The essential conditions of writing workshop: Proposing a new conceptual model

Abstract

Writing workshop, as conceived by Donald Graves and other US researchers in the 1980s, positively transformed the writing instruction of many teachers. However, others experienced considerable challenges as they tried to create workshop classrooms. This article examines the three historical conditions that defined workshop: (1) choice, (2) time and (3) response, highlighting several factors that may lead to unsuccessful practices as teachers attempt to implement them. Then, based on an analysis of the early work of the original researchers and the practices of exemplary workshop educators, it identifies three other conditions—(4) organization and management to promote classroom movement, (5) community-building to create a shared culture of writers and (6) living a publicly literate life—that appear to support the successful implementation of the original three conditions. Finally, pulling from an analysis of the contemporary work of current workshop researchers and educators, it identifies one final condition that was conspicuously not represented in the early work but nonetheless appears essential in connecting and contextualizing all conditions: (7) the introduction of writing purpose to promote empowerment and equity. Together, these conditions form a new and more holistic theoretical model that may now be examined, interpreted, implemented in practice and evolved.