Writing and writer development: Pedagogical challenges and perspectives

This chapter presents pedagogical challenges and perspectives and other publications from Writing to Learn, Learning to Write, and highlights aspects and insights provided by our longitudinal research. It discusses the transitions in writing, genres in disciplinary writing, writing to document or to construct knowledge, response practices, and student-initiated writing. Transitions hold obvious opportunities for writing and writer development when moving from one educational context to another, students encounter new fields of knowledge and expertise likely to expand their repertoires of writing and to inspire identity work. Relatively formalised disciplinary genres in the school subjects play a major role in students’ writing and writer development in upper secondary school. As illustrated in the writer narratives, the disciplinary genres are gateways to the subjects, but they may also challenge students’ sense of self or voice in writing. Students in the Danish upper secondary programmes are required to write in order to document and construct learning and knowledge.