Generational Issues for Educators 17

The Impact of Teacher Efficacy

and Beliefs on Writing
Instruction
By Ginnie Curtis

T he purpose of this author’s research was to investigate how the modeling of effective writing
strategies impacted kindergarten teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes toward the
teaching of writing. One’s knowledge base plays an important role in the efficacy of a writing
teacher. Teachers must understand the writing process themselves before they can share with
students and develop each student’s skills as a writer. Teachers must feel confident in their
delivery of writing instruction through an effective, systematic process. Their beliefs and attitudes
can potentially impact students in the writing process and overall achievement. Through a mixed
methods approach, the researcher used both quantitative and qualitative data to explore the
research question. The findings suggested that the modeling of specific writing strategies does
impact teachers’ ability as writing instructors. Confidence and efficacy are outcomes implied
through this investigation.

Introduction
Writing is a difficult skill for educators to instruct and students to master. It is a
complex, multifaceted skill that requires explicit instruction by a trained teacher. Bifuh-
Ambe (2013) stated that “teachers must feel competent as writers and writing teachers
in order to provide the kind of instruction and modeling that will help students develop
into proficient writers” (p. 137). At least part of this inattention to writing instruction
stems from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which resulted in writing being greatly
ignored as a focus on high-stakes testing preoccupied educators and students in American
classrooms (Cutler & Graham, 2008). Unfortunately, more recent research has also
identified a lack of time or teacher ability in providing quality writing instruction (Bifuh-
Ambe, 2013).
For kindergarten teachers, teaching writing to young children who are also learning to
read can be overwhelming. Kindergarten teachers bear much of the responsibility for the
foundational skills of these early learners. Many times, their writing instruction centers
on handwriting, sentence structure, and spelling (traditional writing instruction) without
much explicit instruction in writing itself (Cutler & Graham, 2008). Teachers must find
an effective balance between writing instruction that focuses on process and content and
on traditional writing instruction.
Perhaps this disparity is a direct result of lack of training on effective writing instruction.
The National Commission on Writing (2003) recommended the improvement of teacher
preparation as one of four findings in its study. In their 2011 article, A Year in the Writing
Workshop (2011), Troia, Lin, Cohen, and Monroe examined how teachers’ beliefs about