my weekend

This weekend I taught a masters by coursework class. The unit focused on approaches and issues in writing instuction. I like teaching the unit because i designed it. It addresses writing pedagogy from process writing onwards in Australia. The first day of the weekend school addressed process writing and genre pedogogy - leading up to the great writing debate between these two approaches in Australia. Today we examined resolutions of that debate as these have panned out withing current approaches to writing in classrooms. Balance was a focus. We examined the Early Years LIteracy Program in Victoria, the approach presented by Lesley Wing Jan in her text about writing, and the four roles model developed by Luke and Freebody. While the latter model doesn't advocate a balanced approach, we spent some time thinking about how it does lead to a balance of a particular kind.

Spending a whole weekend doing this kind of work isn't the ideal. However, it reminded me that I have a double interest in my work as an academic. I want to make a contribution to the field of conversation analysis and I would like to contribute to the field of writing pedagogy. I haven't pulled it off yet. The papers that I have sent off for review have focused on CA. I am yet to make a mark on literacy pedagogy, in relation to writing. Yet I feel that my PhD research has led to some important findings in relation to writing instruction. Mmmm -gotta write more papers.