Writing to learn: Collaborative research in a teaching and learning community

DEBBIE BOGARD, JAMES COLLICOTT AND SAM HUGHES, CITY AND ISLINGTON SIXTH FORM COLLEGE, UK

Centring research within communities of practice

Professional networks are a collaborative endeavour of teaching and learning communities of practice to undertake professional and personal development. An effective network allows agency for teachers to focus on their own interests, with the community supporting them in innovative research to develop self-efficacy in teaching and learning. In this way, collaboration is necessary in order to be effectively autonomous (Fullan, 2018). The impact of this practitioner-led research, Stenhouse argues, sees the teacher as a key researcher in their classroom in order to enhance professional judgement (Stenhouse, 1975). 

In our further education setting, the teaching and learning community (TLC) acts as a collaborative research hub with an egalitarian non-hierarchical model, situated in classroom practice. Over the last three years, our TLC has been working in an academic partnership with research-practitioners at Goldsmiths University on ‘writing to learn’ strategies. This has two components: freewriting involves writing without stopping to correct or think, to help manifest and collect the writer’s thoughts (Elbow, 1998). Diagrarting is a neologism of dialogue, diagrams and art (Gilbert, 2022), a process in which writers doodle, draw, write and discuss ideas spontaneously. In order for it to be genuinely effective, teachers freewrite and diagrart for themselves, both individually and in communities of practice. As a TLC, we have been experimenting with writing to learn, trialling and adapting the strategies across our subjects, as a way of supporting our collective CPD (continuous professional development) (Bolton, 2018; Bogard et al., 2022).

What does writing to learn look like in our TLC?

In one of our TLC meetings, we did a six-minute freewrite around the question: ‘What do I want from my professional life?’ Before we did this, we shared our experiences of using freewriting for our own development. Two teachers discussed using freewriting as a form of note-taking when studying for an MA, and feeling that it brought a useful impetus towards deeper understanding. Another colleague reflected on how writing one’s own questions and problems, before answering and problem-solving, helps to create learning opportunities away from the potentially narrow path of the curriculum. We discussed how many students feel fearful of the blank page and scared to make mistakes. By consciously and explicitly shifting away from assessment and judgement, freewriting can become an empowering act, both for ourselves and for our students, helping to turn off one’s internal critic and shift from performative to growth mindsetThe theory, popularised by Carol Dweck, that students’ beliefs about their intelligence can affect motivation and achievement; those with a growth mindset believe that their intelligence can be developed. 

Following the freewriting exercise, we discussed the process and how it might be used in the classroom, especially with students who might feel reluctant to take part, through being either wary of making mistakes or coerced into something that feels out of their comfort zone. We discussed how we could encourage students to cross the threshold and bring them with us through building trust – each classroom its own community, underpinned by a supportive, motivating and safe learning environment. In this way, the TLC becomes a model classroom for the learning behaviours that we seek to enact and cultivate with our classes.

What does writing to learn look like in the classroom? 

Biology incorporates writing to learn as a key approach, both to give students vision in their course progression and to access prior knowledge of the subject, to encourage synoptic thinking between different aspects of the syllabus. The hope was that students would form a more complete schema of understanding, rather than having knowledge siloed by topics. This was communicated with students, with the understanding that the freewriting and diagrarting would not be marked, but students may be asked to share thoughts and ideas. Teachers often modelled the process, particularly initially, to build student understanding and confidence in the process. The stimulus material contained a number of different media types, including pictures, diagrams and writing, all linked to biology concepts that could span several topics. The initial prompt used – ‘How do I see myself as a learner?’ – encourages students to visualise themselves and help to understand their own thinking processes. Later in the course, the material may include a diagram of a photosystem with several potential syllabus links, and students are asked ‘What do I know about this topic?, encouraging them to find links between topics and make schemas more robust by increasing areas of recall.

The experiment lasted several months and was embedded into the scheme of work, to ensure parity across the groups and embedding the skill across the cohort. The students at first found writing without the encroachment of exam narratives taxing and struggled to access beyond the specification points, focusing on using terminology and recall. Initially, students struggled with the free nature of freewriting, having rarely written without thinking about the test at the end, yet many students could see the benefits of the activity. As the course progressed, students were able to make more links between ideas, which increased their perceived value of the activity, although often still seeing it as a means to initiate recall rather than to solidify ideas and shape their thinking. This is an interesting aspect of the experiment that requires further examination as to the way in which this interacts with A-level expectations of students. Over time, students gained confidence in their writing and in using writing to learn as a jumping-off point, with some even using it to better understand their own thoughts of their future, particularly around university choices.

In history, writing to learn activities were spread out over the course of several months. A prompt question was designed to fit in with a topic of study that sought to open up understanding and connect with a topic in a more meaningful and personal way. For example, as part of an introduction to a course on the British Empire, learners did a five-minute freewrite or diagrart around the question:‘What does freedom mean to me?’ Students were encouraged to think in terms of both their own lives and how it might relate to some of the key themes of the course, including colonisation, self-determination and anti-colonial nationalism. In humanities subjects such as history and politics, students are expected to be familiar with abstract concepts (e.g. sovereignty, power, empire), and using writing to learn felt like an opportunity to help students to engage and connect with these ideas beyond thinking solely in the abstract.

Feedback on the writing to learn activities has been positive. One student commented that he preferred to talk rather than write, and felt that he’d been ‘conditioned’ to write in a particular way, which led to a conversation about freewriting itself as an activity in freedom. Another spoke of having ‘short bursts of inspiration and passion’ through freewriting, while a third, reflecting on the process, remarked that she had ‘had a conversation with myself’. A fourth student fed back: ‘My pen started writing and I was just like: what the hell… what’s going on?’ It has been encouraging how positively the students have taken to writing to learn. Across A-level subjects, it is perhaps most useful as a way of deliberately and consciously guiding students away from exam board specifications and other trappings that can contribute to limited thinking, and instead as a way of creating a different kind of space for more expansive thinking and reflection.

Reflections and next steps 

Teaching is one of the most prescriptive industries for professional development, yet higher levels of autonomy link to higher satisfaction levels (Worth and Van den Brande, 2020). The scope of this programme and the classroom-driven nature has felt exceptionally freeing to us as teachers. Within the TLC, teachers can feel emboldened to study and understand theories underpinning learning and research the effects on their students. The ability to design and evaluate our own understanding of theory and share this understanding with colleagues and wider professional networks has been hugely impactful, both in relation to critical engagement with the curriculum and in our own development.

As part of this professional development, a small group of TLC members took this research to national conferences last year. This was an incredible learning experience as teachers, to experience research first hand and to share this model of professional practice for both classrooms and teacher reflection. In addition to delivering workshops, TLC members have also published research from their own perspectives (for example, Denerveux, 2024), demonstrating how both autonomy and collaboration can develop from the community of practice, with teachers free to determine their own involvement and direction of travel.

In terms of next steps, at a subject and departmental level, we are keen to continue embedding writing to learn into our schemes of work. At an institutional level, we encourage leaders to integrate writing to learn into departmental meetings and professional development days, as a way in which to model good practice. At a cross-institutional level, we want to continue working collaboratively with colleagues across multiple sites of learning, including schools, colleges and universities. Ultimately, we want all teachers to feel emboldened as leaders of professional learning, working together in self-driven, self-organising communities of practice, and growing as practitioner-researchers to shape their own professional learning and development.