Towards boundary crossing: primary and secondary school teachers teaching creative writing and its redrafting

Abstract

Purpose

There is little research into how teachers think about and teach creative writing and its redrafting and how this might differ depending upon the age of the pupils being taught. This paper aims to compare the creative writing conceptualisations and practices of primary school teachers (5–11-year olds) and secondary school teachers (11–18-year-olds) in England through a qualitative survey. This comparison enables to think about the influence of policy on creative writing in primary and secondary schools as well as what professional development could look like for these teachers to improve the teaching of creative writing.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative survey exploring the creative writing and redrafting pedagogies and conceptualisations was responded to by primary school teachers (n = 18) and secondary school teachers (n = 19). Taking an ecological view of creative writing and teacher identity, the authors undertake a comparative analysis of the survey data using the 5A’s theory of creativity (Glaveanu, 2013) and a view of professional identity existing within “landscapes of practice” (Wenger-Trayner, Wenger-Trayner, 2015). This enables to illuminate how and why creative writing is contextually afforded, or otherwise, in primary and secondary landscapes of practice.

Findings

This analysis demonstrates how the redrafting of creative writing is marginalised in both landscapes of practice and how redrafting is largely conceptualised as a technical rather than critical or creative action. The authors show how teachers, particularly in primary school, aim for their pupils to produce “products” rather than engaging in the “process” of creative writing. This analysis also shows that whilst creative writing is overall more marginalised in the secondary school landscape, it is often taught through process approaches. In both landscapes of practice, the re-drafting of creative writing is largely taught through product approaches.

Research limitations/implications

This research is potentially skewed by the fact that we recruited our participants through networks relating the teaching of English, including creative writing. What is worrying about this limitation, however, is that the picture of creative writing in schools in England probably leans more to a product approach than the picture this research has uncovered.

Practical implications

Professional development for teachers in both landscapes is needed in relation to pedagogical actions for creative writing and its redrafting. Some of the key differences we have outlined in conceptualisations and practices between primary and secondary schools landscapes, notably the overuse of product-based teaching actions in primary landscapes, and some of the differences we have outlined within discrete landscapes of practice, notably how some primary school teachers feel more confident to challenge the product-based approach, with one conceptualising redrafting as “creative”, indicate that professional development should involve teachers working across schools.

Social implications

Policy needs to be reformed to move away from the technicist view of creative writing held in both landscapes of practice. Linked to this, the way creative writing is assessed as a product in secondary schools needs to change – the re-introduction of portfolio-based coursework (Bishop, 1990) would provide the affordance of redrafting as an action central to creative writing processes.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a rare piece of research which compares primary and secondary school teachers’ approaches to teaching creative writing. It shows that primary school teachers can be formulaic in the way they teach creative writing, using product approaches. However, in secondary schools the picture is different: teachers, particularly those, who are writers themselves, give students more agency in redrafting and shaping their writing. This indicates how professional development should involve primary and secondary school teachers in dialogue with one another to cross boundaries of practice.

Introduction

What is creative writing? From the perspective of creative writers there is no consensus. Going back to the poet T.S. Eliot (1997), we find an extreme view of the creative writing of poetry as a formal activity, where the poet must understand form and the work of their significant predecessors, to write something worthwhile. For Eliot, therefore, creative writing is about “depersonalisation”, the poet removing themselves from the act of writing creatively to learn from and use previous creative works. To take a more contemporary creative writer, Smith (2017), for example, conceptualises creative writing quite differently. For Smith, the creative writer experiences a continual attempt to express themselves, to reveal their personality and lived experiences through the exploration of language and form.

Linked to these polarised views held by creative writers are pedagogical practices which have been conceptualised by Wyse et al. (2013) as existing on a continuum of “closed and open approaches”. Closed approaches to the teaching of creative writing lean more towards Eliot’s line of thinking, with students developing an appreciation of different forms to produce their own piece of writing. Such closed approaches were popularised in the teaching of creative writing in Australia and England in the 1990s due to an appropriation of genre theory (Martin et al., 1987), where both fiction and non-fiction texts were categorised as having specific features at whole text, sentence and word level that students should learn and adopt. In this paper, we refer to such approaches to teaching creative writing as “product approaches”.

In line with the thinking of Smith, on the other hand, more open approaches to the teaching of creative writing give students choice over language and form as they find and develop their writer “voices” (Grainger et al., 2005). Here, the act of writing is a process that has been conceptualised as problem-solving (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987), with the students exploring language and form to convey and transform their lived experiences to express what they want to say. Accordingly, open approaches give more autonomy and control to students in the creative writing process and in this paper we, therefore, refer to such approaches to teaching creative writing “process approaches”.

Like Wyse et al. (2013), we see product and process approaches to the teaching of creative writing as existing on a spectrum. In our conceptualisations of the teaching of creative writing, we do not, therefore, prioritise the teaching of one approach over the other. Instead, we value the potential of leanings towards both approaches – leanings that might then move the other way – to develop the creative writing of students in the classroom.

Linked to the spectrum of product and process approaches to the teaching of creative writing is the redrafting of creative writing. For an approach to teaching creative writing that leans towards creative writing as a product, feedback for redrafting can be seen as predetermined by the teacher based upon the extent to which the student has achieved the desired product in their creative writing first draft; for an approach to teaching creative writing that leans towards creative writing as a process, teacher feedback for redrafting is not predetermined but instead responsive to the creative writing process in which each individual student is engaged.

We could find no literature which explored the ways in which teachers specifically conceptualise creative writing and its redrafting. For us, this seems an important topic to address. Firstly, developing an understanding of how teachers conceptualise creative writing and its redrafting can help us to understand the relationship between their conceptualisations and how they approach the teaching of creative writing to students in schools. Secondly, understanding teachers’ conceptualisations of creative writing and its teaching can help illuminate the ways in which global and national policy contexts have shaped their conceptualisations and practices. In England, where our research takes place, we also wondered whether conceptualisations and practices might be different for those teaching primary school students (aged 5–11) and those teaching secondary school students (aged 11–18). Identifying any differences between these two groups will help us think about whether there might be any potential for collaborative professional development between primary and secondary schools.

Literature review

When undertaking our literature review, we wanted to tell the story of how research has developed conceptualisations of the teaching of creative writing and its redrafting in relation to the product and process spectrum. We wanted to think about the relationship, or otherwise, between this research and policy, with a particular focus on England, where our research takes place. Finally, because we believe our research has implications for teacher professional development, we wanted to analyse the literature on teacher professional development and teaching creative writing in relation to the product and process spectrum.

Research in America in the 1980s and 1990s: process approaches to the teaching of creative writing and its redrafting

Graves’s research from the USA (1983) is often cited for the ways in which he viewed writing as self-expression. For Graves, students should be nurtured by teachers through a writing process to develop their own writing pieces for their own audiences. Teachers should focus on encouraging, suggesting and scaffolding in relation to students’ emerging creative writing through a one-to-one mentoring process Graves (1983) called “conferencing”. At later stages in writing, “conferencing” includes giving feedback to young writers to engage in redrafting. Building on the work of Graves, Elbow (1986) strongly advocated “freewriting” in the early stages of the writing process to give young writers the time and space to develop their own thinking and their own creative writing artifacts. Elbow (1986, p. 61) pre-empted Bereiter and Scardamalia’s (1987) view of writing as “problem-solving”, where the teachers used their skilled judgements to “hold off criticism or revising for a while [to] build a safe place for generative thinking or writing” (Elbow, 1986, p. 61). A similar approach was taken by Bishop (1990), who reflected upon her own composition classes where she tried to avoid making judgements on students’ emerging creative writing. For Bishop (1990, p. 132), it was important that students moved towards redrafting their own work as they, “self-evaluate and revise when they analyse their own growth in journals and draft folders, participate in large- and small-group critique sessions, participate in student-teacher conferences, complete written self-evaluations, and compile writing portfolios.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, research into the teaching of creative writing in schools that took this process approach was followed by research that acknowledged that for teachers to facilitate students’ creative writing teachers should also have experiences of creative writing. In America, Bizzaro (1993, p. 15) was an early advocate of teachers becoming writers, challenging teachers of poetry to take risks by writing not to “produce an excellent poem” but instead to “experience first-hand what their students will experience in the belief that the best teachers of writing are most often writers themselves.” Bizzaro (1993) was keen to point out that the best writers are not necessarily the best teachers of writing, rather it is the combination of lived experiences of being a teacher and a writer which gives the teacher as writer a deeper understanding of their students’ creative writing, including identifying the most opportune moments to assess and provide feedback.

Policy context: product approaches to the teaching of creative writing and its redrafting

In England, government policy since 2002 has ignored the research from the USA in the 1980s and 1990s by restricting choice for teachers and students undertaking creative writing in primary and secondary schools. Of note here is the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) (DfEE, 1998), which promoted a more product orientated approach to teaching creative writing in primary and secondary schools, informed by the implementation of genre theory (Martin, Christie, and Rothery, 1987). Under the NLS, teachers directed students in primary and secondary schools towards specific written products for predetermined audiences. Although recommended rather than mandated, the NLS was widely used by primary and secondary school teachers in England. It was followed by a mandated national curriculum for English (DfE, 2014), which is still in place, and is similarly prescriptive in valuing the technical aspects of writing, including spelling, punctuation and grammar, over ideas, craft and content. As a result of this policy context, students in English primary schools were found to be compliant in writing for their teachers to meet the outcomes of curriculum policy, with Lambirth (2016) concluding that students were effectively ‘alienated’ from the writing process (Lambirth, 2016).

For older students in secondary schools in England, creative writing also leans towards a product orientated approach. Exam board syllabuses see creative writing as a one-draft-only-activity, with students writing a creative product under exam conditions. As with younger students, 14-to-16-years olds are required to meet an assessment criteria (e.g. AQA, 2023) that focuses on the technical aspects of writing – a checklist directing teachers and students to concentrate on predetermined creative writing products rather the writing process itself. For 16-to-18-year-olds, the axing of the Creative Writing A-level in 2015 means that creative writing is very much marginalised within the wider English Language A-Level syllabus.

Linked to the rise of “accountability systems” in education (Theriault, 2021, p. 13), the commodification of education has resulted in a leaning towards overly product orientated approaches to the teaching creative writing not just in England but in other countries too. Price (2020), for example, outlines how in Western Australia policy dictates that audiences for creative writing are chosen and predetermined for students rather than by students. As a result, the focus of the teachers and the students is on the writing of a predetermined product rather than on the writing process. Redrafting of creative writing becomes is limited by feedback on how to effectively address predetermined audiences rather than how to creatively explore different aspects of the process.

Research since 2005: teachers’ professional development and adopting teacher-writer identities

Recent research into the teaching of writing in teacher education has focussed more broadly on literacy and writing instruction rather than creative writing. In the USA, for example, Myers et al. (2016) highlight a lack of focus on the teaching of writing instruction in most teacher preparation programmes. In France, Lavoie and Cavanagh (2023) analyse of the critical reflections of two teacher educators, who acknowledge how their approaches to teaching the pedagogy of writing places limits upon the way their preservice teachers teach writing in schools, with a leaning towards decontextualised, product-orientated approaches.

In England, despite the policy context outlined above, research into teacher development and the teaching of creative writing, has, however, taken a more process orientated approach. Grainger et al. (2005) book on teaching writing in primary school can be seen to mark this change. Fundamental to the teaching of creative writing are process approaches that facilitate students to undertake “purposeful writing which satisfies their need to communicate and harnesses their individuality and creativity” (Grainger et al., 2005, p. 11). Crucially, this involves picking up on the implications of Bizzaro’s (1993) research to encourage teachers to be “authentically modelling writing” (2005, p. 166). By sharing their actions as writers, teachers can demonstrate “the important principle of writing to learn, which involves writing, rewriting and restructuring as meaning evolves and understanding develops”, including “re-reading during writing [by] shuttling back and forth from their sense of what they wanted to say to the words on the page, and back to address what is available within them” (Grainger et al., 2005, pp. 167–169).

While Grainger et al. (2005) focus on teachers modelling creative writing processes, later research responds more fully to the implications of Bizarro’s work by encouraging teachers to adopt writer identities, whereby they also write alongside their students in class and engage in writing outside of school. Smith and Wrigley (2016), for example, set up and researched teachers’ writing groups, with teachers participating in these groups developing both their understandings of creative writing processes and their pedagogies. Cremin and Oliver’s (2017) systematic literature review of research into ‘teacher-writers’ built on this research by demonstrating how writing groups as professional development held the potential to allow teachers to adopt writer identities, countering issues relating to low self-confidence and negative writing histories. The subsequent Teachers as Writers project (Cremin et al., 2019) showed how working in writing groups with professional writers and critically reflecting upon their teaching of creative writing was successful in shaping teacher-writer identities – identities that they harnessed to motivate and inspire young writers in their classes. This project has parallels with research from the USA (Donovan et al., 2023), where critical reflection upon the teaching of writing and writer identities enabled experienced teachers to develop their teaching of writing practices.

Methodology

How do researchers measure and represent the conceptualisations and pedagogical approaches which inform the teaching of creative writing? This is a tricky problem for multiple reasons. Firstly, investigating teaching is not a straightforward procedure because it involves so many moveable parts: teachers, students, classroom context, etc. Secondly, as discussed in the Introduction, understanding what is involved in the teaching of creative writing must consider the nebulous nature of creative writing: what exactly is it?

To provide clarity and open-mindedness, we have decided to use Glăveanu’s ‘5A’s framework’ (2013) as a way of understanding how creative writing is conceptualised pedagogically in schools. For Glăveanu, creativity can be comprehended by examining 5A’s: actor, actions, artifact, affordances and audience. Glăveanu states that this framework “did not emerge out of a set of definitions” but rather is a view of creativity as being “concerned with the action of […] a group of actors in its constant interaction with multiple audiences and the affordances of the material world, leading to the generation of new and useful artifacts” (Glăveanu, 2013, p. 76).

Glăveanu’s model was attractive to us because it is so dynamic and richly contextual, with the creative process a “constant interaction with multiple audiences and the affordances of the material world”. This approach fits with the busy, ever-changing world of school teaching where there is constant flux. The actors in our paper are teachers and students who are all involved in the business of writing creatively. Their “actions” are fundamental to the teaching of creative writing and incorporates their approach. This may involve a leaning towards a more product approach, where affordances in the form of exemplar texts shape students’ artifacts; this may involve a learning towards a more process approach, where teachers share their own writing experiences and encourage students to select their own audiences and shape their own artifacts.

As indicated above, the policy context in England indicates that teachers’ actions and use of affordances tend to “alienate” students from the creative writing process (Lambirth, 2016), with affordances directed to predetermined audiences for creative writing and artifacts. The “audience” for the creative writing can become very narrow – an exam assessor – when other artifacts might be achieved by encouraging students to write for “real” audiences; themselves, the wider community. Glăveanu’s ‘5A’s framework’ helps us understand creative writing in its social, pedagogical and creative contexts, and provides us with a holistic way of analysing our data.

In thinking about how creative writing is approached pedagogically in schools, we also wondered whether primary school and secondary school teachers might approach the teaching of creative writing and its redrafting differently. This curiosity was based on our prior experiences in primary and secondary schools, which indicated that practices might be distinctly different. In England, this potential difference seems logical – primary school teachers teach the full range of subjects, with secondary school teachers specialising in specific subjects. As mentioned above, secondary school teachers of creative writing often have a degree in English and sometimes creative writing itself. To compare primary and secondary school teachers’ pedagogical actions in relation to their professional identities in primary and secondary school contexts, we decided to adopt Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner's (2015) theory “landscapes of practice” as a second theoretical lens. For Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015, p. 19), professional identity is the “constitutive texture” resulting from participation in a landscape of practice. Accordingly, we were curious about how primary and secondary schools teachers’ creative writing actions might be different within different landscapes, where they take on different professional identities.

In line with these underpinning theoretical perspectives, our research aims to answer the following questions:

RQ1. Can primary and secondary school teachers’ actions for the teaching of creative writing be seen as participation in different landscapes of practice?

RQ2. And, if different, what do these landscapes of practice for the teaching of creative writing look like and why?

To explore these questions, we collected data using an online survey. We gained ethical approval to conduct the survey from both our institutions and used our existing networks to contact these teachers – English teaching associations and networks, former students who are now teachers. At total of 37 teachers in England participated: 19 secondary school teachers; and 18 primary school teachers. The questions we asked in our survey were underpinned by the 5A’s of creativity and landscapes of practice. We asked about whether teachers “acted” creatively in their landscapes of practice, whether they wrote and read creative work themselves, how often they taught creative writing and whether they taught re-drafting of creative work and how often. The survey was numerical to the extent that we asked about the frequency they taught creative writing and its redrafting as well as confidence in teaching creative writing and its redrafting. However, the overall methodology of the survey was qualitative – we asked for teachers extended comments upon what they taught when they taught creative writing, their confidence levels when teaching creative writing, the content/pedagogy of what they taught and what they believed were the benefits of teaching creative writing and its redrafting.

Analysis of the qualitative survey

Our literature review demonstrates the ways in which the radical potential of research into creative writing pedagogies from the USA in the 1980s is not always realised in the policy context of England and other countries. It also demonstrates how whilst some this research takes places discretely in either primary or secondary school settings, little attention has been paid to teacher professional development and comparing teachers as actors who teach creative writing in these different landscapes of practice.

Below we present our analysis of our survey data which aims to do just that. In total, 19 secondary school teachers and 18 primary school teachers participated in the survey. As a group, the primary school teachers were more experienced than the secondary school teachers, with 12 having taught for 11 years or more. By contrast, none of the secondary school teachers had taught for 11 years or more, with 11 having taught between 6 and 10 years. All secondary school teachers taught English as their main subject. Our analysis includes both a description of some of the basic statistics relating to the two groups as well as a thematic approach, using the lenses of the 5A’s of creativity and landscapes of practice.

In line with Miles et al. (2020), our approach to data analysis involved three stages: immersion in the data; coding the data; and establishing patterns in the data to identify themes. Immersion in the data involved reading through the teacher surveys and using annotations to highlight anything of interest that related to our understanding of the literature, our theoretical lenses and our overarching research questions. At this stage we were open as possible to different interpretations of the data and were aware of the risk of using our theoretical lenses restrictively, leading us to “shoehorning” our data into themes that ignore other salient interpretations. Before coding the data, therefore, we sought to minimise this risk by interpreting the 5A’s in a broad, expansive fashion, using key inquiry questions and more specific questions relating to the 5A’s and the landscapes of practice. These inquiry questions are represented in Table 1.

By asking these theoretically informed questions, we were able to undertake an initial coding of our data. For example, in relation to the “Actors” inquiry questions about teachers having a “clear writing pedagogy”, we coded teacher responses from both landscapes as either “leaning towards a product approach” or “leaning towards a process approach”. In relation to this inquiry question, we identified a pattern in the data that demonstrated how secondary school teachers tended to mix their approaches more than primary school teachers. We also coded the data in relation to the teacher’s confidence in teaching creative writing and found that primary school teachers tended to be more confident than secondary school teachers. This enabled us to identify a pattern and a potential causal link between primary school teacher confidence and their leaning towards product approaches, helping us to identify the theme of The relationship between teacher-writer identity and pedagogical leanings in a primary landscape of practice. Using this process (Miles et al., 2020), we ultimately identified five key themes, which we discuss below, using the language of our theoretical lenses.

Findings and discussion

The use of our chosen theoretical lenses to analyse the data meant that our approach to data analysis was abductive. As a consequence of this approach, we found it necessary to present our Findings and Discussion together, in the form of the five following themes:

redrafting of creative writing increasingly marginalised in secondary landscapes of practice due to accountability measures;

teacher-writer identities improving confidence in the teaching of creative writing and its redrafting in primary but not secondary landscapes of practice;

the relationship between teacher-writer identity and pedagogical leanings in a primary landscape of practice;

increased agency in pedagogical actions for teachers in secondary landscapes of practice; and

the prevalence of limited conceptualisations of the affordances of redrafting artifacts.

Redrafting of creative writing increasingly marginalised in secondary landscapes of practice due to accountability measures

According to our survey, teaching creative writing as an action was more prevalent in primary than secondary school landscapes of practice. In the primary school, 68% of respondents (n = 13) said they taught creative writing for at least 6 h every half term (i.e. an hour of creative writing a week). This contrasted with only 11% of secondary school teachers (n = 2) saying their taught creative writing for at least 6 h every half term, with 42% (n = 8) teaching creative writing once a term (i.e. once every 12 weeks). In contrast to this picture where the teaching of creative writing as an action is more prevalent in primary schools, perhaps surprisingly 11% of primary school teachers (n = 2) said they never taught creative writing, whereas all secondary school teachers taught creative writing at least once a term. As explored in theme 3 below, for these primary school teachers the lack of teaching creative writing as an action was due to school literacy policy that leant firmly towards a product approach to the teaching of writing. In this approach, the affordances of “pre – written models shared […] at the beginning of all writing. Children are being taught to paraphrase, not write creatively.” Within the primary school landscape of practice, the action of teaching creative writing appears, therefore, more polarised than the in the secondary landscape.

In both landscapes of practice, however, the action of teaching the redrafting of creative writing is relatively less frequent than the teaching of creative writing itself. In primary schools, where 68% of teachers teach creative writing for 6 h every half term, 55% of teachers (n = 10) teach the redrafting of creative writing three times a term with 17% (n = 3) never teaching the redrafting of creative writing. In secondary schools, there is a similar relative drop off, with 63% (n = 12) teaching the redrafting of creative once a term. Thinking about redrafting as part of the writing process, we also wondered how the teaching of the redrafting of creative writing as an action compared with the teaching of the redrafting of writing as an action in both landscapes. In primary schools, our survey shows how teachers felt these actions were similar in terms of frequency; in secondary schools, however, 37% said they taught the redrafting of writing significantly more than the redrafting of creative writing, with the rest saying the amount of time spent on these actions was similar.

With the action of the teaching of the redrafting of creative writing generally more marginalised in the secondary than the primary school landscape of practice, teachers from secondary schools referred to a “crowded curriculum” as the main reason for this marginalisation. As one secondary school teacher attested, “there isn’t much space for re-visiting and re-drafting work. Students might have the opportunity to respond to written feedback and re-draft part of a piece of writing, but we don’t tend to re-draft whole pieces.” Interestingly, for this teacher a “lack of space” was seen as symptomatic of the way in which creative writing is ultimately examined (AQA, 2023) in the secondary landscape of practice: “I suppose we always have one eye on having to produce writing in an exam situation, where you have to get it right first time.” With educational accountability measures (Theriault, 2021) in England not valuing the action of the redrafting of creative writing in the secondary landscape, the students as writers appear to be undertaking actions which value the final product, with the examiner as an audience ultimately shaping the nature of the creative writing artifact. Teaching actions which position the artifact as a predetermined product are explored further in theme 3 below.

Teacher-writer identities improving confidence in the teaching of creative writing and its redrafting in primary but not secondary landscapes of practice

Our research indicates that teachers lack confidence in their pedagogical actions, particularly when teaching the redrafting of creative writing. Both primary and secondary teachers’ responses illustrated a lack of confidence in the teaching of redrafting, both in the quantitative and qualitative data we gathered. Furthermore, no primary and secondary teachers believed that they were teaching redrafting very effectively, with a higher percentage of secondary teachers saying that they taught redrafting somewhat effectively. While these statistics are only suggestive, they do highlight a salient issue; in the landscapes of practice we are examining, these actors feel limited confidence and therefore agency in promoting a vital aspect of the creative writing process.

Secondary teachers who identified themselves as creative writers did not necessarily feel more confident in teaching creative writing and its redrafting in the classroom. However, more in line with Cremin and Oliver’s research (2017), primary school teachers did. This could imply that the knowledge secondary school teachers gained from engaging in creative writing and redrafting actions makes them more aware of the complexities of the writing process and how difficult creative writing and creative writing redrafting is to teach. Why are primary school teachers who identify as teacher-writers more confident in teaching creative writing than their secondary counterparts? The factors at play would be a fruitful area of discussion for teachers to explore in cross-sector professional development dialogues – as demonstrated in our discussion of theme 3 below, the difference may relate to how creative writing is conceptualised by teachers and taught in primary and secondary landscapes.

The relationship between teacher-writer identity and pedagogical leanings in a primary landscape of practice

A central conundrum for actors involved with the pedagogies of creative writing revolves around the degree to which teachers focus upon the use of material affordances to serve as exemplars for predetermined products of creative writing or nurture a deeper sense of agency in their students by focusing more on process approaches. In a landscape of practice where high-stakes, summative examinations are prevalent as “accountability systems” (Theriault, 2021, p. 13), it was not surprising for us to discover that a leaning towards a product approach to the teaching of creative writing is prevalent in both primary and secondary schools.

However, our analysis of open comments demonstrates that the product approach is more predominant in the primary than the secondary school landscape of practice. One primary school teacher writes:

We have been told by the academy to teach pre-written models shared between parallel classes at the beginning of all writing. Children are being taught to paraphrase, not write creatively.

Neither the teachers or the students as actors in this primary school landscape of practice have much agency, with students being instructed to “paraphrase” or summarise information as predetermined products rather than express themselves through a process approach to creative writing.

A different approach evident in the primary landscape was to teach children how to write in different genres. However, this use of genre theory was again more in line with a product approach to the teaching of creative writing. The original conception of genre as social action (Martin, Christie, and Rothery, 1987) is not evident in the teachers’ responses, suggesting a predetermined approach to redrafting by teachers as actors, with process based approaches to teaching creative writing and the related responsive approaches to redrafting not mentioned. One primary school teacher wrote:

“We take a genre-based approach to writing. For example, in Y5 [9–10 -year-olds] across the year, the children will write all of the following genres of text: memoir, explanation text, setting-focused short story, biography, poetry, character-focused short story, a persuasive speech, a book review and a scientific report. For all of these revising/redrafting is one of the writing processes that our children go through and are specifically taught skills for (idea generation, planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing).”

Here, the focus is upon the genre of the piece, with a skills-based approach towards redrafting which is linear. This does not take into account that some writers are not planners but are “discovery” writers and do not plan initially, but need to start writing (Myhill and Watson, 2011, p. 54) in a more process orientated way. Creative writing is mixed in with other types of writing such as book reviewing and scientific reports. Another primary school teacher wrote:

“We redraft over the period of a week or more for each written genre unit completed. We also encourage editing as children write.”

This genre-based writing approach suggests that students are not given much agency with regards their artifact and audience and that redrafting is editing based upon a predetermined notion of the final artifact. In line with a product view of creative writing, primary schoolteachers’ attitudes towards redrafting appears to be procedural, with students being instructed to follow steps to redraft. One primary school teacher wrote:

“When we are writing an extended narrative, we write the first draft in their English exercise book. We edit and improve in purple pen, then the children write up on lined A4 paper which I will make into a book for them.”

Here, the teacher is the agent in charge of the artifacts of creative writing, making the books for the children, rather than the children as actors making books for themselves.

As indicated in the theme above, the primary landscape seems more polarised with confident teacher-writers leaning to more of a process approach. One teacher said:

“As a result of my being the English lead, I am trialling the teaching of creative writing every week. The idea behind this was to develop a love for writing and give children a space to write without the pressure of [spelling, punctuation and grammar]! In these sessions they have a chance to play with words. So far it has had a positive impact on the rest of the writing curriculum.”

Data like this suggests that confident teacher-writers in primary schools feel empowered enough to challenge predetermined artifacts, questioning the exclusive use of product approaches, such as using acronyms as planning tools for creative writing. When these process approaches are used in primary schools, this tends to be as a reaction to exams and formulaic strategies. These actors, like the English lead cited above, are more experienced teachers who are confident in teaching creative writing and who adopt creative writer identities in their landscapes of practice. They have agency and use affordances which they feel will be meaningful to their students, such encouraging them to write for publication and each other. This accounts for the polarisation of teaching approaches within the primary landscape of practice: product-based approaches predominate meaning that more confident teacher-writers tend to react and lean towards more process approaches. The product-based approaches can give those teachers who do not perceive themselves as teacher-writers more confidence in their teaching of creative writing; the process-based approaches can validate the identities held by more confident teacher-writers.

Increased agency in pedagogical actions for teachers in secondary landscapes of practice

In contrast, secondary schoolteachers are more likely to mix product approaches with process approaches. One teacher wrote about “planning using 10 nouns. Using films/tv shows for inspiration”. While using particular nouns might be suggestive of a product approach – dictating the types of words students should use – the use of films/tv as affordances indicates a leaning towards process approaches. Another teacher wrote:

“I do some of the following:

use an image;

use audio-visual prompts;

use extracts as inspiration; and

writing collaboratively.”

Here, we see a teacher using open-ended starting points which embrace all modes. This landscapes of practice is very different from a heavy leaning towards a product approach that is driven by genre or paraphrasing pre-existing material evident in primary schools. Secondary school teachers have more agency to change their approach to the teaching of creative writing, expressing the belief that there are “loads of ways” of teaching creative writing, ranging from using objects, pictures, film and extracts of fiction to prompt and inspire. One teacher wrote:

“Often find the surrealists have great ways in. I have lessons based on Burrows’ (sic) cut ups (I know he got it from elsewhere but he is a good way in) and the exquisite corpse method. I use the latter for creating characters.”

Here, this teacher’s sense of agency and cultural reference points is striking, using artists like the Surrealists, and the writing strategies of “beat” writer William Burroughs.

In the secondary landscape of practice, this process approach is balanced with an emphasis on a product approach with some teachers using strategies like “vocabulary banks” – lists of words to be used in a story – but they also use approaches which allow students as actors more choice. Indicative of this approach is this teacher who spoke of:

Using picture prompts; structure strips; language techniques; sentence structures

Another teacher speaks of teaching:

Showing not telling, sensory description, story structure, narrative point of view, descriptive techniques, genre features.

In these two quotes from different teachers, we see open-ended process pedagogies such as using picture prompts, sensory description, narrative point of view being mixed with the more closed use of sentence structures, genre features, story structure maps/plans that students need to learn and imitate.

What is clear is that in the secondary landscape of practice, regardless of whether teachers hold a teacher-writer identity or not, there is a recognition that both product and process approaches as actions can be beneficial to students undertaking creative writing. This is perhaps underpinned by these actors’ understanding of the complexity of creative writing and the way in which adopting a single product or process approach might not work for all students – an understanding of complexity which, in contrast to the confident teacher-writers in the primary landscape of practice, is deepened further by teachers who hold assured teacher-writer identities.

In relation to accountability systems, it may also indicate that secondary school teachers seem more adept at playing the game of pleasing the other influential actors in their landscapes of practice through using product approaches, while quietly promoting pedagogies which are much more about developing the students’ personal expression.

The prevalence of limited conceptualisations of the affordances of redrafting artifacts

We asked primary and secondary school teachers what they felt were the benefits of redrafting creative writing – the responses of both groups indicate conceptualisations of this action which are about presenting a perfect product. Predominantly, the action of redrafting creative writing in both landscapes of practice was about technical accuracy. Both long-serving and younger teachers held this conceptualisation. In the landscape of the secondary school, where a blend of product and process actions for teaching creative writing were more prevalent than the primary school landscape, a teacher of 1–5 years of experience saw redrafting as improving “accuracy”, as did a teacher of 11 years plus experience. Similarly, a teacher with 6–10 years’ experience in secondary schools saw redrafting as an action to use “more precise vocabulary and punctuation”. This indicates that in both landscapes the current policy context in England (DfE, 2014), which demands English teachers teach punctuation, grammar and spelling over content, appears to be all-pervasive in shaping the actions of teachers as actors in relation to redrafting, regardless of prior experience.

The potential for the action of the redrafting of creative writing to be more than a technical activity was less prevalent in the open responses. Where it was apparent in both landscapes of practice, however, was in the idea that redrafting could enable writers as actors to gain critical distance from their writing. One primary school teacher, for example, felt that redrafting as an action was an “opportunity to reflect”. A secondary teacher felt that redrafting as an action could make a “student a critic of their own work, which is often the first time they can critique with an authorial understanding”. And another secondary teacher felt that redrafting could promote “metacognition”.

Few responses promoted the action of critically reflecting upon what creative writing meant for the creative writing process and the ultimate production of creative writing artifacts. Only two secondary school teachers (no primary school teachers) related the idea of critical reflection to the idea of craft. For one secondary teacher, the action of the redrafting of creative writing was about “crafting devices instead of putting them in randomly”. This idea was taken further by another secondary school teacher, who also considered the ways in which students might think about crafting artifacts with an audience in mind: “[redrafting] gets students to really think about their message and the emotions they want to convey and about the crafting.” This conceptualisation suggests the agency that can be given to students as actors in the action of redrafting creative writing, with students making decisions about how they might appeal to an audience of their own choosing.

There was also a slightly different conceptualisation of redrafting of creative writing as an action from a primary school teacher, who was confident in teaching creative writing, and who held a teacher-writer identity. For this teacher, redrafting as an action was an opportunity for students to “express their ideas and creativity and take agency of their writing.” Whilst for the secondary teacher agency is a more implicit concept in the action of redrafting, here agency is explicitly part of that action. Furthermore, redrafting of creative writing is seen as an action which is fundamentally “creative” – a chance to “express” ideas and create new meanings. This is the opposite to the technical conceptualisation of the action of redrafting of creative writing held by most teachers in both landscapes of practice.

Conclusion

Our research is potentially skewed by the fact that we recruited our participants through networks relating the teaching of English, including creative writing. While we conclude that creative writing is particularly marginalised within secondary schools, taught through predominantly product-based approaches in primary schools, and dominated by overly technical redrafting in both landscapes, this means the picture of creative writing actions in schools in England probably leans further towards a product approach than our research indicates.

If students as actors are to overcome the alienation (Lambirth, 2016), they experience from overly product orientated approaches to the teaching of creative writing, often shaped by the misappropriation of genre theory (Martin, Christie and Rothery, 1987), we believe that two changes need to take place. Firstly, policy needs to be reformed to move away from an overly technicist view of creative writing held in both landscapes of practice (DfE, 2014; AQA, 2023). Linked to this, the way creative writing is assessed as a product in secondary schools needs to change – the re-introduction of portfolio-based coursework (Bishop, 1990), where students have choice over their audiences (Price, 2020), would mark a bold but much-needed reform. Portfolio-based coursework would both acknowledge the centrality of redrafting as a creative action in the creative writing process as well as serving, over time, to provide both teachers and students with affordances with which to facilitate redrafting.

Secondly, professional development for teachers in both landscapes is needed in relation to pedagogical actions for creative writing and its redrafting. As indicated in our literature review, best practice happens when teachers write alongside their students (Bizzaro, 1993; Cremin and Oliver, 2017) and encourage the writing to be aimed at authentic audiences. In the primary landscape of practice, our research shows how it is only through adopting a teacher-writer identity that resistance to overly product approaches to the teaching of creative writing is possible. More broadly, teachers of all ages need the space to develop their writing practices and to reflect upon their own processes of redrafting (Smith and Wrigley, 2016; Cremin et al., 2019; Donovan et al., 2023). This could start in teacher preparation programmes, with a focus on primary school teachers. As demonstrated in a review of preparation for the teaching of writing in the USA (Myers et al., 2016), development of pedagogical understandings of writing instruction is limited.

Some of the key differences we have outlined in conceptualisations and practices between primary and secondary schools landscapes, notably the overuse of product-based teaching actions in primary landscapes, and some of the differences we have outlined within discrete landscapes of practice, notably how some primary school teachers feel more confident to challenge the product-based approach, with one conceptualising redrafting as “creative”, indicate that professional development should also involve teachers working across schools. This would potentially broaden the ways in which teachers in both landscapes understand creative writing, its pedagogy and its redrafting, helping teachers as actors cross boundaries and achieve “hybridisation” of practice (Clark, 2017, p. 245).

This is an interesting point as the current focus on boundary crossing in research into the teaching of creative writing exclusively involves professional writers working alongside teachers (Cremin and Oliver, 2017; Cremin et al., 2019). Given that writers should not be seen as the best teachers of writing (Bizzaro, 1993), it could be that teachers themselves, some of whom may hold teacher-writer identities, are more effective in developing pedagogical actions and moving beyond overly technicist conceptualisations of creative writing redrafting, which lean towards a product approach, within both landscapes of practice. Hybridisation of practice in this sense, therefore, would involve primary and secondary landscapes of creative writing practices coming together. Our next steps, therefore, are to do just that – to facilitate the critical reflection of primary and secondary teachers, who are interested in thinking about their pedagogical actions for creative writing and its redrafting.

Author Affiliation

Table 1.

Inquiry questions relating to our theoretical framework

The 5A’s	Key inquiry question	Specific questions	Landscapes of practice question
Actors	What is the teacher’s understanding of the nature of creative writing?	Does the teacher have a clear writing pedagogy? Does the teacher adopt a teacher-writer identity? What roles do students take?	What kind of creative writing is everyone doing in their landscape of practice?
Actions	What are the learning activities and do they lean more towards a product or process approach?	Are the tasks open-ended or closed? How does redrafting take place?	What is the balance between product and process approaches in the landscape of practice?
Artifact	What kinds of creative writing are produced?	Are the artifacts predetermined by teachers or do students have choice? How does the activity of redrafting play out in product and process approaches?	How do actors feel about the artifacts produced in the landscape of practice?
Affordances	What material affordances do actors draw upon?	Which affordances does the teacher use and how are they used? Do the material affordances and pedagogical approaches benefit the students in their creative writing?	To what degree is the landscape of practice conducive to the production of creative artifacts?
Audience	Who are the audiences for creative writing artifacts?	Is the audience determined for students or by students? Are real audiences addressed?	Who decides the audience for creative writing artifacts in the landscape of practice?

Source: Authors’ own work

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