Teaching an Embodied Thinking Process for Narrative Writing ‘With Grammar in Mind’: An Analysis of Writing Conferences and Teacher Talk

ABSTRACT

The writing process method is applied by teachers intending to engage students in the types of processes writers go through recursively when creating a text, including planning, drafting, revising, and editing. However, little is known about how teachers might support the imaginative thinking process that leads students to craft effective and visually detailed narrative scenes. In this paper, I explore how teachers have enacted one-to-one writing conferences to guide students through an embodied thinking process that leads to the selection of particular grammatical features for narrative effect. In this study, four Grade 5 teachers trial this method of thinking using six distinct embodied concepts through 75 writing conferences with 12 students. Through a thematic analysis of conference talk data, the study reveals how teachers support embodied thinking in a series of stages. These include building a shared narrative world, explaining the link between embodiment and grammar, and inviting students to think differently using the embodied concept. Findings show that teachers scaffolded students’ embodied thinking processes, but deviations in such teaching occurred.

KEYWORDS:

• Writing conferences
• narrative
• grammar
• writing process
• teacher talk

Introduction

Writing involves a series of processes. Motivation, planning, drafting, revision, and editing comprise a recursively multi-layered process in which the writer learns to make choices about which process to engage in at a given time (Graham & Sandmel, 2011). Advocates of the process approach to teaching writing claim that students learn best when they are taught these processes, and benefit from the cognitive effort of text production (Rijlaarsdam & Van den Bergh, 2006). Process writing advocates recognize that the idiosyncrasies of writers’ processes require teachers to provide individual student attention (Calkins, 1986; Graves, 1983; Murray, 1985). Such attention often manifests in teacher-student interaction, whereby the teacher tailors their instruction according to the stage of writing their students are working on (Anderson, 2000). The most individualized form of interaction is the writing conference, a one-on-one meeting between teacher and student with the intention of teaching the student a new strategy. Conferencing has been researched according to a range of pedagogical purposes, with evidence suggesting that it has positive impacts on writing quality (Corden, 2007) and self-efficacy (Bayraktar, 2013).

Within the process-oriented paradigm, conferencing typically focuses on the content of the writing rather than words and grammar (Ricks et al., 2017). Grammar tends to be taught in the editing stage as a form of secretarial error correction. However, research suggests that when grammar is taught as a revision process through rich discussion whereby ideas are reshaped through language choice, students become more adept at understanding the link between grammar and narrative effect (Myhill, Jones, et al., 2012). Wyse (2006) suggests that individualized teacher-student talk that facilitates deliberations of word and syntactical choice is the ideal means by which students learn about the sensory effects of grammatical choices on writing.

However, studies do not address the processes of thinking that lead writers toward such choices or the role of conferences in facilitating thinking. One process that might support grammatical choices in the narrative genre is “embodied thinking,” or the tendency of writers to mentally simulate the narrative world they are writing about (Fleckenstein, 2003). In this sense, proficient writers situate their bodies imaginatively in their narrative worlds to sense and visualize details of their scenes and write “from the inside” of their stories. In contrast, thinking about grammar might be regarded as thinking externally to the narrative world. It is possible to teach writers specific ways to embody narratives that parallel how readers engage with narratives when prompted by specific grammatical features (Stockwell, 2020). Figure 1 illustrates this. A writer might be taught to embody a fixed vantage point to perceive depth. Using this strategy, they imagine a figure standing in the distance of their mental field of view. To craft the mental image textually, they might choose adverbs like “there” and prepositional phrases like “in the distance,” which prompt the reader to form a similar mental image. Thus, embodied thinking strengthens the association between writers’ mental images and their felt sense of grammar, fostering intuitive choice-making (Rule, 2017).

Figure 1. An illustration of writer and reader embodiment of narrative texts.

In this paper, data is presented from a qualitative study of four teachers applying a novel approach to conferences in their classrooms, informed by theories of embodiment and embodied thinking with cognitive stylistics, as a process for teaching grammar-for-writing. The study aimed to examine how teachers engage students in embodied thinking associated with linguistic choices during writing conferences after attending a teachers’ workshop. Teacher-student dialogue is analyzed to articulate teachers’ roles in facilitating the process of thinking “from the inside” of the narrative scene to select appropriate grammar. In this paper, it is argued that teachers need to be both sensitive to the “narrative world” students are creating before deciding what to teach and have a strong understanding of the grammatical concepts and their associated embodied thinking processes.

Literature review: writing conferences

The writing conference was developed as the process approach grew in popularity in the United States through early advocates such as Calkins (1986) and Graves (1983). Conference pedagogy was built on foundational conceptualizations by Murray (1979), who argued that conferences afford valuable meeting time for writers to talk about their plans, drafts, challenges, and goals, with the intention of improving upon the work in progress. These early theorists define the teacher’s role as a careful listener of the writer’s ideas to support their agency. Studies on writing conferences have been mostly qualitative (e.g., Bayraktar, 2013; Ricks et al., 2017; Shvidko, 2018), with influential research such as Kaufman’s (2000) examining the practices of one experienced teacher and concluding that, over time, students begin to talk openly about their writing and solve their own problems. As the writing workshop method was adopted in schools through commercialized programs such as the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP), writing conferences took structure in the form of Research-Decide-Teach, where teachers initially find out what the student is trying to achieve (research), decide what to teach, and then teach it (Anderson, 2018; Calkins et al., 2005).

Conferences typically support oral feedback, functioning as formative assessments (Graham & Sandmel, 2011; Hawkins, 2016), allowing teachers to identify what the student is doing well and with which aspects of writing they need support (Graham, 2018). Positive teacher-student rapport encourages students to receive suggestions more openly (Shvidko, 2018) and supports student agency over their decisions when facing challenges (Helsel et al., 2021). Student contributions and openness to talk are key factors in the quality of conference feedback, which is facilitated by teachers’ ability to model such openness and may encourage students to be more candid in revealing their challenges and goals as writers (Qureshi, 2013).

The implementation of writing conferences shows significant variability in terms of instructional focus and purpose. Cutler and Graham’s (2008) national survey of writing instruction found that most teachers conduct weekly conferences with students. These conferences mostly focused on effort and spelling (once or twice per week), while conferences supporting the whole text and process strategies such as motivation, challenges, and purposes occurred once per month. In their study of conference purpose, Hawkins (2019) found that there were four ways conferences were enacted: (1) as verbal rehearsal of the content; (2) as collaboration on specific writing criteria (e.g., language use); (3) as an opportunity for students to transcribe text; and (4) as an opportunity to fix mechanical errors. Enactments 1 and 2 most closely reflect the aims of writing conferences and comprise the majority of their findings (Hawkins, 2019).

Several practices support conference effectiveness. Kissel et al. (2013) found that effective conferences allow students to set the agenda with the teaching following the student’s lead, suggesting that teachers should guide students while allowing them the agency to make decisions and enact the conference as a conversation between writers of equal stature. Moreover, Glasswell et al. (2003) highlight the importance of ensuring conferences are uninterrupted and focused on a particular goal, setting high standards while varying the degree of support, and fostering the development of self-regulation strategies. Graham and Sandmel (2011) suggest that teaching points should focus on the content of the writing, such as the ideas, images, meaning, or arguments the writer intends to create. In a study by Ricks et al. (2017), these “writing content conferences” were found to be successful when they were academically demanding and applicable to students’ lives. Teaching students to make precise word choices is often done by modeling how authors think about textual possibilities (Healey, 2024; Johnston, 2004). Teaching linguistic features and style explicitly is feasible in conferences when situated within the context of improving the presentation of the content (Healey & Gardner, 2023; Myhill & Newman, 2016; Wilcox, 1997).

Conferences can also be ineffective. In contrast to the idealized “conversation between writers,” studies have reported how conferences are largely controlled by teachers’ directives (Glasswell et al., 2003; McKeaney, 2009), with little room for students to contribute to the discussion (Schuldt, 2019). Studying the characteristics of ineffective conference practices, Glasswell et al. (2003) found that teachers spent longer than needed conferring with a student, let themselves be interrupted often, focused on surface level features of writing (e.g., spelling), and promoted student dependence on them rather than supporting agency. Such findings bring into question the degree to which teachers understand their facilitative role in a conference.

A common theme in writing conference literature is the nature of teacher discourse and how it facilitates student participation and decision-making. Teachers who initiate discourse by listening authentically to the student find that students tend to respond positively (Karsbaek, 2011), are open to receiving further feedback (Bayraktar, 2013), and participate alongside teachers in the types of deliberations characteristic of writers’ thinking (Kissel, 2017). Studies suggest that when teachers ask open-ended questions of student writing, they are better able to decide on and explain teaching points (Roser et al., 2014) and set the tone for trust and dialogue (Helsel et al., 2021). Effective teachers gain a “window into students’ writing processes and insights on their decision-making capabilities” (Kissel et al., 2013, p. 9), while facilitating equal participation in learning (Glasswell & Parr, 2009; Taylor, 2021; Yang, 2022).

Student writing and thinking processes have been impacted in several ways as a result of teachers facilitating dialogue and feedback. Compared to written feedback, conferencing significantly improves Arabic EFL writers’ accuracy of connectives, referential markers, and text cohesion (Alfalagg, 2020). Similarly, conferencing improves the degree to which students make revisions (Urmi, 2010) and improves the quality and frequency of grammatical choice for narrative effect (Healey, 2024; Healey & Gardner, 2022). Conferencing also has positive effects on students’ strategic thinking processes (Johnston, 2004), supporting their ability to discuss their thinking (Bayraktar, 2013). It might be interpreted, then, that the quality of student writing reflects the quality of thinking scaffolded via discussion during conferences.

Current research in the sphere of facilitative teacher-student talk examines how students learn to manipulate grammar to create certain effects in writing. The grammar-for-writing pedagogy sees dialogue as creating a socio-cultural context for exploring the interaction of language and meaning (S. Jones, 2023), where teachers open up and steer lines of inquiry via careful questioning (Myhill & Newman, 2016) and think together with students (Mercer et al., 2019). Until recently, dialogic teaching for writing has focused mostly on the content of writing. Over the past decade, though, extensive research in the United Kingdom by Myhill and colleagues at Exeter University has shown positive results in students’ grammatical choices for effect in classrooms, facilitating rich dialogue around grammar in composition (Chen & Myhill, 2016, Myhill et al., 2016; Myhill & Newman, 2016; Watson et al., 2021).

It is apparent that writing conferences are broad in their scope, requiring teachers to act as an audience to the writer’s process, ready to provide relevant feedback focused on the content of the writing. What is missing from the literature is a study of how teachers might identify opportunities to teach the process of reimagining content with grammar in mind. The study that follows analyzes how embodied thinking is especially suited to supporting this process.

Conceptual framework

Grammar-for-writing: teaching metalinguistic thinking

In this article I adopt Halliday’s (2002) functional view of grammar, a linguistic approach that examines language as a resource for making meaning (Myhill et al., 2020). While traditional pedagogical grammar focuses on teaching students to identify noun phrases or the positioning of adverbials, functional approaches focus on transforming this knowledge into “meaningful understandings about texts and the choices [students] have as writers in shaping their own writing” (Myhill et al., 2013, p. 89). For example, students might learn how placing adverbials at the beginning of a sentence foregrounds the setting in which an event takes place (e.g., Beyond the valley, a roar rang out.) and decide how they might use this in their own texts to achieve similar intentions. These conscious decisions are the result of “metalinguistic thinking,” or the ability to consciously reflect on language and manipulate it to achieve desired effects (Myhill, 2005; Myhill, Lines, et al., 2012). Therefore, it can be said that proficient writers express meaning “with grammar in mind,” or, as Halliday suggests, “using grammar to think with” (Halliday, 2002, p. 416).

It is more common that writers reflect on grammar implicitly than explicit, especially young writers whose understanding of grammatical effect extends further than their ability to explain it (S. Jones, 2023; van Lier, 1998). Explicit grammatical knowledge is often encapsulated by one’s ability to use grammatical metalanguage, or the naming of parts of speech (i.e., noun, verb, preposition, etc.). However, Watson et al. (2021) argue that the explicitness of grammatical knowledge does not depend on one’s knowledge of the metalanguage but on their knowledge of how grammar is used. For example, a writer might know to move an adverbial to the front of a sentence for foregrounding purposes without knowing that it is called an adverbial. It is this explicit knowledge of grammar-in-use that frames the pedagogical approach of this article. For instance, Chen and Myhill (2016) argue that all writers have some degree of explicit knowledge of grammar-in-use, as “it is impossible to write without engaging in metalinguistic activity at some level” (p. 101). A teacher might decide whether an implicit or explicit approach is most appropriate depending on the student.

Studies have developed pedagogical principles for fostering metalinguistic dialogue, known by the acronym LEAD (Myhill & Newman, 2016). Teachers introduce grammatical concepts by making a link (L) between the grammar and its functions in making meaning and then teaching them through examples (E) from authentic (A) literature rather than lengthy explanations. This takes place within the context of high-quality discussion (D) between teacher and student, exploring the effects of different grammatical constructions and how they might use them in writing (Myhill etal., 2020). While research applying these principles has led to improved student writing, it is unclear how students enact the processes of thinking with grammar in mind or how this might be taught.

What is clear, though, is the importance of teacher knowledge in the discussion of grammar and effect (P. Jones & Chen, 2012). Teacher knowledge can be conceptualized as falling under two domains: linguistic subject knowledge (knowing how grammar shapes meaning) and pedagogical subject knowledge (knowing how to teach grammar) (Shulman, 1987). Studies show that teachers with strong linguistic subject knowledge are better able to engage students in dialogue about linguistic choices and model metalinguistic thinking, while teachers with weaker linguistic knowledge tend toward more monologic directives for deploying grammar (S. Jones, 2023; P. Jones & Chen, 2012). Stronger pedagogical subject knowledge supports teachers’ abilities to explain grammar in appropriate terms during discourse and their ability to link it with writing (Myhill et al., 2013). Studies on teacher knowledge tend to focus on how teachers support students’ thinking around text and meaning. They do not address knowledge of the writing process and how it might be pedagogically useful in teaching writing craft with grammar in mind.

Embodiment: teaching the narrative writing process with grammar in mind

The term embodiment refers to the idea that thought is inseparable from the body (Gallagher, 2005). In linguistic terms, our bodies afford thought, from the way we understand abstract concepts metaphorically (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) to our capacity to imaginatively project ourselves into narrative texts (Galbraith, 1995). According to the cognitive linguistic theory of text-worlds, readers mentally simulate narratives unfolding in imagined worlds (Herman, 2009; Werth, 1999). The text elicits this simulation via the author’s language choices (Bergen, 2012).

Cognitive stylistics is a method for analyzing these language choices, making explicit links between grammar and their embodied effects on readers’ simulation of the text-world (Stockwell, 2020), and informs this article’s pedagogical approach to writing embodiment. Glenberg (2011) states that “language is understood by driving the brain into states that are analogous to the perceptual, action, and emotional states that arise during perception of and acting in the real situation” (p. 6). Readers assimilate “world-building” linguistic features – such as nouns, verbs, repetition, and syntactic choice – with their prior experiences to construct a mental representation of the narrative (Gavins, 2007). This is possible due to readers’ prior image schemas associated with grammar (Semino & Culpeper, 2002). To illustrate, texts imaginatively position readers in the text-world, control their field of vision and focus, and construct scenic details in relation to their body’s position. A cognitive stylistic analysis might explain the embodied effects of reading the clause “out from the shadow came a pair of feet.” The noun phrase “the shadow” is profiled in our vision in front of our body. The verb “came” elicits motion toward our body, while the prepositional phrase “out from” signals the initial point in the feet’s path of motion, which we imaginatively draw toward us. The noun phrase “a pair of feet” limits our field of vision to the person’s lower body. Other grammatical constructions work in similar ways. Prepositional phrases (e.g., below the table; around the corner) function due to our bodies’ experiences in three-dimensional space. A verbless sentence (e.g., The broken window.) stands out against the conventional flow of a narrative in the same way a red object stands out against a white background in our visual field.

Process approach programs often include narrative writing strategies that feature embodiment generally. For example, in the TCRWP narrative writing units, students are taught embodied approaches such as “write from inside the story” or “make a movie in your mind.” As yet, no research has attempted to interrogate this form of instruction. Cognitive stylistics offers specific concepts that might inform the teaching of embodied thinking processes as a means for teaching linguistic choice. It is assumed that, like readers, writers engage in the building of imagined worlds, reorganizing possible mental representations to support the selection of appropriate text.

In the past 20 years, embodied concepts of cognitive stylistics have taken a pedagogical turn, becoming a framework for students to engage with the textual effects of language (Clark & Zyngier, 2003; Hall, 2014). Rather than teaching grammar as an isolated exercise, this framework provides students with a set of intuitive embodied concepts to identify the effects of authors’ linguistic choices (Cushing, 2022; Giovanelli, 2014). Our earlier research applied a selection of embodied concepts to equip Grade 5 students with imaginative tools for thinking about narratives, associated with grammatical resources (Healey & Gardner, 2021, 2023). In a series of writing conferences, students were taught six ways to think about their narrative scenes through examples in published literature, or “mentor texts,” highlighting the grammatical resources authors use to craft them. These concepts, adapted from Giovanelli and Harrison’s (2018) cognitive stylistics literary analysis guide, include narrative effects for:

• Creating perspective (vantage point)

• Zooming in and framing scenes (scope)

• Tracking things in motion (attentional windowing)

• Scanning the length of objects (fictive motion)

• Making parts stand out (figure & ground)

• Creating energy (action chains)

See Table 1 for a description of each.

Table 1. Embodied concepts taught.

Embodied concept	Definition & Grammar	Abbreviated example of teaching
Vantage Point	The position in space from which the writer imagines their body viewing a scene, influencing choices of prepositional phrases (e.g. “beyond the hills”), adverbs (e.g. here; there) and verbs (e.g. came; went).	Imagine standing next to the character watching the scene unfold. Describe what is happening from your perspective using verb and prepositional phrases.
Scope	The closeness of the viewing angle to an object, limiting the degree of what a writer chooses to see in their imagination, influencing choice of noun phrases (e.g. “their hand” rather than “they”).	Zoom in close to just one part of the character’s body, so that you can’t see more than this part. Use a specific noun to perform the action.
Attentional Windowing	The writer’s ability to imagine tracking an object or character’s path of motion across space, influencing choices of verb and prepositional phrases (e.g. She dashed away, past the gate, and into the house).	Imagine watching the character move, from the start, through the middle, and to end. Describe their motion at each point using verbs or prepositions.
Fictive Motion	The writer’s ability to imaginatively scan the length of a stationary object to describe its size, influencing choices of action verb phrases (e.g. The tree rose from the ground; The tables stretched along the wall).	Look at that object in your mind, and scan from one end of it to the other. Describe that scanning using action verbs.
Figure & Ground	The writer’s ability to notice parts of a narrative scene that stand out to give them textual salience, influencing choices of deviating grammatical patterns (e.g. incomplete sentences; adjectives placed after nouns) and parallel grammar (e.g. repeated phrases).	Focus on the part of the scene that stands out most. Bring it into focus by using a repeated grammatical pattern.
Action Chains	The physical impact an object in the narrative scene has upon other object(s) altering them in some way, influencing choices of syntactic structure such as active clauses containing subjects and objects (e.g. He swung the bat, smashing the window).	When you feel that there is energy between things, imagine that energy passing from one thing to the other. Designate these as subjects and objects, and use active verbs to show that chain of energy between them.

Students equipped with this framework were found to have significantly increased the quantity and quality of their embodied linguistic choices (Healey & Gardner, 2022). While this study was the first of its kind to apply an embodiment-linguistic approach to teaching writing, theoretical groundwork for it exists. The act of writing, especially in the narrative genre, cannot be viewed as a set of discrete skills (e.g., crafting text and ideation). Rather, a writer’s textual choices are realized as a result of their embodied understanding of the world (Dolmage, 2012). It follows that attempts to teach linguistic features in isolation could lead to a disassociation between the writer’s somewhat forced application of language and their desire to make meaning (Rule, 2017). Alternatively, Bergen (2012) argues that the narrative writer might have an embodied vision of what they intend to create in the reader’s imagination using grammatical resources as a “director” of the imagination, influencing perspective and focus, or playing with the structure of a sentence and observing how it imaginatively alters their scene. Scott (2018) draws upon cognitive stylistics to conceptualize this view of writing as balancing critical and creative thinking to identify schemas evoking their imagination and analyzing their linguistic choices.

The process of embodied thinking in writing conferences

Writing conferences potentially support an embodied approach to teaching narrative grammar. A student enters a writing conference with a “storyworld” in mind (Herman, 2009), consisting of all mental conceptualizations of the narrative text, written or yet-to-be-written, including setting, characters, events, and emotions. The teacher begins discussion in the initial research phase of the conference, attempting to elicit world-building information from the student. The teacher fictionally relocates themselves to the world the student is describing (Herman, 2009). Through further questioning, the teacher begins to develop a shared understanding of this world. A further aspect of world building includes possible perspectives, focal points, and salience that define how the world might be presented textually (Stockwell, 2020). For example, the teacher might identify the importance of a character who is moving across the setting. To better understand this, the teacher might ask the student to describe the full path of the character’s motion – that is, where a character began and ended their movement, as well as any points in between. This sensitizes the student to the types of imaginative world-building readers do. The teacher uses information gleaned from the research phase of the conference to decide what might be useful to teach. In this example, they might decide to teach the student how to mentally construct multiple points along a character’s path of motion and select textual examples to highlight the grammar that constructs such effects. This decision requires an understanding of both the student’s writing intention and which embodied concept might help them achieve it (Healey & Gardner, 2023).

In the teaching phase of the conference, the teacher introduces the student to an appropriate embodied concept, its grammar, and the process of writing. In our previous research (Healey & Gardner, 2023), we found that students benefit from seeing modeled examples of the target grammar in literature (mentor texts) early in the teaching phase and examining how it creates narrative effects (Cushing, 2022; Myhill & Newman, 2016). The teacher supports the student in making explicit links between the grammar and its embodied effect. For example, they might highlight the verbs and prepositions that signal mental tracking of a character’s path of motion across a setting. Then, the teacher explicitly models how writers think about their unfolding narrative scene according to this embodied concept. For example, they might teach how writers imagine tracking a moving character from their starting point to the end, taking note of the objects they pass by, and deciding which verb and prepositional phrases might best suit this imaginative tracking. Finally, the student is asked to verbalize this process for their own narrative, with the teacher supporting their application of the embodiment-grammar-writing process link. The following section presents a study exploring the question of how teachers apply these ideas in practice.

Methods

The data reported are drawn from all conferences with participating teachers and students, 75 in total, over the course of a nine-week personal narrative writing unit with Grade 5 (10–11-year-old) students, representing part of a study exploring the efficacy of embodied concepts on student writing and the role of the teacher. The research question relevant to this paper is: What features of teachers’ writing conference dialogue support students’ embodied thinking of narratives and their linguistic choices?

Context

The study took place in a Chinese/English bilingual school in Hong Kong, which uses the writing workshop method of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) as its English literacy program (Calkins, 2013). All participating students and teachers speak English as their mother tongue. In the TCRWP workshop model, students work on a series of writing projects in a given unit, from initial idea generation through planning, drafting, revising, editing, and, in some cases, publishing. Lessons begin with a 10-minute whole-class instruction, or “minilesson,” followed by individual conferences or small group sessions. A TCRWP writing unit typically consists of three “bends,” or stages, guided through minilessons. In the first bend, students learn to generate many short pieces of writing to explore possibilities for whole-text creation. The second bend involves taking one idea and drafting it several times under teacher guidance. In the third bend, students take a second idea through the drafting process with reduced teacher support. Conferencing remains a consistent practice across all three bends.

Research consent was granted by the participating school, teachers, students, and their parents for the duration of the nine-week narrative writing unit. The unit consisted of 20 lessons, each scheduled for 55 minutes. The minilessons in the unit supported general strategies for generating ideas about the content of the story, such as brainstorming people, places, and feelings, as well as strategies for improving the craft of writing, such as story structure and elaborating on significant moments. Data were collected at the beginning of the academic calendar (August to October) of 2022 during the first writing unit.

Participants

Four Grade 5 teachers, with an average of 19 years’ experience, volunteered to participate, all of whom had prior experience in conducting writing conferences within the workshop setting. Participating teachers were interviewed to ask about their prior training and experience in teaching grammar, to which they all responded to having had no linguistic training in any approaches to teaching grammar or grammar-for-writing. The four teachers’ general experience and experience with writing conferences are outlined in Table 2. Three students per class (12 in total) were selected at random to have conferences with their teacher audio recorded.

Table 2. Summary of participating teachers’ experience.

	Teacher 1	Teacher 2	Teacher 3	Teacher 4
Years of teaching experience	26	22	9	20
Years of conferencing experience	6	6	5	7

Procedure

Teachers attended a three-hour workshop prior to the narrative writing unit to develop understanding of the embodied and linguistic concepts and how they might be used in a writing conference. The workshop covered the basic principles of grammar as a resource for meaning-making, with considerable attention paid to the six embodied concepts shown in Table 1. For each concept, teachers were taught how it supports the construction of a narrative scene through multiple examples from literature and its link with grammar. To practice using the concept, teachers then applied its grammar to write their own scenes and discussed scenarios where the concept might facilitate their students’ writing. Teachers received a mentor text “conferencing kit,” which was comprised of a set of six booklets, each containing a series of extracts from age-appropriate novels, many of which are recommended by the TCRWP as Grade 5 texts. These kits complemented the school’s use of mentor texts as they gave teachers specific examples of writing strategies authors use. Each booklet of extracts was associated with an embodied concept that models links between grammar, embodiment, and narrative effect. Teachers used these booklets to support their teaching of concepts during conferences.

While minilessons supported students in generating the broad content of their storyworlds, conferencing supported the details of world-building. These world-building details fall under the cognitive linguistic notion of construal (Langacker, 2008) – the ways in which a reader or writer might conceptualize an expression, idea, or literary scene. For example, students are taught to build a scene by examining where things might be located (vantage point), which parts are prominent in the visual field (scope, figure & ground, and fictive motion), the extent to which objects or characters move (attentional windowing), and how things interact (action chains). See Healey and Gardner (2021) for a full discussion of these concepts’ world-building qualities. Discussing the grammar used in published mentor texts facilitates understanding of how grammar is used for authentic purposes (Myhill & Newman, 2016; Ruday & Haddock, 2023).

Teachers conducted six to eight conferences with each of the participating students throughout the narrative unit, lasting on average five minutes and two seconds. These conferences took place while the remainder of the class worked independently on their own narratives. Pre-COVID-19 pandemic, the school had invested professional development resources into improving writing conferencing, which included using a range of mentor texts from literature, student writing, and teacher-created texts. Teachers were familiar with using “conferencing kits” in conferences and how to engage students in one-on-one discussions of author texts, as advocated by Anderson (2022). The research complemented the school’s application of using mentor text in conferences.

Teachers were asked to follow the research-decide-teach format for conferencing, with teaching points limited to what was available in the booklets provided. They did not read student writing prior to each conference. Students receive no explicit grammar instruction during school, though they complete homework activities with a traditional grammar focus. Teachers reported that students were only somewhat familiar with conventional metalanguage. This was relevant as teachers were left to decide whether to use grammatical metalanguage explicitly or explore grammar implicitly. Rather than being scripts, the teaching points acted as examples of writerly decisions, allowing teachers the freedom to discuss these in relation to their students’ needs. For example, one teaching point explored the effect of generating suspense by revealing parts of objects before the whole. Several examples from mentor texts were provided of specific noun phrases used to generate this effect, linked to the embodied concept of “zooming in.” A potential teaching point using these examples might be, “When writers want to create suspense, they sometimes use specific noun phrases before revealing the whole object. And they do this by imagining zooming in on the object, part-by-part.” Teachers were charged with deciding how best to articulate teaching points and how to guide their students through it. Students not participating in the research still received occasional small group teaching and conferencing.

Data analysis

Audio recordings of the conferences were professionally transcribed in full. Each of the 75 conferences was analyzed inductively using NVivo, totaling 5.7 hours of audio. Three rounds of data coding were conducted employing Charmaz’s (2003) grounded theory approach involving open, axial, and thematic coding. Initial open coding was guided by the research question, focusing on teachers’ talk, and the quality of that talk was guided by the conceptual framework of embodiment, grammar, and writing conferences. Each code was labeled according to the stage of the conference in which it occurred (i.e., research, decide, teach), so that they could be analyzed discretely. This was done through a round of axial coding, which sought to cluster data into themes. Where themes converged, a top-level code was created to group them into a broader theme (i.e., Building a shared narrative world, Deviations, and Inviting students to imagine narrative differently). Themes that did not converge were left standing independently. Eleven themes were chosen to present the data, as they appropriately described how teachers applied the concepts of embodiment to conferencing. Table 3 lists these themes in sequential order according to the stage in which they appear in the conference and the number of conferences in which the theme occurred. Bullet points represent sub-themes containing their frequency in brackets. Teachers also participated in two interviews, one at the midway point of the writing unit and another at the end, to reflect on their experiences with conferencing. These interviews were semi-structured, totaling 3.4 hours, and were audio recorded and transcribed. A thematic analysis was conducted through a round of open and axial coding generating themes. Interview data serve a supporting role in the present study, and are not presented here in full.

Table 3. Themes and definitions identified in conference data.

Theme	Description	Number of conferences
Research
Building a shared narrative world Opening (40) Asking for elaboration (35) Narrowing (19)	Teacher questioning which supports the student to open up and elaborate upon sensory and emotive details of their narrative scene as a strategy for deciding what embodied concept to teach.	43
Missed opportunities for shared world building	Instances where an opportunity for the teacher to support the student to build a shared narrative world was missed in favor of researching the student’s attempt at skills.	32
Decide
Teaching point-research connection	Teaching points introduced emerge from the shared world building of the research stage.	40
No teaching point-research connection	Teaching points introduced independently from the research stage.	29
Teach
Grammar-embodiment link – explicit	Teacher-led explanations of embodied effect with explicit reference made to grammatical examples.	22
Grammar-embodiment link – implicit	Teacher-led explanations of embodied effect explored through several linguistically similar examples without reference to grammar.	30
Deviations States embodied concept without attempt to explore it (22) Deviating from embodied concept (17) Deviating from grammatical concept (15) Deviating from both grammatical and embodied concept (5)	Instances where the teacher has misunderstood either or both the embodied effect or the grammatical concept in their explanations.	24
Inviting student to imagine own narrative world differently Teacher-student collaborating to construct world (22) Instruction to construct world independently (11)	Dialogue which supports the student to embody their narrative scene according to the concept taught.	33
Directive text instruction	Teacher directions on what to write or instruction to deploy particular grammatical features.	29
Collaboration on text building	Teacher questioning that supports the student’s sentence construction according to the embodied concept taught.	15
Missed opportunity to collaborate on text building	Instances that presented as an opportunity to support the student to build a sentence, but were missed.	32

Results

Data is coded according to 11 themes identified in Table 3. Of these themes, the six that relate most strongly to embodiment as a writing process are presented here. These themes are:

• Building a shared narrative world

• Missed opportunities for shared world building

• Grammar-embodiment link – explicit

• Grammar-embodiment link – implicit

• Deviations

• Invitation to imagine own narrative world differently

Building a shared narrative world

From a functional perspective, grammar-for-writing pedagogy emphasizes the inseparability of context from the meanings represented by grammar. To decide which grammar might be supportive of student writing, the teacher would benefit from understanding the context in which the grammar will be used. Part of this context is the narrative world the student is attempting to build. The theme, Building a shared narrative world, represents teachers’ inquiries at the beginning of a conference to construct a clear sensory perception of students’ narratives. By doing this, they empathize with their students’ attempts to create meaning and the processes they undertake to do so, with the purpose of using this mentally constructed world to decide which world-building concept to teach. With the context and concept in mind, the teacher might be more sensitive to different grammatical possibilities to teach. However, there was a significant range in the extent to which teachers prompted students to provide world-building details.

When teachers effectively elicited world-building details from students, they tended to initiate the conference with broad questions about the story itself to “open” the narrative world, showing genuine interest in the students’ writing. In the example below, the teacher begins the conference with an “opening” question. After the student shares their context, the teacher follows up with a process-oriented question: “How are you going to get your reader there with you?”, suggesting that the teacher was considering which embodied concept and grammar might support the student’s writing:

Teacher: So, what’s happening in your story?

Student: I went rock climbing and I’m afraid of heights so I didn’t want to come down but the longer I stayed on the wall I felt more scared so it was kind of scary and people had to try and get me down from the wall.

Teacher: How are you going to get your reader there with you?

Student: I’m going to try and use as much descriptive words as possible.

Teacher: What are you going to describe?

Student: The wall and probably how tall it was.

From this discussion, the teacher chose to teach the concept of fictive motion and the use of verbs to describe stationary objects so the student could describe the climbing wall in relation to their body.

In 35 conferences, teachers spent more time building a shared narrative world by asking for elaboration that generated further details of the scene. This was often done as a way for teachers to find out which parts of the student’s narrative were important to them and what grammar they were already using. In the following example, the student told the teacher they were writing about their first airplane ride. The teacher then asked the student to elaborate by embodying their scene:

Teacher: You were sitting in your chair. What’s going on around you in the airplane?

Student: There were little leaks from the engine, and then there was a bit of steel and then the wings looked a bit odd because I’d never seen an airplane before.

Teacher: Okay. What was odd about the wings do you think?

Student: I thought it was broken.

By asking, “What’s going on around you?,” the teacher signals embodied thinking via the preposition around, to infer whether the student is thinking about positioning the reader and perhaps using the vantage point grammar indicated in Table 2. The student names objects around the plane but does not situate them spatially around their body via such vantage point grammar. The teacher inferred that the student might need explicit teaching of prepositions to create a vantage point of the plane’s interior and to help the student think grammatically.

In 19 conferences, teachers attempted to “narrow” the world-building conversation toward particular embodied concepts to help them gain more granular sensory details of the scene. The following examples of teacher’s questions from a range of conferences feature the embodied concept that was subsequently taught in brackets:

• Is the instructor moving between the candidates? (Attentional windowing – prepositional phrases to track the instructor)

• We need to get you into the character’s point of view. So it’s not going to be us looking at you on that wall is it? What are you going to see? (Vantage point – adverbial phrases to describe scene from character’s perspective)

• I know that when you were looking at that really steep hill, and that rope, you felt that was a moment that sparked some anxiety, maybe, fear, stress in you. (Fictive motion – verbs to describe the length of the rope)

• Tell me more about the pain you’re feeling in your hands while you’re playing. (Scope – specific nouns to focus on the hands)

The prompts above are far more targeted than the prompts designed to open or elaborate upon the narrative scene. They show the teachers applying foresight of the concept and the grammar they intend to teach to garner greater understanding. However, in 32 conferences, teachers missed opportunities to build a shared narrative world, perhaps due to time pressures or because they had already decided what to teach prior to the conference and already understood what the story was about. At other times, teachers turned the discussion toward technical skills without eliciting world-building details, perhaps fast-tracking the conference toward a teaching point:

Teacher:What are you describing now?

Student:Teamwork, and …

Teacher:How are you going to describe the teamwork? How are you slowing it down? Are you showing actions? What are you trying to do with the teamwork?

This sequence of questions offers the student possible methods for writing about their scene, but does not support the teacher in understanding the scene. They open up discussions of writing, but not of the narrative world.

These examples of shared world building show how affording visual details of the student’s story helps teachers decide which embodied concept to teach and how the student is thinking grammatically. Importantly, it also sensitizes students to the types of discourse writers engage in with themselves and with other writers. As a result, later in the writing unit, some students began to initiate conversation about their narratives using the same embodied terminologies and their associated grammar they had learned earlier.

Grammar-embodiment link

While prior research on metalinguistic talk has focused on teachers making the link between grammar and narrative effect, the analysis here specifically focuses on how embodiment features into teachers’ explanations of grammar. Participating teachers were trained to explain grammar according to the six embodied concepts in Table 2 as part of the teaching phase of the conference. Most conferences featured explanations that linked embodiment and grammar, while others focused on broader narrative effects. Of the conferences, which foregrounded the grammar-embodiment link, two distinct types of metalinguistic thinking were categorized: explicit and implicit grammar.

A theme that stood out in teacher interviews was a lack of confidence in linguistic knowledge while conducting conferences. Teachers expressed how they would often focus more on the concept of embodiment than the grammar in their teaching. For example, one teacher said:

“I think I need to focus more on the grammar side of it and the structure of the grammar. I was focusing a lot on conceptually “this is what you’re trying to do, and you can see by using this, this and this, you’re tracking other movement across.” But I think maybe in hindsight, [I should] go back and look at how the grammar aids that.”

Conferences coded with an embodiment-explicit grammar link are characterized by teacher explanations of the embodied concept while also naming the grammar and how it achieves the embodied effect. Less than one third of conferences were coded under this theme, and of those, which were, references to grammar were often fleeting. In the example below, the teacher introduces the concept of action chains by showing an example from a mentor text, then pointing out the grammar used to achieve that effect:

Teacher: This strategy is called action chains. So, the effect of using these action chains is that you’re showing how the thoughts and emotions of a character, how it’s affecting them. It’s like thinking of how energy transfers from one thing to another. [Teacher introduces and reads passage from mentor text] “And Digory could say nothing for tears choked him.” Do you see how that sentence looks like this? [Gestures to diagram of action chains]. Okay, “tears” – the subject – the feeling; “the tears, choked him.” So, it’s that idea of …

Student: So, “choked” is the verb?

Teacher: Yeah, it’s that idea of the energy, the tears transferring from one thing to another. So, it’s that feeling sadness.

The teacher then guides the student through three more examples.

Conferences coded with an embodiment-implicit grammar link differ in that the teacher does not mention the grammar but instead shows several similar textual examples. In four cases, teachers used their voice to emphasize particular phrases. In all other conferences coded to embodiment-implicit grammar, teachers pointed out phrases after reading. In the following example, the teacher introduces the concept of scope by referring to the idea of “zooming in,” making frequent reference to relatable filmic metaphors. Through dialogue, the teacher engages the student in identifying the effects of particular phrases. The teacher repeats this discussion with four mentor examples, applying specific noun phrases and creating zooming effects.

Teacher: [Reading mentor text] “There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.” Right. So, in this case, this example the hand is what they’re zooming in on. There was a hand in the darkness …

Student: Yeah. I think they’re zooming in on the knife, because it’s like talking about the knife had a handle, blah blah blah.

Teacher: When you go on more, I agree. But just in that one sentence, if we didn’t read on the part – the rest of it. What do you think about this sentence here? What do you think we’re zooming in on?

Student: The hand holding the knife, but then like …

Teacher: True. When you visualize that part of the sentence, have you got a person standing there, or is it just a hand?

Student: A person. But you only see a hand first.

Teacher: All right. What it’s zooming in on here is the hand. It’s just a hand in the darkness. Okay? Then, the extra bit of information is, “it held a knife” […] But what you are trying to do is you are trying to really zoom in on one part, and to really emphasize it.

In both explicit and implicit grammar explanations, teachers often asked students whether they noticed how authors applied certain effects. In the examples above, the teachers invite the students to take an active role in noticing the grammar-embodiment link. The use of repeated examples through discussion supports student understanding when making links between grammar and effect (Myhill etal., 2020).

Deviations

From their interviews, all four teachers stated they believed they had insufficient grammatical knowledge to apply explicit teaching of some grammatical concepts fluently. One teacher said, “If you’re talking about what the author’s doing and the effect that it’s having, that part’s easy for me. I think that grammar part is the really hard part that I find hard to talk about with the kids. Knowing the grammar inside out is a challenge.” A third of the conferences included some degree of teachers deviating from explaining concepts in terms of the grammar-embodiment link, when compared to how it was presented in the workshop, as these may have been attempts to explain strategies without the need for secure grammatical knowledge. It is important to note that teachers were trialing this method for the first time, having had limited training in teaching grammar, and they may have been adapting the embodied grammar to a different, yet effective, way of explaining it.

Teachers often simplified their explanations of teaching points to a memorable content strategy rather than a way of thinking about narratives. These neglected to make any link to grammar. In the example below, the teacher introduces the concept of attentional windowing, a mental tracking of a character or object across a path of motion signaled by sequential verbs or prepositional phrases. Here, the teacher simplifies it as writing motions “step-by-step:”

Teacher: I think what we’re going to work on today is kind of telling the story a little bit by bit, okay. So, I think you do want to add some kind of description about where we were, how we were getting there. […] Maybe then what we could do here when you’re arriving in the classroom, maybe we could do that, and maybe we could think about that step-by-step motion.

[Reads mentor text].So, maybe you could think about going step by step with your thoughts. So maybe think about what you saw when you got into the classroom […] but just kind of go in a step-by-step motion.

In 17 conferences, teachers understand the grammar but not the embodied concept, resulting in instructions to deploy particular grammar. In the example below, the teacher deviates from the concept of attentional windowing by neglecting the idea of tracking motion, but makes a clear reference to the sequence of verbs:

Teacher: We could use different verbs to describe the people coming to help you. What verbs could we use? They could rush over? What other verbs could we use to describe them coming to your help?

Student: Dashing.

Teacher: They could dash over. Maybe one of them would rush, and one of them would dash. They might lean cautiously toward you when you’re lying on the ground. They might stretch out to take your hand. Maybe try to use these verbs, these multiple verbs, to describe one of the people who came to help you. So, they would dash, maybe they would duck down and then they would reach or stretch to help you. Maybe try to use three verbs to capture their motion as they’re going to help you.

The teacher focuses their instruction on using many verbs without explaining how to mentally track an object across a path of motion. They provide several examples of verbs indicating different actions rather than a single motion, which may be effective in terms of teaching detailed sequences of character actions.

A major theme from teacher interviews was their perceived unfamiliarity with the new materials, impacting their understanding and teaching of the concepts. All teachers expressed how their familiarity, and thus confidence, grew toward the end. One teacher said: “I think the major challenge was the familiarity, the confidence to go, ‘you need to use this strategy. Here’s some examples.’ Once or twice, I second-guessed myself as I’m speaking about the strategy.” Familiarity with the concepts likely leads to more adaptive conferences addressing student needs.

Invitation to imagine world differently

The final stage of the conference is an opportunity for teachers to link learning back to the initial context of the shared world building of student writing and to solidify thinking with grammar in mind. The theme of inviting student to imagine their own world differently represented the final stage of the conference, when the teacher would invite the student to apply the concept to their own narrative. This often involved a series of questions about the student’s narrative scene related to the concept taught, with questioning prompting students to embody their scene, thinking along with the teacher, and verbalizing what they might write. By facilitating this reimagining through highly specific “embodied” thinking processes, the teacher guides the student to apply grammatical concepts associated with this kind of thinking, either implicitly or explicitly.

In the example below, the teacher taught the concept of vantage point and asked the student to imaginatively scan a scene, with the teacher inserting prepositional phrases to revoice the student’s imagination through implicit grammar-thinking associations:

Teacher: So maybe you could imagine yourself scanning that room? What would you see when you were scanning that room?

Student: Well, in the right corner, there – like in the corner on my right on the very…

Teacher: So you’re going to start from the right-hand side of the room and work your way … So, the right-hand side, what do you see?

Student: …In the very far corner, there was like a couple of teachers wearing those like blue and white shirts and then they…

Teacher: Formally dressed teachers, and then what did you see as you scan?

Student: Then they were kind of like… managing the music and technology stuff.

Teacher: Okay, but if you’re scanning from them, what else do you see?

Student: Then I – in front of me are a couple of rows of audience.

Teacher: Okay, two rows of audience. What else do you see if you keep scanning? So you’ve got teachers here, then you’ve got your two rows, what else do you see?

Student: Then there’s not much except like behind me, there’s like a curtain that there’s a couple of props.

Generally, this teaching strategy was used briefly at the end of a conference to check for understanding. However, it was also used to facilitate idea generation and grammatical thinking, which proved to be more successful when teachers understood the student’s narrative world and the concept they were teaching, highlighting the importance of teachers’ contextual knowledge on the thinking and grammar relationship.

Discussion

In this paper, teachers applied embodied concepts from cognitive stylistics (Giovanelli & Harrison, 2018) to teach students how to think about their narratives in six distinct ways with reference to specific grammatical resources through writing conferences. The analysis of the characteristics of teachers’ talk offers a broad picture of the affordances and challenges associated with this approach. There is evidence that teachers engage students in the creative process of embodied thinking. However, it is also clear from Table 3 that there is inconsistency in the degree to which teachers support students through this process at every stage of the conference.

By coding talk according to each conference stage, it has been possible to explore the pedagogical sequence supporting the process of embodied thinking. Graves (1994) argues that teachers should exercise patience and openness early in a conference (the “research” stage), dampening the urge to provide quick solutions. This was illustrated by the theme of building a shared narrative world. Wegerif (2013) highlights the importance of “opening dialogic space” to engage students in thinking alongside the teacher. The selection of teaching points appropriate to student writing may be influenced by the teacher’s awareness of the context of the student’s writing and their understanding of the world the student is attempting to build. However, a significant portion of the research stage dialogue was coded to missed opportunities to build a shared narrative world. Of those that did, there were differences in the degree to which it was discussed. In building a shared narrative world, teachers tended to ask questions to help the student elaborate on narrative details, or what Wegerif (2013) calls “widening dialogic space,” from which some teachers then narrowed their discussion toward specific embodied concepts.

In the “teaching” stage of the conference, it is reasonable to expect that teachers would put degrees of emphasis on grammar, depending on the teacher’s confidence with grammar and their knowledge of the student and their needs. As reported in teacher interviews, teachers had limited declarative knowledge of grammar, which is reflected in their preference for discussing grammar implicitly or not at all. When grammatical examples of embodied effects are discussed implicitly, there might be an “unconscious taking up of classroom examples, even before an understanding of the grammar or of noticing its presence” (S. Jones, 2023, p. 85). The analysis shows that, when making implicit embodiment-grammar links, teachers emphasized the grammar without using the metalanguage, which may still support metalinguistic thinking (Chen & Myhill, 2016; Gutierrez, 2008). On the other hand, explicit links to grammar were made to support students with coordinating their sentences. For example, under the theme of explicit grammar-embodiment link, some teachers explained how sequencing prepositions creates attentional windows and how ordering nouns and verbs creates action chains. This draws upon declarative knowledge of the grammatical unit and procedural knowledge of how to coordinate it syntactically (Watson et al., 2021).

In the final stage of the conference, it was encouraging to identify teachers inviting students to imagine their narratives using the embodied concept to transfer their understanding to creative practice. This serves several purposes. First, as a pedagogical purpose, it fulfills the central aim of a conference: to position young writers as agents of their writing, deciding how they will apply their learning (Murray, 1985). Second, as a metalinguistic purpose, it challenges students to think creatively with grammar in mind (Myhill etal., 2016). Third, as a writing process purpose, it allows teacher and student to think together in a shared embodied space, scaffolding authorial thinking (Healey & Gardner, 2023; Mercer et al., 2019).

The teacher deviations theme stood out as a factor in many conferences. These deviations were characterized by teachers’ explanations of teaching points that were not articulated in the initial workshop. This often entailed the teaching of grammar without links to embodied thinking. Similarly, explaining grammatical concepts was often characterized by more intuitive descriptions of narrative effect without links to grammar.

This study has supported the role of conferences in the workshop approach to writing. Nevertheless, TCRWP has come under recent scrutiny in popular journalism (e.g., Wexler, 2023) for its whole-language approach to reading instruction and, to a lesser extent, its process-oriented approach to writing. One recent quasi-experimental study by the American Institutes for Research suggests positive impacts of TCRWP on English Language Arts scores over time compared to neighboring schools (Salinger & Weinberg, 2021). There is significant space for teacher decision-making during TCRWP workshop lessons, often centered around how often and with whom to conference. Given that empirical research into TCRWP’s effectiveness as a program is scant, this research supports the role of conferencing, demonstrating that specific embodied strategies afford teachers the writerly knowledge to guide students through concrete imaginative processes.

Limitations

A significant limitation of this study was the quality of teacher training. The three-hour workshop was evidently not sufficient to develop teacher understanding of a new way of working with grammar and embodiment in conferences. The participating school’s schedule did not allow for any more time at the beginning of the school year to extend the training. Teachers all expressed during interviews that they spent much of the writing unit familiarizing themselves with the concepts while also teaching students. Perhaps addressing student needs does not bode well with implementing newly learned strategies. It may have been more conducive to provide teachers with greater support via coaching throughout the unit to develop confidence in one concept at a time rather than having them try to cover several new materials in a limited timeframe.

Moreover, while the research took place in an authentic classroom setting, the research focus of the study limited what was taught during conferences. It may be impractical to limit all conferencing in a narrative writing unit to a set of six concepts. Conferences are intended to allow teachers to make unrestricted decisions regarding what and how to teach, and while there is a broad scope in which these concepts might be applied, it is restricted to the research in question.

Another limitation concerns the teaching of new concepts. A writing conference builds on the students’ prior knowledge, which is why the research phase of a conference is key to deciding what to teach. However, the concepts in this study included entirely new ways of thinking about writing that had not been learned prior. The research’s qualitative design lacks broad transferability, as the site of the study was influenced by local factors such as teachers’ prior knowledge, the initial workshop design, and the demographics of the international school students.

Implications and future research

Teacher knowledge of grammar was a significant factor in the characteristics of teacher talk. As discussed above, more extensive training is required. Research suggests that sustained professional development has a greater impact on teacher practice compared to one-off training (Cordingly et al., 2015; Vrieset al., 2013) and tends to involve formal and informal learning, staff collaboration, and ongoing support from the trainer (Armour et al., 2017; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). For instance, it would be beneficial to facilitate ongoing teacher coaching sessions with the researcher to provide feedback on how they are handling the new materials throughout the course of teaching. Conference observations might provide feedback on missed opportunities and the extent to which their explanations of concepts support student understanding of embodiment. It is recommended that teachers benefit from training in grammatical concepts and in how to teach the link between grammar and meaning, developing their linguistic and pedagogical subject knowledge respectfully (Myhill et al., 2013; Shulman, 1987). With the foundations of conferencing and grammar-for-writing in place, it might thus be more impactful for teachers to learn how embodiment supports narrative writing. It may be practical to build these concepts up over time in previous years’ narrative units, including during whole class minilessons, before teaching specific applications of the concepts through conferences.

There is significant scope for future research addressing the recommendations above. Conferencing is a highly specific learning context, and the learning of grammar and embodiment can be explored beyond this. There are opportunities for research to further explore the nature of teacher understanding of grammar and embodiment to help bridge the gap in understanding, leading to more appropriate teacher training. Research that examines student understanding in terms of the impact of explicit grammar and embodied notions on understanding would assist in identifying what is developmentally appropriate to teach for various students. The six concepts outlined in this paper afford opportunities for researchers to expand on their application beyond conferences. For example, research might explore the value of introducing a whole class to embodied language for narratives (e.g., zoom, stand out, track, scan, etc.), which can be applied to discussions of shared literature and writing. The embodied thinking framework that has been implemented in some UK classrooms in the teaching of critical literacy (Giovanelli & Harrison, 2022) can potentially be recontextualized in writing classrooms across genres. For example, students might learn to make targeted decisions about metaphors used in persuasive writing or achieving clarity in expository texts.

Conclusion

By investigating teacher talk, the findings indicate that teachers support embodied thinking processes through the stages of researching student writing, deciding what to teach, and teaching it. This was done by asking probing questions to understand the student’s narrative world, explaining links between imagination and grammar, and guiding students through the process in their own narratives. At the same time, it is worth noting that few conferences involved all three of these stages. These inconsistencies were characterized by missed opportunities to support student thinking, with teachers taking greater control of the dialogue. Teachers’ knowledge of narrative embodiment and associated grammatical concepts, as well as their pedagogical knowledge of supporting these concepts within the writing process, was inconsistent, likely impacting student learning. The data show that teachers’ explanations of concepts often deviated from the intended instructional focus of making embodiment-grammar links, but it is worth noting that teachers were trialing this approach for the first time after only attending a short workshop.

In conclusion, the analysis suggests that teaching writing as a process of embodiment with grammar in mind may be a viable classroom practice. Specifically, teachers equipped with a deep understanding of the narrative writing process and its links to embodiment and grammar are better positioned to teach it. The writing conference affords teachers the professional agency to adapt their teaching in response to student understanding and their process of writing. Therefore, teachers knowledgeable of imaginative thinking processes have the power to not only teach writing effectively but also to teach students to think like writers.

Ethical statement

I declare that ethics approval has been granted for this project by the Ethics Committee at Curtin University, Western Australia. Ethics approval number: HRE2020–0181.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the teachers and students for participating in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).