Text and context: A new approach to the study of classroom writing

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Abstract
This paper argues for and illustrates an approach to the study of writing that integrates ethnographic analysis of classroom interaction with linguistic analysis of written texts and teacher/student conversational exchanges. Such an approach sheds light both on the writing that gets done in a classroom and on the broader institutional constraints that influence teachers’ and students’ expectations and behavior. The approach is illustrated through a case study of writing in a single sixth grade classroom during a single writing assignment. The analysis characterizes the teacher's expectations (or “schema”) for how the assigned composition should be structured and then analyzes students’ first drafts as either “matches” or “mismatches” with that schema. Teacher/student conferences are seen as a “strategic research site” for studying the teaching and learning of writing in that they bring together teacher, students, and written texts. Conferences can be studied in light of the kind and number of “corrections” generated, as well as the interactive processes that occur as student drafts are shaped to meet the teacher's expectations. Such an analysis provides evidence of the way that teachers’ goals, expectations, and inter petive judgments are communicated to students, and how they constrain the meanings, evaluations, and outcomes of teacher/student interactions and student texts.

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