I've perused four more articles that focus on "audience awareness" and how online writing "may" help students push towards becoming better writers. I'm finding studies that parallel my thinking, yet focus on elementary or middle school writers with a specific audience designated before they post their written work onto the web for anyone to find and read. This post will move from a broad conversation addressing the insight of Starr Lewis at the Kentucky Department of Education, and move towards three qualitative studies. Looking at Starr Lewis's thinking is close to home; Kentucky's writing program fostered over twelve years of growth within me as a teacher of writing in Kentucky.
The State of Kentucky is celebrated for its portfolio assessment. In Kentucky, students are expected to be writers, K - 12, and teachers are responsible for keeping writing folders for students every year. In 4th grade, 7th grade and 12th grade, students produce a writing portfolio to be assessed as part of a school's accountability. Starr Lewis, a leader in portfolio assessment in Kentucky and now the associate commissioner for the Office of Academic and Professional Development at the Kentucky Department of Education, reflected on Audience Awareness (2001), as it pertains to Kentucky's advanced writing curriculum. Since 1990, Kentucky has drawn much attention to its portfolio assessment and this attention continues today.
Lewis (2001) states four beliefs about Kentucky's Writing portfolios that should always be on the table: 1. Assessment does affect instruction, 2. All students deserve the opportunity to learn to express their thoughts and beliefs in writing, 3. Education should prepare students for the types of writing they will do throughout their lives and 4. Education should open doors for all students. A classroom that sets goals for writing assessment will be a classroom that fosters better writing instruction. Before the educational reform in Kentucky, students were expected to write for various audiences in the State's program of studies, but they did so very little because it wasn't assessed. She notes that students wrote seldom and when they did, it was always in forms for their teachers to assess. The writing portfolio process introduced students to writing for a variety of purposes and for a variety of audiences, and writing occurs more often in Kentucky, now, because it is factored into the way the State assesses its students.
Even so, understanding "authentic audience" remains a struggle (Lewis, 2001). More specifically, Lewis writes, "Without a connection to the world outside the classroom, there is no audience other than the teacher or classmates. Because the outside connection has not really been established in most classrooms, the best a student can do is to write as if he or she were addressing an audience for a particular purpose." (retrieved: http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_ single_ftPES.jhtml). Her point, however, is that a contrived audience is superficial and makes for unauthentic student writing. Teachers should teach writing, then, as a means for real-world experience.
In 2008, using the Internet, especially Blogs, can be one way to push teachers and students to think about ways for writing to transcend classrooms. When teachers and students probe who might read a student's piece of work, why they might want to read it, what criticisms the work may bring, etc., teachers and students enter the irreplaceable conversations of what real writers wrestle with -- conversations that are "remarkable" (Lewis, 2001). In summary, audience awareness is a key factor in developing students as writers. The Internet is a place to initiate conversations about audience awareness and online publishing.
Henderson & Joyce (2005) looked to pre-school and elementary classrooms to determine that students often find an audience for their thinking and writing in teachers, peers and/or other adults in the room. They determined that developing a sense of audience begins with signing an artist's name. Through school sharing and participation, audience construction is started. Understanding what is expected and valued by audience members helps young students to develop an awareness of the types of information, explanations, visual aides, and content audiences expected. The conversations around these relationships is where the teaching occurrs. (There may be a parallel here to Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development in that as students become writers, they must grow comfortable, at their own pace, to how their ideas and words are received by those who read their work. Therefore audience-awareness is a developed process).
Karchmer-Klein (2007) looked specifically at 4th graders as they moved their writing towards Internet publishing and noticed that ability did not factor in how students used electronic features for designing how their writing looked online (with images, font choice and spacing) and that offering literacy instruction with the goal of online publications increased students' audience awareness. When writers are more able to understand their readers, they are more able to design more effective writing. Through reading and analyzing online texts, a young writer becomes more equipped with what their writing should look like. What is new with online writing, though, is that now a writer must understand how to use online features to create meaning for their readers: audio, font, video, graphics, color, hyperlinks, etc.. Her findings suggest that their is a relationship between literacy instruction and the development of audience awareness while writing for online publication. Her study also notes that further work is still needed, especially when reconceptualizing a global audience who may find written work online. Technology is changing the way educators should be teaching writing and requires innovative thinking that researchers are only beginning to understand.
Garthwait (2007) studied the use of online composition with 7th grade students. Interestingly, she discovered that students were receiving useful instruction in a computer lab class about audience awareness and online writing that was untapped by the language arts teachers who shared the same students with the computer instructor. There is potential for collaborative learning and integration, especially because the computer teacher offered much insight on how posting to the web requires an awareness of what individuals desire to see. Recognizing a multimodal reality of today's student learner, Garthwait (2007) discusses how employing tools that appeal to a wired generation makes sense. Although words are one tool used by writers, the online writer is allowed graphics, video, audio, etc. that also help convey meaning and understanding. Audience awareness shapes composition, and the new space for writing -- the Internet -- opens new conversations about audience.
Perhaps teachers have been lacking with their instruction and guidance on how audience awareness creates good writers (Garthwait, 2007): "Digital writing becomes powerful because it has the potential to meld easily verbal, visual and auditory communication: a see-saw between abstract (lingual modes) and intuitive (graphic arts modes" (retrieved http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/results_single _fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=CE). The computer lab teachers helped students gain electronic literacy skills that other educators need to promote, as well. In the computer lab, students were able to focus on specific audiences with knowledge of strategies used by online writers. There are new semiotic tools used by today's writers that are used to recognize who the audiences are. Students learned a great deal about significant writing skills while learning about computer skills. In many ways, the processes go hand in hand, but at this school being studied, the connection was not yet made.
Garthwait, A. (2007). Middle school hypermedia composition: A qualitative case study. In Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 16, no. 4, p. 357 - 375. retrieved 3/24/08,
Wilson Web.
Henderson, S.D. (2005). Developing a sense of audience: An examination of one school's instructional contexts, in Reading Horizons,, 45, no.4, pp. 321-348, March/April, retrieved 3/24/08, Wilson Web.
Karchmer-Klein, R. (2007). Audience awareness and Internet publishing: A qualitative analysis of factors influencing how fourth graders write electronic text. In Action in Teacher Education, 29, no. 2, pp. 39 - 50, Summer, retrieved 3/24/08, Wilson Web.
Lewis, S. (2001). Ten years of puzzling about audience awarenss. In The Clearing House, 74, no.4, pp.191-196, March/April, retrieved 3/24/08, Wilson Web.
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