Research topic/aim 

Although research shows creative writing to have the potential for facilitating learning, Swedish upper secondary school policy documents do not mandate or suggest it as a pedagogical tool. Consequently, upper secondary school teachers may find creative writing to be didactically valuable yet difficult to legitimize except as extraneous activities, due to the lack of support in both policy documents and textbooks (Malmström, 2017; Pulls, 2019). 

Theoretical framework 

The present integrative literature review explores research on the didactical potentials of creative writing in secondary education to “assess, critique, and synthesize the literature on a research topic in a way that enables new theoretical frameworks and perspectives to emerge” (Snyder, 2019, p. 335). The review maps the uses for creative writing in education, making use of abductive analysis (cf. Timmermans & Tavory, 2012) and Ivanič’s (2004) discourses of writing in education: the skills, creativity, thinking and learning (see Sturk & Lindgren, 2019), process, genre, social practices, and sociopolitical discourses of writing. 

Methodological design

A total of 318 peer-reviewed articles – both empirical and theoretical – on creative writing in secondary education and beyond have been systematically collected and categorized according to their discoursal positionings in the abstracts, introductions, and/or conclusions (in order of priority). These excerpts have also been inductively coded for topics and themes. Furthermore, several articles have been both randomly and purposefully selected for close reading. 

Expected conclusions/findings 

The review shows that despite a large body of international research showing didactical affordances of creative writing, few Nordic studies on the issue exist. The research portrays creative writing as relevant within all the writing discourses, thus demonstrating its usefulness in comprehensive pedagogical practices. For instance, creative writing is found to support learners’ general, literary, and critical literacies and to foster students’ interpersonal, cultural, and writerly identities. 

Relevance to Nordic educational research 

These findings may a) inform in-service teachers interested in integrating creative writing into their pedagogical repertoires, b) facilitate precise assessment of creative writing without necessarily making judgments on learners’ creative or artistic abilities, and c) inspire research on the topic to be carried out in the specific contexts of the Nordic countries.

This position paper argues that creative writing can be a fruitful tool for cultural responsiveness in secondary education and calls for creative writing to be viewed as a more natural part of language teachers’ culturally responsive pedagogical repertoire. The integration of creative writing exercises in culturally responsive language arts education may rouse a strengthened voice, benefit cultural literacy, engender the discovery and exploration of individual funds of knowledge, enhance relational competence, and bring about the critical crafting of and engagement with cultural representations. These arguments are convergent with the view that teaching, in order to be culturally responsive, should originate from students’ funds of knowledge, taking both subject content and relational aspects into consideration – and this paper proposes that creative writing is uniquely positioned to facilitate these aims.