Abstract Learning to write is a critical aspect of early literacy learning, however, there is a need to better understand the complexities of writing instruction and growth in the early grades. Generative or compositional writing has been studied less frequently in early-grade research than transcriptional skills (i.e., handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar). The purpose of this study was to gain insight into possibilities for young writers’ development related to generative writing processes and to better understand student agency during writing in an early-grade context. Utilizing an instrumental case study approach, 10 observations were conducted during writing sessions in one first-grade classroom to examine students’ actions and generative writing opportunities. From a sociocultural perspective, five focal students’ actions and experiences were studied closely and used to elucidate student agency in the first-grade classroom context. Findings show that the teacher played a significant role in the agentic and generative writing opportunities (i.e., autonomous production of text) of their students and that the first graders were able to write generatively early in the school year. Descriptive scenarios reveal the students’ enactment of positional, motivational, and dispositional agency and the highly nuanced, idiosyncratic nature of agency. Our findings add to the existing literature by providing examples of first-grade students engaging in generative writing processes, making decisions about the physical environment, writing materials, and interactions with others, providing insight into how students might develop individual agentic dispositions and writer identities in the early grades.
DeCoursey et al. (Fri,) studied this question.