Student Autonomy and Writing Development

Education has, in recent years, shifted away from lecture-based practices and a new focus began to take shape, a focus on making students more active participants in their education. The Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) considers an individual's ability to motivate themselves. Concurrently, this classroom research investigates how educators can support writing development through the use of autonomy in writing; autonomy refers to student choice, mutual respect, and student-teacher collaborations. In order to investigate these relationships, students in a sixth-grade English Language Arts classroom were frequently given autonomy in their writing. In pursuit of this writing development’s connection to autonomy, student writing, both formal and informal, teacher materials, and student self-reflections were collected. The implementation of autonomy in writing aims to allow freedom of topic through which students can engage and further their development as a writer.