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Working with a university mentor, a seasoned teacher tried a new research strategy with seniors and was surprised with their buy-in.
We should do this all year! I feel like my writing is better. I had something to say because I could talk with my partner about it." Reading John's reflection on our collaborative writing experience, I felt he had achieved the objectives for the experimental assignment I had implemented for the twelfth graders: to improve their self-efficacy and to see themselves as writers. The assignment had also offered them opportunities to share perspectives with peers, to co-construct meaning, and to experience the real-world practice of collaborative writing.
In school, writing may be viewed as an independent endeavor because teachers are pressured to ensure each student performs well on standardized writing tests. Students often work alone, produce a finished paper, and receive a grade for independent efforts. The idea of writing as a partnership may be viewed as less rigorous in holding each student accountable. As teachers, we may not be able to change the standardized writing tests our students take, but we can use strategies that help students prepare to meet those tests with greater success. One strategy is collaboration.
Interestingly, collaborative writing-"writing involving two or more writers working together to produce a joint product" (Harris 369)-has been shown to improve students' independent writing ability and self-efficacy (Krishman et al. 5; Louth et al. 224; Wigglesworth and Storch 465). Collaborative writing is common in the workplace, where employees work together to create and refine ideas through video conferencing, wikis, and Google documents (Stratton 261; Van Steendam 197). I felt a collaborative writing project would be good preparation for the twelfth graders I was teaching, so building on themes from our recent study of Hamlet, I launched a collaborative research project where students chose the topic to pursue together but were held individually responsible for their contributions.
PITFALLS AND POWER OF COLLABORATION
I knew the potential pitfalls of collaborative work. I had heard them from colleagues over the years: students who sat idle while their partners worked diligently to complete "their" work, parents who questioned the fairness of grades for group work, or the situation where work was lost by one partner, leaving the...