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Constructing Knowledge in a Professional Community: The Writing Project as a Model for Classrooms
By: Sheridan Blau
Publication:
The Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1
Date: Winter 1993
Summary: Blau argues that the "inquiry" experience that teachers encounter in the summer institute carries over into similar authentic teaching and learning experiences in their classrooms.
Excerpt
...We have found in our studies of exemplary Writing Project teachers at the elementary level that their teaching in all subjects reflects their Writing Project experience, not simply because they are using writing to learn in every subject, but because they see learning in every subject as fundamentally a constructivist enterprise, one involving students not in receiving knowledge about science or history, for example, but requiring them to engage in the kinds of inquiries that characterize the doing of science and history by scientists and historians. Again, these teachers seem able to conceive of their classrooms as authentic learning communities only because they themselves have learned through their continuing involvement in Writing Project activities how to participate productively in such a community.