The landscape of writing instruction in schools has long grappled with significant challenges, often leaving students disengaged and lacking confidence in their abilities. Many educators, under pressure from standardized testing, scripted curricula, and stringent state report card expectations, have historically leaned on formulaic structures and strict rubrics. While intended to provide clarity and measurable growth, these approaches frequently render student writing lifeless, generic, and merely a transactional activity designed to meet a requirement rather than foster genuine expression. This prevailing paradigm has cultivated an environment where marked-up papers and low grades erode student confidence, leading to a pervasive belief that they are inherently poor writers.
This systemic issue became the central focus of Dr. Nashwa Elkoshairi’s PhD dissertation, prompting a deep inquiry into how to cultivate student ownership and trust in their unique voices. Her research and subsequent implementation of an innovative approach—embedding structured freewriting within an inquiry-based learning cycle, anchored by Culturally Responsive Leadership (CRL)—yielded dramatic results, offering a compelling blueprint for revitalizing writing education across all disciplines.
The Crisis in Conventional Writing Instruction
For years, teachers like Dr. Elkoshairi observed a consistent pattern: students viewed writing as an arduous task governed by rigid rules. Even attempts to introduce choice, such as format options or presentation methods, often proved to be superficial modifications to an underlying structure dominated by strict rubrics and extensive expectations. This "teacher-centric" model inadvertently fostered an environment of stress and compliance, where the intrinsic joy and discovery inherent in writing were largely absent. Students, accustomed to precise instructions and predictable grading, struggled to connect personally with their writing, viewing it as an external demand rather than an internal process of thought and expression.
The academic literature, conversely, reveals that authentic writing—the kind found in compelling texts and scholarly works—is characterized by expression, deep thinking, and intellectual wrestling with ideas, not by adherence to rigid formulas. This stark contrast between classroom practice and real-world writing spurred Dr. Elkoshairi to explore alternative pedagogical methods, drawing inspiration from seminal figures in reflective writing and freewriting such as Peter Elbow, Donald M. Murray (though not explicitly named in the original, often associated with freewriting), Ken Macrorie, and John Dewey. These pioneers advocated for writing as a process of discovery, a tool for thinking, and a means of personal growth.
Freewriting: A Catalyst for Change
At the core of Dr. Elkoshairi’s transformed approach is freewriting, an open, continuous writing practice where students are encouraged to let their thoughts flow onto the page without interruption for polishing, correcting, or planning. The paramount objective is discovery rather than perfection, allowing writers to unearth ideas they may not have consciously recognized. This unconstrained environment directly counters the fear of error that often paralyzes young writers, shifting the focus from product to process.
The integration of freewriting into an inquiry-based learning cycle proved to be particularly potent. By framing units around "driving questions" – broad, human-centered inquiries like "How do stories connect us?" or "What drives the choices we make?" – students were invited to explore topics that resonated with their personal experiences and curiosities. This departure from purely standards-based tasks fostered genuine intellectual engagement, allowing standards to be taught organically through the analysis of diverse media within the inquiry framework.
Quantifiable and Qualitative Impact
The impact of this pedagogical shift was profound. Dr. Elkoshairi’s students, who initially struggled to produce even 150 words and engaged only in surface-level thinking, demonstrated remarkable growth. By the end of the academic year, all students had progressed to producing over 500 words in their freewrites, exhibiting "transformational reflection" – a significant leap in cognitive depth and analytical ability. Writing, for the first time in Dr. Elkoshairi’s career, became genuinely student-centered. While this study originated in a virtual learning environment, the principles and practices are universally applicable to any educational setting.
The Urgent Relevance in the Age of AI
The timing of these findings is particularly critical given the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media. With dwindling attention spans and the pervasive availability of AI-generated text, students face an unprecedented risk of losing confidence in their own cognitive abilities and unique voices. A growing trend sees students delegating their thinking and writing to AI, often stemming not from laziness but from years of internalizing the belief that they are "not good writers." Dr. Elkoshairi’s approach actively disrupts this narrative by building writing fluency through accessible topics rooted in students’ identities and lived experiences. When writing is authentic and meaningful, students are more likely to recognize the inherent strength and value of their own thoughts, asserting their intellectual independence against the backdrop of AI’s omnipresence.
Formulaic approaches, such as the RACES strategy, five-paragraph essays, or sentence frames, while potentially useful as initial scaffolds, can inadvertently become intellectual traps. They often suppress curiosity, stifle creativity, and, most critically, diminish a student’s sense of identity in their writing. Such rigid formats can confine students’ thinking, leaving no room for exploration beyond the prescribed structure. Inquiry-based freewriting, conversely, liberates students to take intellectual risks, claim ownership of their ideas, and engage in "thinking on paper" without the fear of penalty. This approach transforms writing from a task of compliance into a space of genuine curiosity and exploration.
Culturally Responsive Leadership: Setting the Stage for Authentic Inquiry
Before implementing the instructional process, Dr. Elkoshairi recognized the necessity of establishing a classroom environment conducive to deep, identity-based learning. Traditional school structures often fall short in aligning with culturally responsive approaches. To address this, she turned to the principles of Culturally Responsive Leadership (CRL), a framework articulated by researchers like Muhammad Khalifa. CRL emphasizes that effective leadership begins with critical self-reflection and extends to how educators support teachers, shape school environments, and engage students and families.
Translating the broader tenets of CRL into actionable classroom practices, Dr. Elkoshairi established four grounding conditions essential for middle school students:
- Fostering a Culture of Belonging: Creating a classroom where every student feels seen, valued, and respected for their unique background and contributions.
- Validating Student Identity and Experience: Intentionally incorporating students’ diverse cultural backgrounds, personal narratives, and lived experiences into the curriculum and classroom discourse.
- Promoting Critical Consciousness: Encouraging students to critically analyze information, question assumptions, and understand power dynamics, fostering a sense of agency.
- Building Trusting Relationships: Establishing strong, empathetic relationships between the teacher and students, and among students themselves, creating a safe space for vulnerability and risk-taking.
These CRL-infused conditions were paramount in preparing students for the reflective and inquiry-driven work that freewriting demands, ensuring that safety and inclusion preceded authentic intellectual engagement.
Inquiry-Based Freewriting in Practice: An ELA Unit Chronology
The practical application of inquiry-based freewriting is anchored around a driving question that fuels curiosity, serving as the central theme for a unit. The following outlines a sample four-week ELA unit designed to address multiple reading and writing standards, culminating in a narrative piece while continuously building fluency in both writing and thinking.
Week 1: Setting the Question and Building Background
- Driving Question: Why does friendship matter?
- Main Standards: Informational reading, author’s purpose and perspective, basic research, narrative writing.
- Process: Students begin with an entry freewrite on the driving question, drawing upon their personal experiences and opinions. This serves as a baseline assessment of their initial thinking. Optional prompts are available as scaffolds, but students are encouraged to explore freely. The class then delves into informational texts about friendship, such as articles on the psychology of friendship, cultural perspectives on social bonds, and data on the health benefits of strong friendships. This phase constitutes the first layer of inquiry, providing a factual foundation for later reflection and creative work.
Week 2: Shifting Into Literature and Point of View
- Driving Question: Why does friendship matter? (remains constant)
- Main Standards: Literary reading, point of view/perspective, unreliable narrators.
- Process: The focus shifts to literary texts exploring friendship. Students analyze short stories, excerpts from novels, or poems that depict various facets of friendship. Activities include identifying different points of view, analyzing authorial choices in character development, and discussing how literary elements contribute to the understanding of friendship’s complexities. This phase deepens students’ understanding through narrative and character analysis, preparing them to apply these concepts in their own creative writing.
Week 3: Writing the Narrative, Applying the Standards
- Main Standards: Narrative writing, purpose and audience, description, dialogue, style.
- Process: Students embark on a narrative writing project directly informed by their reading and critical thinking from the previous weeks. This project integrates reading and writing skills into a single performance assessment. Students are tasked with designing a narrative scene that explores friendship through distinct perspectives and points of view. The process includes brainstorming, drafting, peer feedback sessions focused on narrative craft (e.g., descriptive language, authentic dialogue), and revision based on a standards-based rubric that assesses both narrative quality and the transfer of analytical reading skills. This project is where students demonstrate mastery by applying learned concepts in a creative, personal context.
Week 4: Exit Freewrite and Synthesis
- Main Standards: Research and synthesis, reflective writing, explanation with evidence.
- Process: The unit concludes with an exit freewrite on the original driving question: Why does friendship matter? This time, students write with the benefit of having explored informational texts, literary narratives, and their own creative writing. They are encouraged to synthesize personal experiences with insights gleaned from the unit’s readings, demonstrating how their thinking has evolved, been challenged, or confirmed. Optional reflection prompts support deeper engagement, but students retain autonomy over their focus and approach. This final freewrite serves as a powerful space where academic standards and personal identity converge, allowing students to explain, synthesize, and reflect through a deeply human lens.
Evolution of Feedback and Assessment
A crucial element of this student-centered approach is the transformed feedback model. Freewrites are intentionally low-constraint, assessed primarily on two criteria: personal reflection on the topic and meeting a gradually increasing word count. Spelling and conventions are deemphasized to encourage fluid thought. Feedback focuses exclusively on positive thinking and writing moves, highlighting moments of critical thinking, synthesis, or meaning-making. Dr. Elkoshairi’s method involves narrating students’ strengths, making visible the power in their writing choices, and engaging with their ideas in a conversational manner. This approach, rooted in CRL, models vulnerability and builds trust by connecting with students’ writing on a personal level, drawing on shared experiences and thoughts.
Student Voices: A Testament to Transformation
Initially, students often exhibited resistance to freewriting, finding the lack of structure unfamiliar and daunting. Early sentiments included, "My first freewrite was pretty short, and I didn’t really know what I was doing," and "I didn’t like them in the beginning, but the more units we went through, the better the units got, and the more I liked the freedom." This initial tension underscored their ingrained habits of relying on explicit instructions and predictable outcomes.
However, as the weeks progressed, a profound shift occurred. Students began to articulate their growth in confidence, fluency, and depth of thought. One student reflected, "After reading my previous freewrites, I can tell how much I have grown as a writer. As the year progressed, the flow and depth of my writing also progressed. This is because I let my thoughts go. I wrote what I was feeling, without the pressure of being perfect. There were no limits, which made my writing so much easier to read and write." Another noted, "I also think that throughout this year I have grown in my ability to just write what I’m thinking… towards the end of this year I just let my ideas flow more freely."
These qualitative observations were corroborated by the observed quality of their writing. Students’ freewrites frequently surpassed their more structured assignments in depth and authenticity, demonstrating not only growth as writers but also as individuals. As one student eloquently put it, "The freewrites opened up my mind to many different things; it made me think more about the topics and changed my views on different things." The process allowed them to consolidate learning and uncover latent ideas, with one student describing how "the freewrite itself was leading me further and further down an unexplored alley, and I was surprised at times what thoughts came to me even as I was writing." The transformative power was encapsulated by a student who stated, "I LOVED the freewrites! The prewrites challenged me to begin thinking about the unit, but the postwrites helped me reflect on everything we learned. The freewrites helped me learn a lot, not only as a student, but as a person as well…I know I’ll use it outside of school too."
Extending Beyond English: Cross-Curricular Potential
The principles of inquiry-based freewriting are readily transferable across all content areas, as they prioritize engagement with "big ideas" over isolated tasks. By anchoring both entry and exit freewrites to a consistent essential question, students are guided to explore prior knowledge, integrate new learning, and reflect on conceptual growth and personal connections, thereby fostering deeper knowledge consolidation.
Examples of essential questions adaptable across subjects include:
- Math: How does mathematics help us understand the world around us? or When is estimation more valuable than precision?
- Science: How do systems interact to create balance and imbalance? or What is the relationship between cause and effect in natural phenomena?
- Social Studies: How do past events shape present realities? or What responsibilities do individuals have to their communities and the world?
- CTE/STEM: How does innovation solve real-world problems? or What ethical considerations arise in technological development?
- Arts/PE: How do we express ourselves through movement and creativity? or What is the role of discipline in mastering a craft or skill?
Conclusion and Broader Implications
Dr. Nashwa Elkoshairi’s extensive journey, culminating in her 275-page dissertation and the practical application of her research, underscores a fundamental truth in education: students thrive when given the space to grow, and educators must cultivate trust in their students’ innate abilities. This inquiry-based freewriting approach, fortified by Culturally Responsive Leadership, represents a powerful paradigm shift from formulaic, compliance-driven instruction to a model that empowers student voices, fosters critical thinking, and instills a lifelong confidence in their capacity to generate meaningful ideas. Its success offers a compelling argument for broader adoption, promising to cultivate a generation of articulate, reflective, and engaged thinkers prepared to navigate an increasingly complex world.
Dr. Elkoshairi extends deep gratitude to Dr. Trumble, Dr. Wake, Dr. Herring, and Dr. Dailey from the University of Central Arkansas, whose mentorship provided crucial academic and personal support, fostering a sense of belonging and intellectual challenge that significantly shaped her confidence and scholarly path.
