Out of the Mouth of Babes, but the Mind of the Mature: Avid Adolescent Writers Talk about the Process

Abstract

This chapter deals with an investigation into how one cohort of avid middle school writers understood the notion of the writing process. It unpacks their insight and personal transactions and reactions to the ‘reader-writer’ response process modelled in their classroom, the own individual ‘habitus’ developed from their socio-familial environment and their reflections on writing engendered as a natural part of their writing development. What emerged from this ‘ethnographic’ study was a model of writing as ‘identity’ reaction. For these young writers, this process of making meaning through print was a deep reflective engagement with the language of text and their sense of self within the confines of their personal growth towards socio-emotional awareness. In essence writing was a reaction to becoming ‘connected’ to an understanding of ‘self.’ In other words, writing was the means by which they analysed the forces impacting on their sense of writing being a driving force in their school experience as opposed to a ritual mechanism For this cohort, writing was a reflection of their growth into ‘identity.’