Was it Something I Said?

EXPLORING TEACHER TALK DURING

WRITING CONFERENCES

RYAN MYERS
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
This study

Focused on writing conferences with 3 students from

the same writing class
Examined my words and actions before and during
the conferences
Showed significant differences between what I said,
what I believe, and what I actually did
I. Lee (2009):
The majority of feedback studies address the act of teacher
feedback per se, and not much is known about teachers beliefs
and the extent to which their beliefs translate into practice. (p.
13)
What I used to tell students

Content is more important than grammar

I like to ask questions, especially Are you sure?
I dont want anyone to write like me. I want you to
write like yourself, find your own voice
I want the conference to be useful for you
And I dont say it to students, but I dont want to
appropriate students work (Sommers, 1982)
My naivet

Lerner (2005):
The writing conference also often seems nave in its ideals, in
its purity as a teaching moment. Instead, we know that
student and teacher each brings ideologies, assumptions, and
expectations to the writing conference that can potentially
clash and make the work grind to a halt. (p. 203)
This seems to be the case in my conference with Ron
(data coming up)
What would be acceptable to you?

What would be a good amount (%) to talk during a

writing conference?
As little as possible
30%
50%
80%
All the time
 My numbers from the study

Conference with Jo Conference with Ron Conference with Tim

Total Words 1582 1713 2360

Spoken by the 1225 1592 2005
teacher

Teacher 77% 93% 85%

Talk
 My shift to grammar talk

Conference with Jo Conference with Ron Conference with Tim

Conference 10:56 11:02 15:56

Length:
minutes :
seconds

The Move to 5:57 9:23 6:59

Grammar Talk
Why does this matter?

Rysdam & Johnson-Shull (2016):

despite the magnitude of its difficulty and importance,
conversation about teacher response to student work has
gotten short shrift in our scholarly discussions about writing
instructionData reporting what teachers actually do when
they respond to student work is scant, and there is little
theoretical continuity enabling us to position the conversation
beneath a pedagogical North Star. (p. 70)
Detractors

Hiatt (1975):
At the risk of heresy, I should like to point out that such
conferences are not automatically beneficial to a student. They
might even be detrimental (p. 39).
Schiff (1978):
Alas, I was perpetuating what Mary Hiatt calls "the myth of the
conference." I thought personal attention and physical
closeness would somehow clarify composing strategies and
conventions that had proven confusing in the whole-class
setting. What I did not realize was that my critical, escapable
conference presence served mainly to widen the gap between
my students and myself. (p. 294)
The call for change

Ferris (2013):
On the contrary, they [teachers] maintained their practices
despite scholarly research and official documents that urged
otherwise. The findings of these recent studies therefore raise
interesting questions about why teachers response behaviors
deviate not only from expert and supervisor
recommendations but also from their own self-reported
beliefs. (emphasis in original, p. 9)
What am I doing now?

For the most recent conferences that I had with

students
I asked them to tell me about their paper, what was
working, and what was not
I only talked about grammar if the student brought it
up first
I tried to prompt the students to talk more than I did
But I still think about conferencing

Black (1998):
It seems to me that it's not only me who needs to rethink
conferencing as a standard, ordinary, unquestioned practice
We have to examine what it is we want from conferencing and
we have to explore the possibility that it often doesn't
accomplish those things-it just doesn't work If a critical
analysis of conferencing has shown that it is something less
than we had hoped, that it fails in many ways to achieve what
we wanted it to, then we can still go back to the hope while
interrogating the practice. (p. 167)
What do I hope youll take away?

Explore what you think you do in conferences

Record conferences you have with students to see
what you really do
Take any steps you deem necessary and/or
appropriate
Works Cited

Black, L. J. (1998). Between talk and teaching: Reconsidering the writing conference.
Logan, UT: All USU Press Publications.
Ferris, D. R. (2014). Responding to student writing: Teachers' philosophies and
practices. Assessing Writing, 19, 6-23.
Hiatt, M. P. (1975). Students at bay: The myth of the conference. College Composition
and Communication, 26(1), 38-41.
Lee, I. (2009). Ten mismatches between teachers beliefs and written feedback
practice. ELT Journal, 63(1), 13-22.
Lerner, N. (2005). The teacher-student writing conference and the desire for
intimacy. College English, 68(2), 186-208.
Rysdam, S., & Johnson-Shull, L. (2016). Introducing feedforward: Renaming and
reframing our repertoire for written response. Journal of the Assembly for Expanded
Perspectives on Learning, 21, 69-85.
Schiff, P. M. (1978). Revising the writing conference. College Composition and
Communication, 29(3), 294-296.
Sommers, N. (1982). Responding to student writing. College Composition and
Communication, 33(2), 148-156.
For more details

This slide show is available online

Check out the info on the website below (also on the
handouts)
http://ryanmyersauthor.weebly.com/teacher-resour
ces.html
Youll also find other resources that might be helpful
for you or a teacher you know
There is also a QR code on the handout that should
work to get you what you need
Q&A

Im happy to field any questions and will provide

answers as best I can.