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Preservice teachers explore their conceptions of the writing process with young pen pals

Abstract Linking preservice teachers’ professional education with meaningful classroom practice is an important goal of teacher preparation (Burk, 1989; Darling‐Hammond, 1997, 1998; Goodlad, 1990; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). In this study, 44 preservice teachers enrolled in two language arts methods courses were paired as pen pals with two classes of first and second graders for ten weeks. The purpose of the study was to explore the influence of the children's writing on the preservice teachers’ conceptions of writing as a complex growth process (Dyson, 1996) rather than a discreet set of skills. Throughout the ten‐week study, the preservice teachers examined the developmental nature of the writing process using the six‐trait writing analysis (Spandel and Stiggins, 1997), wrote journal entries relating what they were learning about the writing process based on their regular analysis of the children's letters, and engaged in follow‐up classroom discussion and peer verification of an on‐going assessment of their pen pal's writing. The preservice teachers’ participation in a shared classroom experience generated genuine questions and concerns within the context of an authentic approach to teacher preparation (Boyd, Boll, Brawner, & Villaume, 1998). While many preservice teachers began the study thinking of writing as a set of linear skills to teach, their paradigms shifted as they came to recognize the highly predictable and developmental nature of the children's writing evidenced through emerging linguistic patterns and strong student voice.