Exploring In-Class Writing Activities in Teacher Education: A Study of Perspectives on Writing in Literacy Events

Introduction

Writing plays a central role in teacher education. Among other things, it comprises a key mediating tool in the processes of enhancing students’ academic learning, and their development towards becoming professional practitioners (Klemp et al., 2016; Macken-Horarik et al., 2006; Nilssen & Solheim, 2012; Wittek et al., 2015). Much of the writing research conducted in teacher education has examined students’ perspectives and experiences related to working with genres of writing that are formally assessed, such as academic papers and exam portfolios (Arneback et al., 2017; Wittek et al., 2017), or types of reflective writing (Hume, 2009; Mortari, 2012). In most teacher education programs, however, there are many other forms of writing activities that take place during classes, lectures, and seminars which are not formally assessed or constitute components of formal coursework. Such writing activities have rarely been systematically analyzed, and consequently there is limited knowledge about their roles and functions in teacher education classrooms.

In this study, we explore in-class writing activities used by a multidisciplinary group of teacher educators at one teacher education institution. We ground our investigation in a New Literacy Studies (NLS) framework, in which literacy is understood as something people do with language, essentially social in nature and embedded in interaction between people (Barton & Hamilton, 1998). Moreover, within NLS, the concept literacy events describes activities where types of literacy – such as writing, speaking, reading – play a role, often in combination (Barton & Hamilton, 2000). Based on this understanding, we conceptualize the writing activities we analyze as literacy events to gain a better understanding of the nature of the writing activities the teacher educators use in their teaching, including aspects such as framing and key features and, in particular, perspectives on writing the activities may reflect. To this end, we analyze fifteen writing prompts and fieldnotes from observations of fifteen literacy events in which writing was at the center and ask: What perspectives on writing are reflected in the writing activities in these literacy events?

By investigating in-class writing activities as they unfold in the literacy events, we wish to contribute knowledge to a relatively under-researched area across educational contexts (see, e.g., Blikstad-Balas et al., 2018; Moon et al., 2018). Gaining a clearer insight into teacher educators’ uses of and perspectives on in-class writing activities is pivotal to understand the role of such activities in the facilitation of students’ development into professional practitioners (Helstad et al., 2017; Solbrekke & Helstad, 2016). Thus, we seek to expand existing knowledge about the roles and functions of writing activities in teacher education classrooms.

Previous research

A sizable amount of literature examines student perspectives on writing – and learning to write – in teacher education. Several studies show how students struggle with mastering the writing conventions of the different disciplines they encounter (Arneback et al., 2017; Erixon Arreman & Erixon, 2017). Arneback and colleagues (2017), for instance, explain how novice students often experience their first period at university as “something of a shock, since the ideals and demands of writing and reading are new to them” (p. 281). Relatedly, Jonsmoen and Greek (2012) found that students had difficulties interpreting assignment instructions, formulating research questions, synthesizing content and structuring the text (p. 15). In a similar vein, studies that have investigated the dual orientation of writing in teacher education towards what Macken-Horarik et al. (2006) label the professional and academic domains highlight that students often find it challenging to balance or combine the different discourses of those domains (Erixon Arreman & Erixon, 2017; Northedge, 2003).

While the studies outlined above focus primarily on students’ challenges in learning the writing conventions and discourses of teacher education, others have explored the role of writing as a learning tool. Researchers have argued that engaging in reflective practice may enhance students’ academic reflection and mediate disciplinary learning (see, e.g., Gere et al., 2018; Helstad et al., 2017). Reflective practices may also augment students’ thinking about professional practice and strengthen their participation in their own learning processes (Hume, 2009; Mortari, 2012; Neff et al., 2012). Writing can also help bridge the gap between the disciplinary and practice fields and help students see the links between the two (Nilssen & Solheim, 2012). Similarly, Solbrekke and Helstad (2016) argue that writing is essential in helping students “connect to their future roles as teachers” (p. 971).

Research into the use of writing activities in higher education classrooms claims that such activities hold potential as a pedagogical learning tool, especially if they are systematically integrated into teaching practice (Leon, 2020; Neff et al., 2012) and ask students to “reflect on their current understandings, confusions and learning processes” (Bangert-Drowns et al., 2004, p. 51). However, a study from Norwegian lower secondary school found that such activities commonly focused on developing content knowledge (Blikstad-Balas et al., 2018).

Finally, research has also explored teacher educators’ approaches to working with students’ writing. The teacher educators in a study by Ofte and Otnes (2022) emphasized the dual purpose of writing as a tool for enhancing students’ disciplinary learning and professional development. Other studies from higher education have highlighted how teachers’ approaches to writing instruction are most often student-centered and process-oriented and involve student interaction and group work (Solbrekke & Helstad, 2016; Wittek et al., 2017). Studies have also identified and problematized limitations in teachers’ metalanguage about writing in professional education programs (see, e.g., Greek & Jonsmoen, 2016; Jonsmoen & Greek 2012). In their study, Arneback and colleagues (2017) emphasized the importance of teacher-student metacommunication about academic writing within and across disciplines in teacher education, in terms of students’ “disciplinary literacy in academia and future professional needs” (p. 281).

The research presented above provides insight into different aspects relating to writing in teacher education. However, as our overview also makes clear, more research into the kind of writing activities that teacher educators initiate in their classrooms is needed. Blikstad-Balas et al. (2018) also argue that there is a need for systematic investigations into “what kind of writing that takes place when such opportunities [writing during lessons] are provided” (p. 120). With this study, we seek to contribute to a deeper understanding of the writing activities included in the literacy events we investigate and the perspectives on writing they may reflect. In so doing, we hope to contribute a more comprehensive understanding of the roles and functions of writing in teacher education.

Theoretical underpinnings

Grounding our investigation within a sociocultural paradigm (Vygotsky, 1986), we draw specifically on the New Literacy Studies (NLS) perspective of literacy as social practice. In this perspective, literacy is understood as something that people do with language (Barton & Hamilton, 2000). Moreover, all literacy activities, such as writing, reading, and speaking, are seen as essentially social in nature and located in the interaction between people, always situated and constituting parts of broader social and cultural practices (see, e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Gee, 2015). Consequently, writing is also particular to specific social domains (Gee, 2015). In the domain of teacher education, writing entails, among other things, the ability to “negotiate tasks relevant to school teaching” (Macken-Horarik et al., 2006, p. 244) such as lesson plans and evaluations, but also tasks relevant to academic learning, such as formal texts.

Within the NLS framework, literacy events are central to the exploration of the social nature of literacy. Barton and Hamilton (2000) define them as observable activities “where literacy has a role” (p. 8). This opens for a wide understanding of the concept because it shows how, as Blikstad-Balas (2013) argues, literacy events can be more than explicit activities “where one reads or writes with a defined goal” (p. 25). In educational contexts, she continues, learning is often the overarching goal of such activities, rather than reading or writing per se (Blikstad-Balas, 2013). This also implies that in literacy events, various types of literacy activities can work together for learning purposes.

Relatedly, Barton and Hamilton (2000) explain that literacy events arise from and are shaped by literacy practices – i.e., the ways people understand, think about, speak about, and use literacy in different contexts (p. 8). Thus, writing can be examined not only as text, but also in terms of the literacy practices and perspectives that produce the texts. Therefore, conceptualizing the writing activities as literacy events seems particularly useful to our investigation because it opens for exploring the nature of the writing embedded in the events as well as the potential perspectives on writing which those activities may reflect.

Also central to our investigation are perspectives on writing proposed by Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), a theoretically framed pedagogical approach to writing instruction in higher education (see, e.g., Russell, 2002). A core pillar within WAC is the notion that student learning happens through – and with – writing (cf. Emig, 1977). WAC is grounded in two theoretical approaches to writing. McLeod (1987) argues that these are not mutually exclusive, but instead exist on a continuum “from expressive to transactional writing” (p. 19). The first approach, writing to learn, is rooted in constructionist theories on learning, seeing the individual’s cognitive processes as central to knowledge construction (Emig, 1977). Writing, then, becomes a way of thinking. Central here are writing-to-learn activities, which Bean (2011) defines as “thinking on paper” (p. 121). Exploratory and reflective in nature, such activities aim to develop students’ subject knowledge and content area literacy (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).

The second theoretical approach undergirding WAC is learning to write, which is closely associated with writing in the disciplines (WID). Drawing on sociocultural learning theories, it emphasizes “the contextual and social constraints of writing” (McLeod, 1987, p. 20). As such, WID puts “greater attention to the relation between writing and learning in a specific discipline” (Russell et al., 2009, p. 395) than WAC. Hence, within a WID perspective, learning to write constitutes a way to create, disseminate and evaluate knowledge in specific disciplines, and develop students’ disciplinary literacy (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Learning-to-write activities are closely associated with WID. These are designed to introduce students to – and help them practice and develop – the communication skills, genres, and writing conventions characteristic of specific disciplines (Deane & O’Neill, 2011; Palmquist, 2020). In the context of teacher education, the WID perspective is quite complex because writing draws on many disciplines, from sciences to the arts, as well as the practice field. Thus, what disciplinary writing looks like in teacher education might not be entirely straightforward (Erixon & Josephson, 2017).

In addition to the disciplinary diversity embedded in teacher education programs, there is another element that warrants the introduction of a third category of writing activities called writing-to-become-teachers activities (Ofte & Otnes, 2022). These are specifically geared to helping students develop professional literacies (Macken-Horarik et al., 2006) through exploring written discourses, genres and conventions that are relevant to their future careers as teachers.

Together, the three perspectives outlined above highlight approaches to writing in educational contexts. However, it must be mentioned that Carter et al. (2007) criticize the perceived separation between the writing to learn and learning to write perspectives, arguing that it limits the learning aspect of learning-to-write activities to a focus on written conventions and discourses. This criticism points to a more complex dynamic between different forms of writing, which we return to in our analysis and discussion.

Methods and material

Writing to learn: Thinking and learning

Our analysis shows that, in thirteen of the fifteen literacy events, the writing was geared to sparking students’ thinking about the lesson’s content. This suggests a focus on using writing to develop students’ content area literacy (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). In Example 1, for instance, they were asked to note down their immediate thoughts about a particular statement, based on personal experience. Similarly, in Example 2, the students were explicitly encouraged to utilize their own experiences as student writers to help them retrieve prior knowledge and generate ideas about the topic, first individually and then in groups. Other writing activities had a slightly different focus, such as asking the students to summarize the topics they had talked about in the lesson or reflect together on the purpose of a paragraph in a research article.

Reflection task Reflect on the following quote from [course literature]: [Quote]. For one minute, note down whether, based on your own experience, the author’s assertion is valid with respect to KRLE instruction in Norway?

Example 1. Writing-to-learn activity.²

Common to all the writing activities in this category, then – and in a majority of the data material – was the prominent focus on learning through and with writing. Indeed, these examples illustrate how “thinking on paper” (Bean, 2011, p. 121), both individually and collaboratively, constitutes a central perspective on writing. The teacher educators framed in-class writing as thinking pieces to help develop students’ disciplinary, academic and professional learning, where they think and write – sometimes collaboratively – to discover, develop and clarify ideas, and forge connections between relevant experiences and course content. Yet, as was also referred to in the previous section, the degree to which the use of writing as a learning tool in various contexts was explicitly pointed out by the teacher educators varied considerably.

Learning to write: Exploring knowledge about writing, genres and meta-skills

Even though there are no writing activities in this material that focus explicitly on traditional learning-to-write elements such as paragraph development, citation practices, or argumentation, we argue that six of the fifteen writing activities still contained a learning-to-write perspective. Two writing activities stand out in this respect. In Example 3, the students read a research article from the course curriculum and answered questions regarding the article’s structure, content and methodology. In Example 4, the students were first introduced to the exam assignment and relevant course literature, and then they were asked to work together in groups and formulate questions, and make suggestions and notes based on their reading of the literature and the national curriculum in preparation for writing the exam at the end of term.

You are going to analyze a research article from the course curriculum. You are going to read and write, and there will also be some time to share ideas. The finished product will be handed in as obligatory coursework (2–4 pages), and the submission deadline is 22 January. • What is the research question? • How is theory and previous research presented? • Which methods do the researchers apply? • How is the empirical data presented?

Example 3. Learning-to-write activity.

These examples illustrate how the writing activities in this category are also concerned with developing students’ disciplinary literacy (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). This is evident in a focus on raising their meta-awareness of and familiarity with skills and practices involved in the process of writing academic texts in the respective disciplines. Interestingly, the activities do not ask them to write such texts, but instead present the opportunity to explore skills and practices relevant to academic writing in higher education in general through engaging in informal writing activities. This illustrates that the disciplinary aspect of the writing in these activities remains largely implicit, as it is not explicitly introduced or discussed. It also suggests that the writing in these activities is facilitated in a similar manner across disciplines, further highlighting a focus on learning writing skills generic to higher education, rather than disciplinary conventions.

By categorizing these activities as learning-to-write even if they contain no explicit writing instruction, we expand this category to include not only traditional writing instruction activities, but also activities that give students the opportunity to recognize or write about writing, presumably as a way of preparing for their own writing. Carter and colleagues (2007) similarly emphasized writing as a way of being socialized into disciplines, which implies that learning to write is not only about acquiring the written conventions and discourses of a field, but also involves gaining insight into various literacy practices which characterize writing in specific disciplines. Building on this perspective, we suggest that these writing activities seem intended to help students explore what goes on in a writing process without focusing on the final textual product. However, the teacher educators did not bring attention to these aspects of the writing activities to any substantial degree.

Writing to become teachers: Forming professional practitioners

In five of the literacy events, the writing the students did seemed geared to preparing them for their future roles as teachers. In Example 5, the students were asked to justify didactic choices in their music teaching to a parent, based on their knowledge of music as a discipline and a school subject. In this process, they shared and discussed the content of their writing with their peers. Similarly, in Example 6, the students used their disciplinary knowledge of young adult literature as a starting point for co-drafting writing activities they could use in their practicum, and linked them to specific learning outcomes listed in the national curriculum.

Justify didactic choices You are a fifth-grade music teacher who has received an email from a parent: Hello, I am Oliver’s dad, and I see that, lately, you have worked with a theory handout and lectures on Viennese Classicism and that you will watch the film Amadeus during music class tomorrow. I am a teacher at the School of Music and Performing Arts, and I know that many of the students in the class play instruments. Have you been singing or playing music during class, or do you have any plans to do so? Just a small tip: I think many of the students would appreciate it and learn a lot from it. Best wishes, Robert Robertson Spend four minutes and write a list with possible justifications for the teaching that Robert questions. Read to the person next to you. Discuss: What categories in the didactic relationship model do you think the different justifications could be connected to?

Example 5. Writing-to-become-teachers activity.

These examples illustrate that the writing activities in this category hold a dual focus: they appear to cater to helping students engage with their disciplinary and pedagogical content knowledge, and combine and formulate that knowledge in written form. Consequently, these writing activities focus on helping students operationalize their disciplinary knowledge in pedagogical contexts and develop their professional literacies (Macken-Horarik et al., 2006).

What is interesting with this category, though, is that the writing-to-become-teachers perspective seems to trump the learning-to-write perspective. We see that while the activities are grounded in disciplinary contexts, they are presented primarily as opportunities to explore concepts, genres and forms of communication that are central to teacher educators of all disciplines. As a result, in line with the previous category, there are only minimal disciplinary differences in the ways the writing is facilitated. We also note that metacommunication about the roles and purposes of writing in disciplinary and professional contexts is missing from these literacy events, thus echoing observations made previously about the implicitness of writing in these activities.

Overlapping perspectives on writing

As we mentioned briefly in the analytical approach section, previous literature has suggested that the categories we used to analyze the perspectives on writing are not mutually exclusive, but overlapping (Carter et al., 2007, McLeod, 1987). We also found such an overlap to be the case in our material. We identified six writing activities that include two perspectives, and two that include all three. Example 3, for instance, aims to help students develop content area literacy (writing-to-learn) and explore aspects central to writing in the discipline (learning-to-write). Example 6 appears as a model activity to develop writing tasks for classroom use and includes all three perspectives; it asks students to use writing to access and transform content knowledge (writing-to-learn), to develop a type of disciplinary text (learning-to-write) they will use as teachers (writing-to-become-teachers).

The overlap of perspectives which the categories reflect may be said to illustrate the complex and versatile nature of writing in teacher education. However, it also raises questions about the limitations of these categories for the purposes of empirical analysis. While the categories are useful as shorthand to communicate different perspectives in the abstract, at least in our empirical context, few of the writing activities can be easily said to be one or the other only. Hence, for the purposes of empirical analysis, it might be more useful to think of these categories as a continuum, where perspectives can play larger or smaller roles. Figure 1 illustrates our operationalization of what the overlap of perspectives on writing in our material looks like when placed on a continuum. We see such a continuum as a continuation of previous work that has noted the overlap, and as a starting point for future conversations about how these perspectives serve to limit or enable different understandings of writing. We return to this point in the discussion.

Discussion and concluding remarks

In this study, we set out to explore the in-class writing activities a multidisciplinary group of teacher educators included in their teaching, and the perspectives on writing which these activities may reflect. Our approach and study design necessarily shape our analysis and the conclusions that may be drawn. In particular, our snapshot approach, in which the participants selected the sessions when they would be working with writing, does not allow us to make general conclusions about these teacher educators’ use of in-class writing activities. If we had entered their classrooms at a different point in the semester or followed them over time, we would most likely have gotten to see different writing activities. Nevertheless, by looking across several classrooms, our analysis shows perspectives on writing that might resonate with teacher education contexts similar to the one in our study. As such, our findings contribute to what Flyvbjerg (2006) calls “the collective process of knowledge accumulation” (p. 227) in the field. Our study thus constitutes a starting point for further research. In the following, we will present and discuss three central findings in light of the research question: What perspectives on writing are reflected in the writing activities in these literacy events?

First and foremost, we find that writing-to-learn perspectives on writing dominate across our material. This is evident in the fact that the activities were framed as thinking pieces (Bean, 2011). They provided students with the opportunities to explore course content and disciplinary concepts, and familiarize themselves with professional genres, conventions and practices. As such, writing constituted a cognitive aid in the student’ learning processes, helping them put their thoughts into words, onto paper (cf. Bean, 2011; Emig, 1977; McLeod, 1987). However, we also noted that the thinking and writing was always intertwined with forms of dialogue and interaction, as illustrated by the fact that the students often co-wrote chunks of text, or engaged in reflective activities based on their writing with their peers. This highlights a perception of writing as a social activity (cf. Barton & Hamilton, 2000), and resonates with Wittek et al.’s (2017) observations that in-class writing activities are often social in nature.

In our material, then, writing is commonly used to explore disciplinary content and professional concepts and practices, and less frequently to explore disciplinary writing, at least explicitly. We see that the teacher educators predominantly promote ways of using writing that can be applied across disciplines to help students develop content area literacy (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008) and professional literacies (Macken-Horarik et al., 2006). This suggests that these teacher educators understand writing as a key mediating tool in the students’ development of disciplinary content knowledge. They also seem to perceive it as central in the students’ process towards becoming professional practitioners, an observation which echoes existing research (see, e.g., Neff et al., 2012; Nilssen & Solheim, 2012; Solbrekke & Helstad, 2016).

It should be noted that we did not explore the potential reasons for the focus on learning in most of these writing activities. However, the teacher educators’ participation in the previously mentioned writing seminar, which promoted writing as a central tool for thinking and learning across disciplines, may have shaped the types of writing activities they used in the observations and resulted in the prominence of writing-to-learn activities in our data material.

We also observe that, perhaps due to the cross-disciplinary focus on writing to learn and content learning in these literacy events, the writing is facilitated similarly in the different disciplines. Even in activities which include disciplinary writing, aspects such as genre conventions and discourse are not given particular attention. For instance, in activities where students practiced genres and skills that are relevant to them as student writers in different disciplines in academia (see Examples 3 and 4), the focal point was on content – i.e., what the students wrote – rather than on form or purpose – i.e., how, or why, they wrote. The focus on content learning in these writing activities mirrors findings from Blikstad-Balas et al.’s (2018) study on writing opportunities in lower secondary school. Moreover, we also found that the writing activities were similar in structure and format across the disciplines, as they were generally presented as informal pieces geared to spark the students’ thinking. Thus, in our material, the focus is on writing across disciplines rather than in disciplines.

Considering the focus on writing as a learning tool, it is perhaps not surprising that none of the writing activities in our material focused explicitly on aspects of writing instruction. This may give the impression that the learning-to-write perspective is absent from these teacher educators’ classroom practices; however, we found this not to be the case. Quite a few of the writing activities presented students with the opportunity to explore ways of thinking about, using and carrying out writing in the disciplines and in the teaching profession, even if the students did not produce complete texts. In line with Carter et al. (2007), we argue that such acts or exploration and reflection are central in learning to write in the disciplines and in professional contexts, because they help students learn about “the ways of knowing and doing that define the discipline” or profession (p. 280).

The teacher educators’ use of writing-to-learn activities to explore aspects of disciplinary and professional writing may embody the notion that learning to write can take many forms and occur in a number of contexts, also in activities where writing instruction is not made an explicit focus or where the writing itself does not constitute the main goal of the activity. In this respect, our findings suggest that for these teacher educators, the concept “writing activities” comprised a much broader understanding of writing than what is typically associated with the learning-to-write perspective. It implies a wide and rich – and we think, useful – understanding of writing activities which encompasses writing in a wide range of forms, purposes and contexts. This understanding of writing aligns with Barton and Hamilton’s (2000) broad definition of literacy, and highlights Blikstad-Balas’ (2013) argument that in educational contexts, writing activities often focus on learning rather than writing instruction.

The multiple perspectives on the uses of writing activities described above underscores our second central finding, namely that the perspectives on writing reflected in these activities should not be understood as mutually exclusive categories, but rather as a continuum of overlapping perspectives. The usefulness of conceptualizing the perspectives as a continuum has been noted by others who have examined perspectives on writing in other disciplinary contexts (Carter et al., 2007; McLeod, 1987). As our analysis reveals, the perspectives learning-to-write, writing-to-learn and writing-to-become-teachers rarely occurs in isolation in any particular writing activity. Instead, a writing activity might primarily be a writing-to-learn activity but contain elements of the learning-to-write and/or writing-to-become-teacher perspectives. In short, while the categories in our analysis work well as shorthand to explain different functions of writing, they may be too blunt to capture the complexity of writing as it unfolds in classroom contexts.

While such a proposition must be further explored in future research to assess its applicability in other contexts, it was notable in our material, as illustrated in Figure 1. Indeed, such a continuum might also be pedagogically useful for teacher educators and for students, as an instrument that could be used to spark discussion and to develop awareness of the functions and roles of different types of in-class writing in teacher education classrooms and in schools.

Finally, we see that neither the writing activities themselves, nor the perspectives inherent in them, were explicitly discussed as pedagogical choices. In other words; there was limited metacommunication between the teachers and the students about the writing that occurred in these literacy events. While the teacher educators framed the activities in the teaching context, they only occasionally brought attention to disciplinary aspects of writing or aspects of text production or the pedagogical affordances of writing activities in teaching and learning contexts. In their study from Norwegian lower secondary school, Blikstad-Balas et al. (2018) similarly found that the teachers seldom engaged in meta-talk about issues related to writing in their classes.

Ultimately, one consequence of the limited metacommunication about writing is, as our analysis illustrates, that the writing that takes place in these literacy events becomes implicit. The lack of explicitness may be due to the prominent focus on students’ thinking and content learning in these writing activities, and thus the writing itself is not perceived to be the primary goal of the activity. Nevertheless, we find the lack of metacommunication about writing a bit surprising given that the teacher educators had participated in the writing seminar and volunteered to take part in this study, which could suggest that they had a raised awareness about these issues.

However, we find the limitations in teachers’ metacommunication about writing problematic, as previous research has also stated (Greek & Jonsmoen, 2016; Jonsmoen & Greek, 2012). The lack of explicitness about the writing that takes place is particularly unfortunate when considering the students’ future careers as teachers and the role of writing across educational levels. With this in mind, it is crucial that teacher educators can make the pedagogical rationales behind their use of in-class writing activities explicit to the students, as this may help raise the students’ awareness about writing as a tool in teaching and learning contexts. Such knowledge is central to teachers’ practices on all levels of education. Arneback et al. (2017) also point out that metacommunication about writing is important to students’ development into professional practitioners. Our analysis suggests that there is untapped potential among these teacher educators with respect to explicitly discussing their uses of in-class writing activities with their students.

Through our exploration of the writing activities in these literacy events, we have contributed valuable knowledge about the uses of and perspectives on such activities in teacher education classrooms. Importantly, our study shows that this group of teacher educators perceive in-class writing activities primarily as versatile learning tools, often serving multiple, overlapping purposes. Consequently, the perspectives on writing reflected in these activities are not mutually exclusive, but exist on a continuum – between writing-to-learn, learning-to-write, and writing-to-become-teachers. As such, our study contributes insight into how in-class writing activities can be understood and used in teaching and learning contexts across disciplines and classrooms in teacher education. At the same time, we observed clear limitations regarding in-class metacommunication about the writing that took place, which we find unfortunate considering the importance of writing in students’ academic and professional careers. More research into in-class metacommunication about writing in teacher education classrooms is welcome, as such research could contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the roles and functions of writing in teacher education in general.