Research Directions: Having Words: Contrasting Perspectives on Children’s Writing through the History of Language Arts

This article is an historical study of the understanding of children’s writing through Language Arts. The author and her research team did a content analysis of articles about writing that appeared in Language Arts beginning in 1924 through January, 2010. Analysis shows that a major area of tension throughout the history of the journal has been between conceptualizations of writing as a form of language use for children’s thinking and expression and writing as a standardized set of skills and processes. The authors propose that these positions can be traced, through the pages of Language Arts, to contrasting perspectives on the value of diversity in experience, interest, and language use, and on standardization versus teacher control of curriculum.