'There is no writing that is writing without teachers'

Teachers' role in the writing process of a seminar paper

Abstract

This article is part of a larger study dealing with different aspects of seminar courses in academic colleges of education during 2014-2015, in which teachers are supposed not only to share knowledge of their expertise in a subject matter but also accompany their students through the academic writing process. This study examines teachers' presence, roles in the writing-inquiry process in a seminar course. Our aim is to portray the complexity of this presence and consequently, to provide the basis for a tool that could (should) be developed, that has the potential to enable seminar teachers to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in their teaching and accompaniment of students. Our research questions were: What is the nature of teachers' presence in the seminar course, and How do they cope with the challenges of ac-companying students writing? We interviewed 26 seminar course teachers in six teacher education colleges. Our findings portray these teachers as multi-tasking ‘acrobats': planners; instructors; coaches; assessors, and models. The importance of this research is that it provides a broad and complex picture of teachers' involvement as well as a basis for a tool for self-reflection.