Writing proficiency is not only central to students’ success at school, but research suggests that it also influences their personal and vocational outcomes after finishing school. While plenty of guidance exists to support school leaders and teachers in reading instruction, guidance on effective writing instruction is limited and research on this varies in quality.
The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) developed a School Writing Instruction Framework (SWIF) to support school leaders and teachers in delivering evidence-based writing instruction to students across all subject areas in mid to upper primary and secondary school. To ensure this framework was relevant, usable and effective, we spent a year collaborating with schools to pilot and refine it.
This case study outlines key learnings from this collaboration highlighting how school leaders can have a positive impact by embedding writing instruction in their schools and how teachers can engage with professional learning to support teaching writing effectively. Building teachers’ knowledge and skills about writing, and translating this into explicit teaching in the classroom, will ultimately help improve student writing outcomes.
Keywords: teaching grammar, evidence-based teaching, evidence-based education, practice implementation