Expanding the collaborative writing research framework: A longitudinal analysis of how collaborative and independent writers orient to writing spaces

Recent reviews of the L2 collaborative writing (CW) literature have highlighted a propensity for researchers to rely on learner and task-related variables to explore CW phenomena. However, this focus limits how scholars conceptualize CW by overlooking the wider educational context that accompanies CW activities and how writers orient to said spaces. Investigating how writers perceive the CW landscape is important as their perceptions are known to impact writing development. Engaging a systems orientation to writing spaces, this study examined how students in different writing conditions perceive the writing landscape. This work followed two intact university classes (one engaged in CW, and one not) over one semester, and collected data from five iterations of a system mapping task and interviews with students. The CW group perceived a more nuanced and complex perspective of the writing space, comparatively. Cluster analyses also revealed that both groups oriented similarly to two variable sets: task and environmental factors, and learner and environmental variables. This study demonstrates how CW positively impacts writers’ perceptions of the writing space and encourages instructors to help CW students realize and take advantage of the wider context that CW is embedded in. This work also expands the CW research framework.