Between common language and disciplinary difference: Secondary teachers talking about writing across the curriculum
This qualitative case study of Australian secondary teachers reveals that while school-wide writing initiatives benefit from shared terminology, effective cross-curricular literacy development requires acknowledging disciplinary differences in how concepts like evidence and analysis are constructed, using student artefacts to make these distinct expectations explicit rather than enforcing uniform standards.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In secondary schools, writing is everywhere. Students write in history class to explain the causes of a war, in science class to record an experiment, and in business class to analyze a company's performance. For decades, educators have debated how to teach this skill. One school of thought argues that writing is a single skill that should be taught the same way in every room, using a common set of rules and vocabulary so students do not have to relearn the basics every time they change classes. Another view suggests that writing is deeply tied to the subject itself; the way a historian builds an argument is fundamentally different from how a scientist reports data, and forcing them into the same mold might hide the unique thinking required by each field. This tension creates a difficult problem for teachers: how can a school support a shared approach to writing without erasing the special ways different subjects create and share knowledge?
A recent study in an Australian secondary school explored this exact dilemma. Researchers worked with eight teachers from different departments—including history, science, business, and English—to see what happened when they stopped talking about writing in the abstract and started looking at the actual work their students produced. The teachers met over the course of a year to examine real student essays, the assignment instructions, the grading rubrics, and the feedback they had given. They were not trying to force every subject to look the same. Instead, they wanted to understand where a shared language helped and where it might be misleading.
The study found that having a common vocabulary was useful, but only as a starting point. Teachers and students could agree on terms like "evidence," "analysis," or "persuasion," but these words meant very different things depending on the classroom. In a history class, "evidence" meant finding a source, checking its origin, and deciding if it was reliable enough to support a claim about the past. In a science class, the same word referred to data that had to be precise, technical, and carefully qualified to avoid overstating a conclusion. When the teachers discussed these differences, they realized that simply telling students to "use evidence" was not enough. They had to explain exactly what that looked like in their specific subject. The shared terms acted as a bridge, allowing teachers to compare their methods, but the bridge led to different destinations.
One of the most revealing moments came when the group looked at a common tool used to help students organize their writing: a formulaic structure often called PEEL, which stands for Point, Evidence, Explanation, and Link. This structure is popular because it gives students a clear way to build a paragraph. However, the teachers discovered that sticking too rigidly to this formula could actually hurt the writing. In some cases, the "Link" part of the formula forced students to jump to a new idea before they had fully finished their current thought, making the paragraph feel disjointed. The study showed that these structures are helpful as temporary training wheels for developing writers, but they should not become a permanent cage that stops students from writing in the way their specific subject requires.
The researchers also noticed that when teachers looked closely at student work, they often realized the problem was not with the student, but with the assignment itself. In one instance, a business teacher asked students to compare two companies, but the grading rubric did not clearly explain how to do that comparison. When the teachers looked at a student's essay that struggled with the task, they saw that the assignment instructions and the grading criteria were not aligned. The student was not failing because they could not write; they were failing because the task was confusing. By working backward from the student's final essay to the original instructions, the teachers could see where the design of the lesson needed to change. This shifted the focus from blaming the student for a lack of skill to fixing the tools the teacher provided.
Throughout the process, the teachers found that they already possessed deep knowledge about how to write in their own subjects, even if they had never put it into words. A science teacher might know exactly how to write a conclusion that is cautious and accurate, but might not have a specific word for that technique until a colleague introduced the term "hedging." A history teacher might know how to judge if a source is relevant, but might not have realized that this was a specific type of thinking that differed from how a business teacher evaluated evidence. By looking at real student texts together, the teachers made these hidden rules visible. They turned their own professional judgment into something they could discuss, compare, and improve.
The study did not produce a single, perfect way to teach writing that works for every subject. Instead, it showed that the most productive approach is a "nested" one. Schools can agree on a few shared terms and routines to help students move between classes, but they must also take the time to explain exactly what those terms mean in each specific subject. The research suggests that when teachers collaborate by looking at actual student work, they can better support their students. They learn to distinguish between what can be shared across the curriculum and what must remain unique to the discipline. The result is not a uniform style of writing, but a clearer understanding of how different fields think and communicate, allowing students to become more flexible and skilled writers in every subject they study.
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