Collaborative Writing Pedagogy: Developing Students’ Collaborative Competencies through “Reading Circles”

Abstract

As higher education increasingly emphasizes student-centred and technology-enhanced learning, collaborative writing has become central to writing pedagogy (Blau et al., 2020; Cheung, 2022; Veddayana et al., 2025), particularly through digital document co-authoring tools (Abdul Rabu & Badlishah, 2020; Blau et al., 2020). Collaborative writing builds on a conception of writing as a socially situated practice (Bazerman, 1988), drawing on sociocultural theories that view learning as increasing participation, shared meaning-making, and knowledge co-construction through social interaction (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff et al., 1999). From this perspective, writing is a recursive, developmental, and socially mediated process in which ideas are refined through composing, dialogue, feedback, and revision rather than simply producing a final text (Hyland, 2019). Collaborative writing has been shown to enhance student engagement, metacognitive skills, teamwork, communication, and academic writing development (Limbu & Markauskaite, 2015; Moxie et al., 2025), particularly when supported by scaffolded learning activities that provide structured roles, guided interaction, and opportunities for reflection (Ament et al., 2025; Heinonen et al., 2020).

Building on these pedagogical principles, this study examines the Reading Circles (RCs), a scaffolded collaborative reading, discussion, and writing activity implemented in a first-year writing-across-the-disciplines course. Rather than presenting the RCs as a fixed instructional model, we conceptualize this collaborative writing pedagogy as an evolving design refined through successive cycles of implementation, evaluation, and pedagogical redesign. Students engage in role-based critical analyses of scholarly articles supported by online co-authoring tools, documenting their individual and collective work before and during discussions and culminating in jointly authored syntheses. This process encourages learners to build on one another's ideas and co-construct knowledge through shared authorship (Limbu & Markauskaite, 2015).

Despite the established educational value of collaborative writing, scaffolded discussion activities, and shared document-authoring technologies, little is known about how collaborative writing pedagogies evolve through evidence-informed pedagogical redesign. Existing empirical research has primarily examined individual collaborative writing interventions at a single point in time, focusing on instructional effects, students' experiences, or collaborative writing processes (Granado-Peinado et al., 2019; Heinonen et al., 2020; Sundgren & Jaldemark, 2020). To address this gap, we examine the four-year evolution (2020–2023) of the Reading Circles and how successive cycles of student feedback informed pedagogical redesign. Using inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021) with iterative coding procedures informed by Saldaña (2021), we analyzed student feedback from 11 course sections over four semesters, comprising 324 survey responses and four focus groups involving 22 participants. The analysis identified themes related to engaging with diverse perspectives, fostering classroom community, developing communication, collaboration, and academic writing competencies, and challenges associated with workload, group disagreement, and individual assessment. By identifying how these themes informed successive refinements to the RCs, this study offers a longitudinal account of evidence-informed pedagogical redesign and practical insights for instructors seeking to develop collaborative writing pedagogies.