Research

Ripple Effects Place Project Inquiry Study

The purpose of this exploratory study is to learn from teachers from the 2025 SWI about their experiences teaching about water and issues of water (in)justice in their schools and communities through ore relational pedagogies, including going outside, a walking curriculum, and multimodal writing. In this study we offered the options of participating in focus group that met for one conversation, an inquiry group that met for a series of three conversations, which provided sustained opportunities to share and inquire into their experiences enacting their projects within a range of contexts, and what they might be encountering as writers/educators in the process. Focus and inquiry group conversations took place between March and June 2026.

Place-Writing and Place-Walking in Educational Contexts: Reflections on Practice

During the summer of 2024, we invited individual and group conversations over Zoom with past SWI participants (2018, 2021, and 2023). The “big questions” for the conversations were shared with participants in advance included: 1) What has come to matter to you as a writer and teacher of writing, and why? 2) What are you trying to make room for in your writing and teaching of writers, and how? 3) What do you find exciting? Where do you hope to go/grow as a writer/teacher of writing? 4) What has been challenging? What might help address those challenges?

Passions, Pedagogies, and Publics: Launching the Manitoba Writing Project

The MBWP grew from the deep roots of writing pedagogy in Manitoba, highlighted through our "Passions, Pedagogies, & Publics" project, a two-year series (2014-2016) of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional public conversations about writing that paired international writing scholars with local writing educators; a one-year research study on the landscape of writing pedagogy in Manitoba; and several workshops and events, including the Writing for Social Justice and Human Rights Forum.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (Select)

Honeyford, M.A. & Watt, J. (2026). “This was a really tough year in terms of global crises”: Walking and writing as ethical and emergent literacy practices in English Language Arts. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-09-2025-0209

Honeyford, M.A. & Watt, J. (2025). Writing relationalities: Relational orientations to teaching writing—moving pedagogies and practice. Literacy, 59(1), 108-117. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12392

Honeyford, M.A., Watt, J., Roche, S., Cain, N., & Ferguson, K. A. (2024). Affectively de-composing: Hope in movement, movie-making, and soil art. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2024.2435921

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2024). What’s the use?: Undoing, decolonizing, liberating, and righting literacies assessments in turbulent times. Language & Literacy, 26(3), 137-154. http://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29724

Honeyford, M.A. & Watt, J. (2018). Burrowing and becoming: Teaching writing in uncertain  times. Pedagogies: An international journal, 13(3), 260-279. DOI: 10.1080/1554480X.2017.1399797 http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KCI88SYvTeWW84Wsz4P5/full

Honeyford, M., & Serebrin, W. (2015). Staging teachers' stories: Performing understandings of writing and teaching writing. Language and Literacy, 17(3), 60-81.

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters (Select)

Riley, K., Honeyford, M., & Fraser, B. (in press). Co-composing-with vulnerability in the polycrisis: A rapping/walking/art-making assemblage of feminist material pedagogies. In F. Canada, A. Panos, S. Evans, R. Beach, & J. Castek (Eds.), Addressing the climate crisis: Transforming schools and communities. Bloomsbury.

Watt, J. (2024). Kitchen tables and greenbelt writers: Flourishing writing in English language arts and beyond. In T. Falkenberg (Ed.) Well-being and well-becoming in schools (pp. 254-269). University of Toronto Press.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2020). Practising place-thought and engaging in critical place inquiry in a public park: Listening, letting go, and unsettling our writing pedagogies. In K. Toohey, S. Smythe, D. Dagenais, & M. Forte, (Eds.) Transforming language and literacy education: New materialism, posthumanism, and ontoethics (pp. 32-53). Routledge.

Presentations (Select)

Honeyford, M.A., Watt, J., Sanford, K., Williams, B., Brydon-Miller, M., & Manitoba Writing Project Teachers. (2026, May). Ripple Effects: Teaching about water (in)justice through embodied, multimodal, and relational literacy pedagogies. [Symposium]. CSSE 2026/ LLRC/ACCLL. University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB. May 31 – June 3, 2026.

Watt, J., Honeyford, M.A., Quadri, S., & Hay, C. (2026, June). The writing [never] materialized: Collage analysis of becoming writers and teachers of writers in place. [Workshop]. CSSE 2026/ LLRC/ACCLL. University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB. May 31 – June 3, 2026.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2025, December). Writing texts, writing acts: Research on becoming writers and teachers of writing in and outside of K-12 classrooms--collage/assemblage as productive action. Literacy Research Association Conference. Las Vegas, Nevada. December 3 - 6, 2025.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2025, December). (Re/de)composing pedagogies in K-12 practice: Literacy, agency, and meaning-making across the human/more-than-human divide. Literacy Research Association Conference. Las Vegas, Nevada. December 3 - 6, 2025.

Honeyford, M.A., Watt, J., Antonio, J., Beresford, M., Gadsby, M., Valois, C., Whelan, M. (2025, Nov. 27). The ripple effects of “write out” pedagogies. Manitoba Professional Educators Network. Winnipeg, MB.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2025, October). Taking writing outside the classroom: Situated and relational writing pedagogy in teacher education. CATE Working Conference. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. October 23 – 25, 2025.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2025, February). Surrender and catch as writers and teachers of writing: Collaging/assemblaging perspectives of imagining otherwise. Provoking Curriculum Conference. Calgary, AB. February 21-23, 2025.

Watt, J., Martin, K., & Kipe, E. (2025, Feb. 3). The “write” place to learn. Manitoba Council of Reading Clinicians. Winnipeg, MB.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2024, December). Write out place projects: Practitioner agency in making ‘good trouble’ through place-writing and walking curriculum practices. 2024 Literacy Research Association Conference. Atlanta, Georgia. December 4 – 7, 2024.

Watt, J., Honeyford, M.A., & O’Hanlon, G. (2024, June). Place-writing and walking curriculum: Mapping writing invitations as social justice pedagogy and teacher research creation. CSSE 2024 CASJE. McGill University, Montreal, QC. June 12 – 17, 2024.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2023, June). Writing matters, place matters: A walking/writing curriculum experience. The 58th UKLA International Conference Writing Matters. University of Exeter, Exeter, England. June 23 – 25, 2023.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2023, June). Thinking with place-writing and walking as hopeful literacies. Sheffield Language and Literacies Conference: Forging Hopeful Literacies. University of Sheffield. Sheffield, England. June 16 – 17, 2023.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (Jan. 27, 2021). Practising place-thought and engaging in place inquiry in a public space, Listening, letting go, and unsettling our writing pedagogies. Education and Social Research Institute. Manchester Metropolitan University. Virtual Talk. Manchester, England.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2019, November). Spirit of place-thought: An inquiry into our summer writing institute and what we learned about listening, letting go, and re-placing our writing pedagogies. National Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference, Spirited Inquiry. Baltimore, MD, United States. November 19 – 23, 2019.

Honeyford, M.A., Watt, J., and the Teachers from the Manitoba Writing Project. (April 11, 2019). Becoming writers: The power of writing in our lives, classrooms, and communities. Adolescent Literacy Summit. Winnipeg, MB.

Honeyford, M.A., & Watt, J. (2019, February). Unsettle and unsettling: An inquiry into knowing, writing, and teaching in place. Ethnography in Education Research Forum. Philadelphia, PA.

Honeyford, M., Watt, J., Beyak, T., Davies, B., & Oresnik, C. (October 2018). Writing place: A poetry walk. Manitoba Association of the Teachers of English (MATE) MTS Professional Development Day. Winnipeg, MB.

Watt, J., Honeyford, M. with Adamov Ferguson, K., Borton, A., Drabyk, D., Findlay, C., Grehan, R., Hunter, H., Neufeld, J., Neufeld, S., Nicol, J., Oresnik, C., & Steele, C. (October 2015). Writing together: The Manitoba Writing Project. Manitoba Association of the Teachers of English (MATE) MTS Professional Development Day. Winnipeg, MB.

Honeyford, M.A., Serebrin, W., Watt, J., Borton, A., Neufeld, J., Adamov Ferguson, K., Drabyk, D., Amy-Penner, J., Oresnik, C., & Reynolds, B. (April 2015). Adolescents writing for social justice and human rights: The Manitoba Writing Project. Adolescent Literacy Summit. Winnipeg, MB.

Honeyford, M.A., Serebrin, W., & Watt, J. (2014, April). Mapping the ‘metaphors we live by’: Representations of teachers’ local knowledge of teaching writing. American Education Research Association, The Power of Education Research for Innovation in Practice and Policy. Philadelphia, PA. April 3 -7, 2014.