Observing writers in isolation, pulling them into research settings in neatly designed studies will reveal nothing about the circumstances that enable people to write. Context, or the setting in which writing actually takes place, may be the most enabling circumstance. Many first grade teachers believe their students cannot write or even spell. However, observations of first grade classrooms, as well as those of other grades where students have written considerably, have shown that teachers--by examing their own writing processes, by writing and sharing their writing with their students, by allowing students to generate their own topics based on experience, and by realizing that there is never just one thing that changes or improves a student's writing--can create enabling circumstances for young writers. Teachers can begin to understand how their own composing process works and become sensitive to what fosters composing and what inhibits it. They can become models who engage in all of the activities in which the class engages. Studying what these teachers do and how they do it poses a challenge to traditional writing research. Collected writing samples and pretests and posttests are not sufficient to understand how writers develop. Researchers need to be more sensitive to learning and writing contexts. (HTH)