1985), showing that teacher educators can design educational settings for pre-service and in-service teachers that produce deeper and more sophisticated understandings and appropriations of course content and methods.