The Writing Pathway

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About the Project

Too often, research is done about teachers rather than with teachers. We believe that teachers must actively participate in developing any tool for the classroom. That is why we are partnering with teachers throughout the project. In particular, teachers are working alongside members of the Pathway team to analyze data, co-construct a writing pathway, and then test and improve the Pathway. Below is a brief history of the project:

Phase I: September 2021 - August 2022

Phase I of the project focused on answering the question: What are the daily writing strategies and approaches teachers employ over a full academic year in a wide range of classrooms and content areas? During the 2021-2022 school year, we researched practices in over 100 classrooms, surveying teachers daily about the writing instruction they offered students. By collecting this data, we created a composite description of typical writing instruction over the course of a year.

The data illuminated which writing skills teachers prioritized and how much time they spent on each skill by collecting data about writing instruction from educators for a full school year. Past efforts to understand how writing is taught relied on surveys or observations conducted a few times per year, providing a less-than-complete starting point for this key improvement effort. Using data collected daily as the starting point for the Pathway grounded the project in the realities of writing instruction in our schools.

Phase II: September 2022 - June 2023

During the summer of 2022, we compared the writing strategies used by the teachers in the study to those validated by the best research in writing instruction. We identified the gaps between research and practice. Then, in consultation with researchers and teachers, we created a writing pathway designed to help teachers narrow the gap between current practice and research-validated strategies. While the Pathway has been created to serve all students well, it was specifically designed with the needs of underserved students in mind. When recruiting teachers for both data collection and pathway design, we prioritized including teachers who worked primarily with students of color, low-income students, and students with diverse learning needs.

Teachers from 12 partner schools nationwide tested this research-based writing pathway in their classrooms and provided us with feedback on the feasibility of implementation. These teachers and control teachers who are not implementing the Pathway also administered pre- and post-test essays to their students. We aimed to determine (1) the extent to which our research-based writing pathway can feasibly be implemented in classrooms and (2) whether implementing the Pathway led to better writing for students. We hope to publicly share the results of this research by early 2025. Based on the progress and gaps we identified in student pre- and post-tests, along with the feedback we collected from teachers, we began a revision and expansion of the initial Pathway.

Phase III: July 2023 and beyond

In the summer of 2023, we published the revised Pathway and supporting resources online (check it out here!). . Most recently, we launched an AI-powered content-generation tool that enables teachers to instantly create student-facing materials for a particular Pathway skill in any content (e.g., “The Industrial Revolution,” “Act I of A Raisin in the Sun,” “cellular respiration,” etc.). You can see the AI in action here—click the “Create Content-Specific Materials” tab. These tools are currently available for the sentence construction and grammar topics in the Pathway, and this content-generation tool will soon be available for all topics in the Pathway.

We are conducting another round of testing and improvement with teachers from 8 partner schools nationwide during the 2023-2024 school year—the results of which we hope to publish by early 2025 (along with the results of our Phase II research). We’re also working with our program team at Teaching Lab to develop professional learning and coaching that can support schools and districts implementing the Pathway.