Small Things, with Great Love: Creating Spaces for Kindergarten Writers and Teachers Through Collaborative Inquiry

Abstract

The aim of this research was to create spaces for kindergarten writers by collaborating with kindergarten teachers through action research cycles. The inquiry’s problem of practice is situated in the understanding that writing instruction within kindergarten classrooms is being sidelined due to a drive to teach in ways aligned to a sub-skills model of reading, an erasure of play, a lack of professional development in early writing instruction, and an over-reliance on scripted curriculum which dictates how and what we must teach. As it stands, a reductionist view of literacy is creating a reductionist practice of writing in kindergarten classrooms. This action research project fostered teachers’ emergent writing pedagogy through a series of collaborative meetings and action steps. Through the collection and analysis of artifacts, documents, photographs, collaborative meeting transcripts, and a series of observations and semi-structured interviews, this study found (1) acknowledging our limitations leads to possibility, (2) centering our students and our own work helps us to reclaim our joy, and (3) developing teachers’ writing pedagogy is similar to the emergent nature of young writers.