Writing in Your Discipline: Writing for Education

Writing Lesson Plans

If you plan to certify to teach, you will be asked to write lesson plans in many different classes. Lesson planning lies at the heart of good teaching, and written plans represent the most structured writing assignments you will do in education classes. A good lesson plan describes all the critical elements of your teaching plan, including what you intend for your students to learn, how the lesson will proceed, and how you will know that your lesson reached your goals. In good lesson plans these three elements (objectives, instructional activities, and assessments) are very clearly connected, and they inform each other.

Writing for Education

Education is a field that bridges anthropology, sociology, psychology, science, and philosophy. When writing about education, you will utilize a myriad of writing styles and formats to address your essay topics. Your writing should always:

1) Be tailored for the audience of the educational community

2) Be tailored for the type or purpose of writing in education

3) Use formal, specific, and precise language

4) Be credibly sourced and free of plagiarism

5) Convey clear, complete, and organized communication

6) Use correct English language conventions

7) Be correctly formatted and styled

The types of writing in Education include: reflective writing, persuasive writing, analytic writing and procedural writing. 

Types of Papers

As an education student, you may be asked to write:

1. journals/field-notes: think of field-notes as the clay for your future thoughts, observations, and ideas; these are informal
2. literature reviews: categorize or conceptualize relevant pieces of literature
3. analysis papers: analyze outside sources to promote your own interpretation of a particular theory or style
4. evaluative essays: look at a particular approach to teaching or theory of learning and discuss strengths and weaknesses
5. narratives present collected data through use of informal methods, imaginary letters to parents, recommendations for school, etc.
6. case studies: present problem, discuss others' thoughts on the issue, describe and analyze data/evidence, and draw conclusions
7. research and lab papers: identify research questions, contextualize the question in the research literature; identify hypotheses, methods of data collection and reduction and analysis; discuss findings.