With the momentous technological advances of the 21st century, writing is everywhere. We write more now than we have ever done, in many more ways than we have ever done – from standard pen and paper, through to the raft of digital communications that are now part of daily life. And the multimodal opportunities of contemporary technologies have changed how we can communicate across time and space, and through creative combinations of text, hypertext, sound and image. Those we teach are likely to write more, and in more different ways, than their grandparents.
So teaching children, young people and adults to become confident, engaged and independent writers is empowering them for the future. This conference will explore research in and teaching of writing – in all its manifestations and possibilities. We invite you to share your research and best practice, considering, for example, the inter-relationships between writing and talk, and writing and reading; how we make our classrooms and learning sites communities of writers where imaginations flourish and arguments are forged; how we enable learners to feel they are authors, with independence and agency; the challenges that learners face in becoming writers; how to foster critical imagination; and the politics of writing for and from difference as a means to embed diversity and inclusion. We are interested to learn about new methodologies for researching writing and to generate thinking about research in writing priorities for the future.
