Writing Instruction in Middle Schools: Special and General Education Teachers Share Their Views and Voice Their Concerns

Abstract

We examined writing instruction in the middle school context from the perspectives of special and general education teachers via focus groups and rating scales. We found that special and general educators alike valued a balanced approach to teaching writing, that both groups held a positive view of their teaching efficacy, and that both groups were strongly influenced by their teaching context. The teachers in our study, although supportive of balanced literacy instruction, were unsure of how to enact such an approach to teaching lower level writing skills and higher level composing strategies within a process-oriented framework. Moreover, they identified a number of factors that negatively impact their efforts to deliver effective and comprehensive writing instruction: requirements to teach voluminous subject matter content, large numbers of students, substantial variation in student backgrounds and abilities, diminished student motivation, barriers to successful inclusion of students with disabilities and meeting these students' writing needs in the general education classroom, and underdeveloped or misaligned district-sanctioned writing curricula.