Project details: Creative Writing Partnerships: Developing potential for a variety of creative writing opportunities with trainee teachers, school mentors and secondary school pupils
Research Team
1. Kate Domaille
2. John Edwards
Funding Body
Duration
October 2004 - October 2006
Grant
£12,000
Description
Wide ranging reforms in the teaching of writing in schools have resulted in sometimes attention-winning headlines of improved standards and raised levels of literacy. At a local level no such success was being aired. Contrarily teachers involved in various initiatives to improve writing skills had become stalled in fixed approaches, writing frames and writing to target attainment levels, all at the expense of pupil engagement. This project was formed in response to issues raised within local schools in Portsmouth and Southampton about how to promote and encourage sustained writing through improved teacher knowledge and a wide range of new collaborations with writing groups, practising writers and new audiences for pupil writing.
In the initial application we argued that we believed the work proposed would provide evidence of the need to foster stronger partnerships between schools and initial teacher training providers and enhance the opportunities for collaborative work in schools and LEAs with low attainment. The project had a range of different activities beginning with a focus on teacher knowledge and developed into a range of writing support activities in local schools. The data collected comprised: observations of workshops with teachers; teacher interviews; observations of pupil workshops; evaluation of project impact on writing in local schools and the development of further initiatives in writing.
