Creating Risky Spaces: Writer’s Workshop and Students’ Perceptions of Resilience

Abstract

This study explores the connections between the writer’s workshop approach and high school students’ perceptions of their own resilience. The research includes multiple-case studies of student participants being taught in a high school writer’s workshop, as well as one teacher participant. The data related to the factors of resilience and the writer’s workshop was triangulated using the following methods: field notes observing teacher instruction, student work, and peer conferencing; individual, semi-structured interviews with the teacher and students; and documents including teacher handouts and student writing and reflections. Utilizing hermeneutic and psychoanalytic theoretical lenses, the data was coded to find patterns and emerging themes: using process to build confidence; the power of writing; anxiety, risk, and failure; collaboration and communication; and the role of the teacher as an acknowledger, mentor, and guide alongside. Through these themes, the study finds that the writer’s workshop is a valid and valuable approach for the high school English classroom in both the teaching of writing and fostering many factors of resilience in students.