‘How do I do it if I don’t like writing?’: Adolescents’ stances toward writing across disciplines

Voice and narrative in L1 Writing

“…While struggling to appropriate an academic voice, which implies establishing analytical distance and engaging with other voices and texts, they also need to experiment with their own voices in order to develop textual repertoires to add agency to their writing. As shown by Jeffery and Wilcox (2013), this project involves subjective and transformative engagement with knowledge.…”

“…Experiences with actualising a sense of voice as "oneself" and as an "owned voice" (Stene-Johansen and Ivanič above) in writing is paramount in students' development as writers and learners and should constitute a core part of any educational writing project (cp. Jeffery & Wilcox, 2013). As argued in Krogh (2003Krogh ( , 2012b, the hermeneutic and meaningmaking form of knowledge of an L1 subject constitutes fruitful conditions for framing students' access to this kind of experience and should, thus, be viewed as an essential Bildung aim for the subject.…”

“…Whereas in the preceding argument, voice and perspective were developed as a key metaphor for L1 Bildung aims, agency is developed by Jeffery and Wilcox (2013) as a pivotal notion for literacy development that holds similar aspects. In their empirical study of American middle and high school students' attitudes to writing in a range of school subjects, agency is conceptualised as "capacity to act" and further "the extent to which students perceive disciplinary tasks as opportunities to transform knowledge" (op.cit., p. 1097).…”

An Inquiry into Adolescents’ Experiences with Cognitively Demanding Writing: Time Investment and the Importance of Authenticity’

“…In the opening poem, a grade 12 student, Paul reflects upon the experience of developing a first-time research paper as part of his studies in the IBDP. As a high school student involved in a rigorous academic program, Paul was expected to engage in the writing of advanced disciplinary writing tasks and had ongoing opportunities to write in different genres and for different purposes (Jeffery & Wilcox, 2014). What was different about this writing task, however, was that Paul was expected to create and sustain an original argument using published literature to inform his claims.…”

“…Echoing the scholarship about the benefits of the EE, much has been written about the multiple advantages that regular opportunities to write in school afford for secondary youth. Some examples attribute regular writing to: the development of advanced writing abilities (Jeffery & Wilcox, 2014), increased understanding of content (Graham & Herbert, 2010), overall quality of student work (American Institutes for Research, 2005Research, , 2007, and achievement on writing (Graham, Harris, & Hebert, 2011) and standardized assessments (Matsumura, Slater, Garnier, & Boston, 2008;Newmann, Bryk, & Nagaoka, 2001). While there is strong evidence of the benefits regular writing can foster, the kinds of writing in which youth engage and produce are also important (Villalon, Mateos, & Cuevas, 2015).…”