Teachers’ approaches to research writing

The amount of curriculum autonomy afforded to many teachers means that their duties often involve creating and designing their own courses. The uniqueness of these courses can mean it is difficult or impractical to collaborate with colleagues, leading to a lack of awareness of the approaches that other teachers take in their courses. However, even when it may not be possible to work together directly, a great deal can be learned from exploring our peers’ knowledge and expertise. All full-time instructors in the English for Liberal Arts (ELA) program at International Christian University teach a Research Writing (RW) course, with shared language learning outcomes yet with differing content based on teachers’ individual area of inquiry. In this paper, I report on the findings from informal discussions I had with 15 ELA teachers about their RW courses and reflect on the implications for my own RW course. This includes a particular focus on our approaches to course content, the writing process, and feedback from both teachers and peers.