Teaching Writing in the Midst of Fragile Alliances: Insights from Literacy Teacher Educators in a Research-Practice Partnership with ‘Underperforming’ Schools [Published]

The purpose of this phenomenological narrative study was to describe what it means to be Literacy Teacher Educators (LTEs)1 who support writing in the context of a research-practice partnership (RPP) in the southwestern United States and to identify elements of the RPP in which they worked that were most useful for supporting writing instruction. Inductive analyses of five (5) literacy teacher educators’ (LTEs’) twelve (12) phenomenological interviews revealed that LTEs were university-school liaisons who: a) used our intertwined identities as LTEs and as writers to understand how to provide support; (b) served as advocates for CLDs; (c) used our advocacy for students to determine how to leverage administrative support for writing; and (d) navigated the structural expectations of our roles across the university and schools by focusing more on encouragement than critique in supporting teachers. Elements of the RPP most useful for supporting writing instruction were LTE understanding, R