Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith, Director of ILSTE, has a research portfolio with a focus on influencing policy and practice. An example is a study commissioned by the New South Wales Education Studies Authority (NESA) about the teaching of writing in NSW classrooms. The Australian Writing Survey (AWS)© was designed to address a significant gap in knowledge about how writing is taught in Australian classrooms and to inform policy, research and practice. The report to NESA outlined eight research findings and ten policy recommendations.
Recently, the topic of writing has gained considerable media attention in Fairfax outlets such as Writing Wrongs, Students struggle as review finds writing skills neglected in NSW high schools, Teachers ill-equipped to teach keyboarding skills amid NAPLAN concerns , Half of NSW teachers say they were poorly trained to teach writing and Teachers admit feeling ill-equipped to teach grammar and spelling.
