The US National Writing Project (NWP) is studying Maltese parents' involvement in their children's academic performance to be able to encourage similar practices in the US, said Sandro Spiteri, head of the Malta Writing Project.
"Maltese parents are well-known for their involvement in their child's academic performance," he said.
Teachers and parents who have gone through the MWP learning process have been sharing their experiences with fellow teachers and parents, he said.
Mr Spiteri was speaking to The Times during a national conference on Writing To Learn, Writing To Teach, held last Friday and Saturday at Attard primary school.
The conference, which included workshops for parents, was organised by the Foundation for Educational Services (FES) in collaboration with the Curriculum Directorate within the Education Division. It also involved the participation of the NWP, a US institution with over 30 years of experience in teaching writing skills to educators in over 180 writing projects serving all 50 US states.
The conference's main aims were to strengthen the role of the writing process as a key literacy strategy in Malta and to provide a conceptual and practical learning experience for teachers, parents and other education stakeholders, through presentations, displays and practical workshops of writing process applications in the classroom and at home.
Keynote speaker Richard Sterling, the executive director of the NWP and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "Today we are finding the need for writing increasing. There has been an explosion of informal writing outside of schools, such as through text messaging, e-mails, blogs and websites. Wherever there are computers, young people are writing more than ever. The demand for more writing and reading skills at the workplace has also increased."
Prof. Sterling said that research has demonstrated that a writing programme implemented across all grade levels and subjects is found in the highest achieving schools.
"Research shows a strong connection between reading and writing. If you write a lot, you understand text better and you become a better learner. Writing is intimately connected to learning. It makes the crucial difference between a perfunctory education and one that prepares young people for success both at University and at the workplace."
The US National Writing Project started in the 1970s because of the concern that young people were not learning to write well. Although they were intelligent and knew how to write basic English, they did not know how to express themselves in writing in a critical way, Prof. Sterling explained.
"Furthermore, if you want to teach writing, you have to learn writing yourself, which was the aim of the project 30 years ago. Each of the 189 NWP sites conducts an annual summer institute, attended by the most experienced teachers in the area. Together, these teachers prepare for leadership roles by demonstrating their most effective practices, studying research, and improving their knowledge of writing by writing themselves.
"After the institute, writing project teachers conduct project-sponsored programmes in their own schools and in neighbouring schools and districts. Since the leverage one gets from training 20 educators to teach writing skills to other teachers and students is much greater than what a university professor could achieve in the lecture hall, the project began to have significant effect of practice," he said.
In Malta, the project was launched four years ago as the Malta Writing Programme (MWP), which is planning to be the first International Affiliate Site in Europe of the NWP next year. The writing process methodology has been included in school development plans, departmental and individual schemes of work, and classroom practice in both Maltese and English. Over 140 teachers across various levels have benefited from the MWP three/four-week intensive training alone, apart from other advanced training, sessions and consultations delivered in the past four years.
In April, the first two-week training session was organised wholly by Maltese MWP tutors for 24 participants, including class, administrators, FES support staff, and teachers from state and non-state primary and secondary schools.
The national conference was also addressed by Christine Johnston, Director for the Development of Learning at Rowan University in New Jersey, US, who spoke about how writing changes according to different individual learning styles, and the implications of this to the teaching of writing.
Mr Spiteri discussed the historical perspectives of teaching writing in Maltese, and how the writing process could be a way forward.
The conference included several workshops on applying writing skills through IT and in content-based subjects such as history, and on adopting teaching strategies for primary and secondary levels.
Mr Spiteri said: "The writing project is designed according to a flexible teaching model, which can be applied according to the different characteristics of the language and educational structures, such as bilingualism in Malta's case. Although the principles of writing are the same for all languages, our native language attainment is lower than that of other countries. We hope that by time, the Maltese language will be taught more and more according to the communicative approach used for teaching English, which would enable students to communicate better through the written native language."