Shared Accountability: How One School Is Reforming a Writing Curriculum through Sustained Engaged Scholarship

ABSTRACT Many high schools in the United States are contending with modest student writing achievement and looking for ways to enhance teachers’ writing instruction. This is especially the case for schools deemed to be “underperforming” and struggling to reform writing pedagogy against an accumulation of teacher and leadership turnover, limited resources, minimal teacher preparation in writing pedagogy, and a persistent gap in student literacy development. Realizing optimal learning conditions cannot be addressed by a single entity, we conducted an engaged scholarship study focused on writing reform in a high school facing these very issues. Through a school-university partnership carried out across three years’ time, we witnessed the transformation of teachers as they participated in sustained professional development, collaboration, and examination of their practices. In the present study, we turned the lens on ourselves to examine the process of conducting engaged scholarship. We found enacting collective efficacy through shared research and knowledge with a literacy coach and ninth and tenth grade English teachers brought about incremental and sustained writing reform and reframed our views of researcher roles and responsibilities.