ABSTRACT
In 1985, the School Curriculum Development Committee (later replaced by the National Curriculum Council) set up the National Writing Project with the aim: to develop and extend the competence and confidence of young adults to write for a range of purposes and a variety of audiences, in a manner that enhances their growth as individuals, their powers of self-expression, their skill as communicators and their facility as learners. While the project was about writing development in schools, it was also about curriculum development, exploring means of effecting change in classrooms. Like many project groups, the teachers began by observing writing practices in their own classrooms and finding out children’s perceptions of writing. This served as the catalyst for experiments with the writing curriculum. In the context of a secondary school, cross-curricular collaboration is a very effective way of bringing shared concerns about writing and learning into the open, and of generating the necessary dynamic for change.
