Teacher produced video tours of classrooms: what matters for their teaching of writing?

Abstract

Australian literacy classrooms are shaped by an unprecedented time of national curriculum reform. Australian teachers follow a national English curriculum with the pressures of national standardised assessment, state interpretation (state-based syllabus and support documents) and localised system requirements influencing their pedagogical practices. It is timely to consider how teachers recontextualise these external pressures in their teaching of writing. This paper uses reflexivity theory to investigate the interplay between social, cultural and individual influences on the materiality of writing classrooms. Through our conceptual framing of reflexive materiality, we analyse video tours created by elementary teachers (Grades 3–6) to highlight classroom components pertinent to their writing pedagogy and practices. Our analysis focused on theoretically-based instruction practices, teacher professional knowledge, opportunities for students to write, and the impact of the external context on the materiality of the classroom environment. Findings demonstrate a reflexive relationship between teachers’ system-based contexts and the substance of classroom objects, spaces, and teachers’ ideas and philosophies regarding writing.