Preface

This booklet is one in a series of "hot topics" reports produced by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. These reports briefly address current educational concerns and issues as indicated by requests for information that come to the Laboratory from the Northwest region and beyond. Each booklet contains a discussion of research and literature pertinent to the issue, how Northwest schools and programs are addressing the issue, selected resources, and contact information.

One objective of the series is to foster a sense of community and connection among educators. Another is to increase awareness of current education-related themes and concerns. Each booklet gives practitioners a glimpse of how fellow educators from around the Northwest are addressing issues, overcoming obstacles, and attaining success. The goal of the series is to give educators current, reliable, and useful information on topics that are important to them.

This product meets a need both nationally and regionally. Writing curriculum and instruction, especially at the secondary level, is a growing concern among educators, researchers, and policymakers. State assessment scores in many states show that students are writing below grade level—in Oregon, for example, only 34 percent of eighth-graders in 2004 achieved standards. However, because teachers have limited amounts of time to spend on writing, they are looking for ways to incorporate writing into their content areas that will enable students not only to improve their writing in various genres, but also to help them reflect on what they have learned and make connections across disciplines.

The goal of this issue of By Request is to offer educators, parents, and policymakers a brief introduction to writing across the curriculum (WAC) and the two approaches most commonly associated with it: writing in the disciplines (WID) and writing to learn (WTL). We provide a brief overview of the theories and research of how writing affects learning, describe common WAC strategies, and take a look at how middle and high schools in the United States are implementing them today. While there is a lack of gold-standard research that definitively points to specific curricula or practices that work absolutely, the existing research does provide some guidelines on practices that show promise. The Northwest Sampler section offers more detailed examples of how middle and high school educators in the region are working to promote writing across the curriculum.

The booklet was reviewed at the draft stage by internal and external reviewers. The external reviewers listed in the Acknowledgments section met criteria for technical, content, and practitioner reviewers. To obtain feedback on the booklet's effectiveness and utility, NWREL ask readers to complete a survey. If you wish to provide feedback, please visit our Web site at www.nwrel.org/request/response.html to log your comments.