Conference Agenda

The most recent poll tests commissioned by the Flemish department of education amongst pupils at the end of primary education (STEP, 2018) indicate that only 34 to 48% of the texts written by 12 year old children meet the minimal standards with regards to formal correctness. There’s a vast amount of evidence-based insights on writing didactics within the Dutch speaking context. Amongst them are strategy instruction, summarizing, sentence-combining, etcetera. (Van Norden 2024, Rijlaarsdam 2022, Braaksma, Jansen & Nederlandse Taalunie 2021, Koster & Korpershoek 2021, Schuurs 2021, Schiepers e.a. 2020, 2022, Van den Branden 2019, Verheyden 2010; Kieft e.a. 2008, etc). The transfer from research to educational practice in Flemish writing classes, however, does not seem to go smoothly.

The positive effects of integrating direct instruction of grammar into the writing class has been slightly neglected in Flanders and in research on writing education in the Dutch speaking context. However, there’s growing body of international scientific evidence on the effectiveness of form focused instruction in the writing class in different stages of the writing process, whether the focus on form is input based or output based, planned or incidental, implicit or explicit and inductive or deductive (Long 2000; Ellis 2001; Nassaji & Fotos 2011, Underwood 2017). In the Anglosaxon context, The Writing Revolution (Hochman and Wexler 2017) has proven to be an effective method of integrating a focus on form approach in writing classes.

Our project Writing in Balance (UCLL 2023-2025) aimed at improving students’ writing by embedding a focus on form approach in Flemish writing lessons for children from 10 to 14 years old. Our research questions were:

• What are the perceptions of Flemish teachers on writing didactics and focus on form in writing classes?

• What are the most relevant grammatical topics to embed in a focus on forms approach in the writing class?

• What are effective didactic models for a focus on forms approach in the writing class?

Along the project we have developed our own didactic model, the Writing Wheel, which can be consulted on https://www.schrijfbalans.ucll.be/menu. The Writing Wheel is based on the literature in the paragraph above and consists of 5 concentric circles that each represent a didactic choice the teacher has to make when preparing a writing class. Central to the model is the choice of a meaningful writing task. Next, the teacher chooses the text type the children will write, e.g. a fictional story, a descriptive text, a newspaper article, … The third circle invites the teacher to select the relevant form focus e.g. text structure, sentence building, word choice, interpunction or spelling. The fourth circle then lists a number of didactic methods that have proven to be effective for integrating a focus on form approach into writing classes such as model text with highlights, text editing, focused revision, student examples and interactional feedback. The last circle of the Writing Wheel lists a number of principles for effective writing didactics, such as strategy instruction, cooperative learning, revision and feedback. Along the project the model of the Writing Wheel became our main theoretical framework in the development of inspirational lesson plans and tools for feedback and differentiation in the writing class.

In contemporary upper secondary education, students’ writing practices are increasingly shaped by a culture of performance, assessment, and efficiency. Across educational systems, competition, acceleration, and outcome-based accountability have become dominant features of learning cultures, contributing to instrumental approaches to writing and learning. Within such contexts, mistakes are often perceived as risky, and students may become reluctant to experiment or take creative chances. At the same time, concerns about students’ well-being and engagement have intensified, prompting calls for pedagogical approaches that challenge performance-oriented learning environments. Creative writing has been highlighted in educational research as a practice with the potential to support engagement, reflection, and alternative forms of participation. Nevertheless, creative writing remains marginalised in formal education, both internationally and within Scandinavian contexts. Writing instruction in upper secondary education is commonly oriented towards genre mastery, assessment criteria, and exam preparation, leaving limited space for experimentation with language, form, and voice. This marginalisation is closely connected to broader governance logics emphasising efficiency, comparability, and measurable outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how students respond to creative writing practices in upper secondary education within an educational culture characterised by performance-oriented ways of becoming. Rather than understanding creative writing as an intervention that enables creativity as such, the paper explores how transitions from regular teaching to creative writing practices rearrange students’ habitual ways of writing, learning, and positioning themselves academically. Inspired by Davies’ rethinking of the relationship between pedagogy and space, the paper investigates how both human and non-human actors, such as spatial arrangements, writing materials, and tools, participate in shaping students’ responses to creative writing and in opening up alternative processes of academic becoming. The research question guiding the paper is: How do students respond to creative writing in an educational culture that fosters performance-oriented ways of becoming?

Empirically, the study is grounded in students’ experiences of a creative writing intervention in upper secondary education that experiments with space, materiality, and relational forms of engagement. The analysis focuses on transitions between regular classroom instruction and creative writing practices, exploring what students are accustomed to, how they encounter creative writing within a performance-oriented educational culture, and how creative practices intersect with prevailing expectations of assessment and achievement. Particular attention is paid to the role of writing spaces, embodied practices such as handwriting, and shared reading activities in shaping students’ participation and sense of possibility. While the study is empirically situated in a Danish context, it addresses challenges that are widely recognised across European education systems and beyond, where performance-oriented governance increasingly structures teaching practices and students’ experiences of learning. By foregrounding space, materiality, and relational processes, the paper contributes to European and international research in language and writing education on creative writing, performance-liberating pedagogies, and academic becoming in upper secondary education. Rather than presenting creative writing as a remedy for performance culture, the article explores how it may open temporary and fragile spaces in which alternative processes of academic becoming can emerge within, and sometimes in tension with, prevailing educational norms.

In English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English Medium Instruction (EMI) settings, there has been an increasing attention to how students critically engage with academic texts, which is mostly related to students’ ability to evaluate evidence, engage in interdisciplinary meaning making and develop an epistemic voice within the academic discourse (Goldman et al., 2016; Luke, 2004). However, there is a gap in how criticality is defined and how teachers operationalise and teach it. This problem is compounded by the fact that critical thinking is a valued skill in university settings, but at the same time remains vague, which causes EAP teachers to experience ambiguity in how to effectively integrate this construct into their teaching and content (Moore, 2019). In addition, the nature of evaluation of the sources creates extra challenges for novice writers who write in another language and makes it more difficult to build an evaluative stance (Xie, 2016).

In many settings, the construct of criticality is viewed as limited to only critical thinking skills, which include cognitive strategies such as analysing arguments, drawing inferences, and separating facts from opinions (Abrami et al., 2015; Willingham, 2007). Although these are necessary skills, they are not sufficient for an academic communication where texts also include some values, interests, and implicit power relations (Cervetti et al., 2001; Freire, 1970). Therefore, students should not only evaluate whether an argument is logical or supported by evidence but also understand how texts function socially and ideologically.

This study draws on the critical dimension of a recent reconceptualisation of bi- and multilingual disciplinary literacies (BMDL) developed within the CLILNetLE Cost Action (Nikula et al., 2026), where criticality is viewed as two complementary lenses: critical thinking (CT) and critical literacy (CL). CT refers to the cognitive aspect of criticality which focuses on the internal logic and evidence-base of texts (Goldman et al., 2016), while CL highlights the socio-epistemic aspect of criticality, which foregrounds positioning, voice, and power (Cervetti et al., 2001; Janks, 2010; Luke, 2004). In other words, CL highlights that texts are not neutral but shaped by certain values and social and institutional contexts.

Research indicates that students, particularly those in formal academic settings, can view academic texts as objective truth and may not realise stance or framing unless it is explicitly scaffolded (Cervetti et al., 2001; Luke, 2004). This gap is particularly important in EMI/EAP settings as students need to develop an epistemic voice to participate in disciplinary discussions, and they need language and literacy sources to represent sources, take a stance, and evaluate knowledge claims (Nikula, et al., 2026). When students practice CT moves only (claim, evidence, reasoning), they may reproduce dominant framings without questioning how knowledge is produced and whose perspectives are legitimised.

To address this pedagogical challenge, this study proposes a pedagogical intervention: a Reading to Writing routine to scaffold CT and CL systematically. The most important aspect of the intervention is using juxtaposing texts supported by guiding materials, which can help students to determine the logical structure first and then guide them to identify the hidden values, interests served, and missing values by comparing two texts. To this end, the objective of this study is to implement this reading to writing routine in an ENG 102 course and investigate how students critical reading and critical response writing skills develop across one semester. Research questions are as follows:

1. How does students’ critical response writing develop in terms of critical thinking indicators (claim, evidence, reasoning, assumption/limitation) and critical literacy indicators (positioning, interests served, missing voices, implications)?
2. How does students’ critical reading performance develop in terms of critical thinking and critical literacy indicators?