Writing Roles: A Model for Understanding Students’ Digital Writing and the Positions That They Adopt as Writers

Previous research in the field of written composition has mainly studied planning and revision. Nonetheless, the understanding of formulation is still poorly understood. This article elaborates the Writing roles model to elucidate challenges in digital writing in the research and pedagogy domains. Writing roles are based on empirical ethnographic data from Swedish lessons at upper secondary schools to create understandings of how digital writing and text processing in school affect students’ writing and the positions that they take as writers. The results show that the use of computers changes writing in school from individual projects to complex collective writing projects. Writing digital school texts thus becomes a literacy project in an ecology of communication with different levels of collaborative writing. Writing is linked to the relationships between students’ writing in interaction with reading, listening and talking, in addition to transitions to the school environment and how students position themselves and others in writing roles in relation to their use of computers. In the classroom, there is continuous negotiation and interplay through social media, both inside and outside the school. The capacity to participate in social activities is central for both giving and obtaining scaffolding in digital formulation processes.

"The results show that the use of computers changes writing in school from individual projects to complex collective writing projects. Writing digital school texts thus becomes a literacy project in an ecology of communication with different levels of collaborative writing." (Author, in Abstract)