The paragraph wars: A research-informed manifesto for change

With suggestions in the media (Carey, 2019) that the new Study Design being developed for VCE English will place more focus on creative and other forms of writing, pedagogies for the teaching of writing are hot topics. The Teaching Writing Today Study, funded by VATE in 2018-19, considered the following main research question: • How are Victorian English teachers designing curriculum for teaching writing? The study, which involved a literature review, survey, school visits and interviews, also addressed the following sub-questions: • What resources do teachers draw on in this work? • How is this work perceived to have changed over time? • What are the various discourses and practices involved, both in planning itself and in chosen pedagogies? • How do teachers perceive students are faring as emergent writers in the curriculum contexts described? • What different kinds of professionalism are enacted in this work? In teacher survey responses and interviews, the use of the TEEL (topic sentence, explanation, evidence and link back to the topic) as a formula for writing paragraphs emerged as a central pedagogy in teachers’ work, with associated ambivalent feelings about both teacher integrity and student outcomes.