A Brief Annotated Bibliography on Publishing Student Writing

This short article summarizes high school programs where three instructors had their students write and publish for a variety of purposes including reader’s theater, and working with elementary students writing “me” books. One teacher had her students write about their own class. The article is short, and more than 25 years old, but the projects being outlined are still doable and might inspire some community service projects or current writing for publication projects in writing classes.

This is a classic book was written in 1968. This fourth edition continues to discuss various whole language practices. Of relevance to the discussion of student publishing is the suggestion to teachers to encourage students to publish letters to the editor. It also has an extensive bibliography. Useful to understand the pedagogical history of helping students writing about real topics and for real audiences. It is a book targeted at teachers and curriculum designers.

In this short article Savonick summarizes the history of student publishing and connects it to the politics of the ‘60’s and 70’s and her own experiences encouraging students to find projects to write for interested audiences. Useful for readers who want to see recent applications of these ideas and for her bibliography. She fills in the research and ideas from earlier authors. Also, this work is directly applicable to a community college audience, since Savonick is working in the context of student work within undergraduate writing classes. I’m thinking of using her idea of writing for a purpose in my Fall 2020 English 122 class for at least one paper.

This article details a qualitative study which followed 8th grade students in an elective journalism and digital media studies class in a large US school. The class included the study of both traditional print journalism and digital media such as audio and video podcasting. One case study reported on in this article was of a young woman experiencing a power struggle with those at her school—it is an interesting cautionary tale. Publishing student work isn’t always equitable for the student who in this case didn’t control where her article ended up being placed in an on-line newspaper, and the placement changed its focus. As adults and teachers, we need to think about the power we wield when we are publishing student work. It is sometimes difficult to be good allies to our students, but the ethical issues raised in this study and the story of her teacher are worth consideration by all teachers. Here at community college, most of our students are adults, but we still need to think about ethics and power dynamics as we publish student work or help them publish their work. It was fascinating to see a study set in the US and published in an Australian journal.

This article presents views and opinions targeted at doctoral students about how to approach scholarly work and publishing. The discussion of the intrinsic value of scholarly work, ethics, social collaboration, and politics is applicable to all student and other publishing. This article represents one of many in the literature that deal with doctoral and graduate publishing.

This article chronicles various publishing projects of student writing in the UK done as a way to produce materials to support literacy. Interestingly, this article discusses the pedagogy, and politics of doing this. How much editing should be done is always an issue. He talks about the concerns of ethics.  Woodin addresses issues of social class, and literacy. As a literacy instructor, I know that this is part of the root of this practice. Literacy was presumed to bring positive social change. What Woodin calls the “expressive and emancipatory side to writing” is part of why I began this project. His footnotes will give readers more sources to follow as they track the roots of this practice. It’s interesting to note that the literature for this practice spans continents.