International Perspectives on Writing Curricula and Development: A Cross-Case Comparison

This book contributes to the innovation of writing education and research globally by providing crucial insights into how the structures and aims of literacy curricula vary internationally. It examines how nine education systems across five continents represent ‘good writing’ in curricula that shape students’ experiences learning to write in school.

The book presents curricular analyses aimed at providing insight into how writing development can be better supported through innovative policy and research. The findings regarding international variation are presented under three broad dimensions: social and contextual factors that shape writing curricula; the discourses of writing reflected in curricula and official documents; and hallmarks of classroom practice, including the relationship with official discourse. Case study chapters present integrated inductive and deductive document analyses, findings of which are compared in a concluding, cross-case analysis chapter.

Offering a detailed comparative analysis of writing research, International Perspectives on Writing Curricula and Development will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of education, literacy and curriculum studies. It will also be relevant reading for policymakers and curriculum designers.

Chapters 1, 7, 9, 10, and 11 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Jill V. Jeffery is Associate Professor of English at Leiden University’s Centre for Linguistics in the Netherlands. Her research investigates how competent writing is conceptualised in educational policies, large-scale writing exams, teachers’ instructional approaches and by student-writers.

Judy M. Parr is Professor of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research, much of which has been large-scale, is grounded in improvement science, focusing on enhancing professional practice and student learning in literacy, particularly writing.