“As long as he writes, I think, that’s most important.”

Teachers’ support in early writing

Abstract

This article examines scaffolding and presents how two teachers participating in the intervention study Functional writing in the first years of school (the FUS project) provide individual support to students in grades 1 and 2 while they are writing. The aim of this study is to gain more knowledge about how teachers can facilitate a proficient writing environment through scaffolding. The primary material for this research is video observation from a total of three writing situations in two different classrooms, and interviews with the teachers. The analysis of the data is based on a framework that differentiates between the different means teachers use, and the intentions they have with the support they give to the students (Van de Pol et al., 2010). The teachers have many students to follow up within a short time, which is something that both teachers highlight as the biggest challenge in the teaching of writing. The results of the analysis show a varied use of means, but that a large part of the support the teachers give, consists of feedback in the form of praise and confirmation. In addition, they ask many questions. The most important intentions of the support are maintaining the writing activity, creating commitment and building self-efficacy. A thematic analysis of the interview responses shows that the teachers are particularly concerned with four overarching areas when they support the students’ writing: These are differentiation, commitment, self-efficacy and a safe and good writing environment. The study also shows that the way the writing sessions are being organized, has got an impact on how much time the teacher spends with each student. The article contributes to knowledge about what scaffolding can be, and the term can also be linked to what Andersson et al. (2019) and Bingham et al. (2017) refer to as high- and low-level support.