After being a middle school teacher for 11 years in Ohio and Illinois, Dr. Jim Fredricksen earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy from Michigan State University in 2008, and then joined the faculty of the Department of English at Boise State University. He also earned a Masters in Writing from DePaul University, a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from North Central College, and a B.A. in English from Indiana University. His dissertation, "You Know What I Mean?" National Writing Project Teachers Explaining Their Judgment: A Case Study of Teacher Rhetoric reflects his research interests in how teachers think and how they share their thinking with others. He is an active member of the Writing Project, National Council of Teachers of English, and the American Educational Research Association.
Articles
Experience Over All: Preservice Teachers and the Prizing of the 'Practical' (with Anne Elrod Whitney and Elsie L. Olan), English Education (2013)
Anyone who has worked with preservice teachers has occasionally felt the vehemence of their desire...
How Educators Use Policy Documents: A Misunderstood Relationship, Language Arts Journal of Michigan (2011)
As an English educator and co-director of a National Writing Project site, I have had...
Tapping the Power: Writing to Learn Language, Content, and Process (with Jeffrey D. Wilhelm), Malfridur (2011)
When we think about the role writing can play in helping our students learn, we...
Building Conscious Competence: Reading Our Students, Sharing Our Practice, New England Reading Association Journal (2010)
When I first began teaching middle school students in the early 1990s, it took at...
Talking About Teaching: Establishing Trust Amidst Uncertainty, Voices from the Middle (2009)
Faced with a day-to-day job that is filled with uncertainty, teachers have to make countless...
Books
Get it Done!: Writing and Analyzing Informational Texts to Make Things Happen (with Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith), Faculty Authored Books (2012)
Oh, Yeah?!: Putting Argument to Work Both in School and Out (with Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm), Faculty Authored Books (2012)
So, What's the Story?: Teaching Narrative to Understand Ourselves, Others, and the World (with Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith), Faculty Authored Books (2012)
Presentations
‘I’m a Writer’: How Writing Experiences Matter When Teachers Assess Writing and Design Instruction, American Educational Research Association (2012)
Learning to Assess: The Resources Teachers Use to Respond to and Assess Student Writing (with Leah Zuidema), Learning to Assess: The Resources Teachers Use to Read and Respond to Writing (2012)
Behind the Scenes with Preservice Teachers: Crosstalk about Assessing Student Writing, National Council of Teachers of English (2011)
Composing Teaching Demonstrations: Teachers "Size up the Situation", Writing Research Across Borders (2011)
When teachers learn together in the context of professional development networks, they act not just...