Extended formats: Students’ development as knowledge-constructing writers

This chapter presents a study that traces two students’ writer trajectories through three extended formats, examining signs of writing and writer development. The two students, Jens and Sofia, attended a natural science specialisation in the general upper secondary programme; their specialisation subjects were biotechnology, mathematics, and physics. The main curricular document that regulates the extended formats is the Study Specialisation Project syllabus. The keyword in this document is disciplinary immersion. The chronotopical ambivalence of the curricular documents constitutes the curricular possibility of selfhood available for student writers when approaching the extended formats. The curricular aims are re-formulated and re-interpreted in school instructional materials and further transformed in writing prompts and problem statements. Regarded as a school writing practice, the time and place/space of the extended formats constitute a double pattern. The chapter argues that the extended formats hold strong potentials for the teaching and learning of content as well as writing.