Tertiary teachers’ conceptions and declared practices about reading and writing in their disciplines

Abstract

This paper examines the declared practices and conceptions on reading and writing that can be inferred from a study in Argentina. After passing a survey to teachers of various subjects in 50 institutions that train future high-school teachers, we collected 544 valid responses. In this article, we focus on one of the open questions that describe the actions taken to address the students’ difficulties to write and understand what they read, recognized by most respondents. Although many teachers claim to deal with reading and/or writing in their field, most of them tend to intervene at the beginning of the assignments (requiring tasks, giving guidelines, providing techniques) or at the end (correcting students’ productions). A smaller proportion of teachers expressed that they support students during these tasks and make time for it in their classes. Some of them also promote interaction between teacher and students or among peers, through discussion on what has been read or written. Two modes of dealing with reading and/or writing within their subjects emerged from these data: the "peripheral" and the "intertwined" teaching. According to the theoretical "writing across the curriculum" and "dialogic teaching" approaches, we examine these results in terms of the conceptions which could correspond to the declared practices. We also discuss the impact that these teaching practices would have on the training of future teachers.

Keywords

• enseñanza
• lectura
• escritura
• disciplinas
• concepciones
• profesores