The bright and dark side of writing motivation: Effects of explicit instruction and peer assistance

The authors investigated the impact of explicit instruction and peer-assisted writing on students' writing motivation and self-efficacy for writing. Eleven teachers and their 206 fifth- and sixth-grade students participated in a 2 (explicit instruction vs. writing opportunities without explicit instruction) × 2 (peer-assisted writing vs. writing individually) experimental intervention study with a pretest-posttest design. The four experimental conditions were compared with a business-as-usual (BAU) condition. The five-week interventions were implemented in authentic classes by regular class teachers, who received a prior professional development training. Multilevel analyses showed that students who wrote with a peer were more autonomously motivated at posttest than BAU students. Additionally, BAU students and students receiving explicit instruction were more controlled motivated than students who were offered ample writing opportunities while practicing individually. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed in view of realizing a bright pathway towards autonomous writing motivation.     

Beyond strategies: teacher beliefs and writing instruction in two primary inclusion classrooms

Links between teachers' pedagogical beliefs and teaching practices were investigated with respect to process writing instruction. Participants included 5 teachers, 44 general education students, and 23 special education students in 2 elementary multi-age inclusion classrooms. Findings suggested that, although the teachers shared similar views on inclusion and were convinced of the uniqueness of their respective instructional approaches, they nuanced their writing instruction to conform to their implicit theories about teaching, learning, and disability. One set of teachers believed that the writing "breakdowns" of students with disabilities required a structural approach-sequenced, individualized, phonics-based instruction targeting individual performance levels. Another set of teachers advocated a relational approach, wherein students with disabilities are "protected" and "empowered" in learning communities characterized by shared activities, student choice, and interpersonal communication.     

Mapping the landscape of writing instruction in New Zealand primary school classrooms

Writing instruction in New Zealand occurs in a context with potential for variability in curriculum and delivery. The national curriculum is broad; self governing schools are to interpret and apply as appropriate to their local context. There are no mandated tests, nor external examinations until the last three years of school. Schools report to the Ministry about achievement in Years 1–8 against national standards in writing, based on overall teacher judgements. The nature of this context supports the notion of drawing on several sources to describe the current landscape of writing instruction: policy documents, specifically the curriculum and standards; national tools and resources for professional learning; the limited existing research base relating to writing in New Zealand, and a study designed to extend this latter body of work by surveying teachers about their practices. The existing research largely concerns the practices of exemplary teachers or relates to investigating the effects of professional development interventions. The survey reported provides the most direct evidence of actual practice. Survey responses (N = 118) came from, on average, moderately experienced teachers who reported a relatively high level of confidence regarding aspects of teaching writing. Results suggest that surveyed teachers reflected the themes identified in the New Zealand teacher based and intervention research, which in turn reflected policy initiatives. The combined evidence indicates the influence of the ‘teaching as inquiry’ approach on writing pedagogy.     

The effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed strategy instruction routine: changing the writing performance of students with learning disabilities

This study examined the effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed instructional routine used to teach three planning strategies for writing to fourth and fifth graders with learning disabilities. In comparison to peers who received process writing instruction, children who were taught the three planning strategies-goal setting, brainstorming, and organizing-spent more time planning stories in advance of writing and produced stories that were qualitatively better. One month after the end of instruction, students who had been taught the strategies not only maintained their advantage in story quality but also produced longer stories than those produced by their peers who were taught process writing. However, the highly explicit, teacher-directed strategy instructional routine used in this study did not promote transfer to an uninstructed genre, persuasive essay writing. These findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to effective writing instruction practices for students with learning disabilities.     

Handwriting automaticity and writing instruction in Australian kindergarten: an exploratory study

Accumulating evidence indicates handwriting automaticity is related to the development of effective writing skills. The present study examined the levels of handwriting automaticity of Australian children at the end of kindergarten and the amount and type of writing instruction they experienced before entering first grade. The current study involved 177 kindergarten children enrolled in 23 classrooms from seven government-funded primary schools in Western Australia. Individual child level data (e.g., handwriting automaticity and word-reading skills) were collected and teachers were asked to complete a survey assessing the amount of time and types of writing activities developed in their classrooms (e.g., teaching basic skills and teaching writing processes). Hierarchical linear models were conducted to examine total variance attributable to child and classroom levels. Results showed a total variance of approximately 20% in children’s handwriting automaticity attributable to differences among classrooms when gender and word-reading skills were controlled for. Large variability was noted in the amount and type of writing instruction reported by a subset of participating teachers. Handwriting automaticity was associated with the teaching of revising strategies but not with the teaching of handwriting. Implications for writing development and writing instruction are discussed.     

Transition planning and writing instruction: the effects of a brief intervention

This study used a multiple probe design across behaviours to determine if four high school students with learning disabilities could plan post‐school transition goals using a modified GO 4 IT … NOW! intervention while learning essential paragraph and essay writing skills. The results of this study indicate a functional relationship between the intervention and increased writing skills needed for high‐stakes testing and increases in students' knowledge of transition planning. During baseline, students produced extremely short essays and did not include essential paragraph elements. After instruction, students wrote longer compositions and included more details, and paragraphs contained more paragraph elements. All participants increased essay quality during the intervention as measured by the rubric used to evaluate end‐of‐instruction writing prompts.     

A comparative study of peer and teacher feedback and of various peer feedback forms in a secondary school writing curriculum

This study examines whether peer feedback can be a substitute for teacher feedback and which measures can be taken to improve its effectiveness. A pre‐test post‐test control group design examined the long‐term learning effects of individual peer feedback and of collective teacher feedback on writing assignments in secondary education. Moreover, it examined the added value of a priori question forms and a posteriori reply forms aimed at supporting the assessee's response to peer feedback. The study supports the ‘non‐inferiority’ hypothesis of there being no significant difference in students’ progress after plain substitutional peer feedback or teacher feedback. Both groups (plain peer feedback and teacher feedback), however, improved significantly less than the groups that worked with question or reply forms, confirming the added‐value of these forms. Almost half of the students found the received peer feedback helpful, but less than a quarter considered giving feedback an aid in their own learning process.     

Children's writing goes 3D: a case study of one primary school's journey into multimodal authoring

This paper draws from research conducted as part of an Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project ‘Teaching effective 3D authoring in the middle years: multimedia grammatical design and multimedia authoring pedagogy’, which is a collaboration between the University of New England, the University of Tasmania and the Australian Children's Television Foundation. This project is being conducted in over 20 schools around Australia. The data presented in this paper focuses on one such school, located in Tasmania. It explores one school's endeavour in the teaching and learning of multimodal narrative. Data includes interviews from students and multimodal analysis of student narratives. The paper showcases the kinds of semiotic choices the children are making for their stories, and includes excerpts from the interviews to illustrate how they are able to articulate justifications for their choices. In particular, it focuses on how children are establishing literary concepts such as genre, characterisation and point of view using all semiotic resources. In doing so, it considers the pedagogy behind the creations to explore how effectively it works as children create new kinds of texts which are innovative, critical, creative and ‘of quality’.     

Increasing the uptake of peer feedback in primary school writing: findings from an action research enquiry

This article reports on how an action research strategy was used to increase children's uptake of feedback during peer assessment in primary school writing. Several different strategies were used in the study that had been successful in increasing students’ uptake of peer feedback in contexts such as higher education. In order to evaluate how successful these actions were, several different data collection methods were drawn upon to triangulate findings including children's work, observations, informal interviews and mind mapping. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data generated. Findings are consistent with those from research in other settings which suggest that pupils make better use of feedback if: it is task-involving and useful; there is sufficient time given for them to act on it and discuss it with their peers; and they are asked to reflect on how it has been used to improve the quality of the assessed work.     

Learner profile stability and change over time: the impact of the explicit strategy instruction program “learning light”

Abstract

This study examined the stability and change in secondary school students’ learner profiles after receiving an explicit strategy instruction (ESI) to foster their text-learning strategy use. A randomized quasi-experimental repeated measures design was set up with one experimental condition – receiving an eight-lesson-teacher delivered instructional treatment – and one control condition. Four learner profiles (i.e., integrated strategy users, information organizers, mental learners, and limited strategy users) were corroborated at three measurement occasions in a sample of 444 students. Cluster movement analysis identified positive changes in students’ learner profiles over time. Both short- and long-term results were promising.     

School bullying and fitting into the peer landscape: a grounded theory field study

Research on school bullying has its roots in the field of developmental and educational psychology, and appeals to the need for a theoretical and methodological widening in order to grasp its ambiguity and complexity. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in which 144 pupils and seven teachers participated from seven school classes in three Swedish public primary schools. A constructivist grounded theory guided data gathering and analysis. This article offers an interpretative portrayal of school bullying. It paints a picture of the core process of misfitting and how this process involves the selective use of normativities from the macro, meso and micro levels. When bullying is conceptualized as simply caused by individual characteristics, teachers and others become blind to gender norms, heteronormativity, racism and a range of other oppressions taking place in bullying, and this will fail to offer an appropriate knowledge base on how to counteract and reduce bullying.     

英语写作教学中教师反馈与同伴反馈的对比研究

作为教师反馈的补充,同伴反馈越来越多地被运用到大学英语写作教学中。不过,关于同伴反馈的效果,实证研究的结果却不一致。本研究以高职生为研究对象,采用文本分析的方法,从反馈合理性的角度,对同伴反馈和教师反馈进行比较,探索高职英语教学中同伴反馈对教师反馈的补充作用。     

对现行教学组织形式--班级授课制的再审视

班级授课制亦称班级上课制，与个别化教育相对，它是一种编级分班集体进行的教学组织形式，它最初尝试于西欧16世纪，17世纪捷克夸美纽斯给以理论上的确定，19世纪开始在世界各国大规模推广，一直延用至今。研究现阶段教育教学改革。必然涉及这一教学组织形式。这就需要对这种教学组织形式的利弊得失，从历史纵深的层面上再度进行审视。     

Exploring the amount and type of writing instruction during language arts instruction in kindergarten classrooms

The objective of this exploratory investigation was to examine the nature of writing instruction in kindergarten classrooms and to describe student writing outcomes at the end of the school year. Participants for this study included 21 teachers and 238 kindergarten children from nine schools. Classroom teachers were videotaped once each in the fall and winter during the 90 min instructional block for reading and language arts to examine time allocation and the types of writing instructional practices taking place in the kindergarten classrooms. Classroom observation of writing was divided into student-practice variables (activities in which students were observed practicing writing or writing independently) and teacher-instruction variables (activities in which the teacher was observed providing direct writing instruction). In addition, participants completed handwriting fluency, spelling, and writing tasks. Large variability was observed in the amount of writing instruction occurring in the classroom, the amount of time kindergarten teachers spent on writing and in the amount of time students spent writing. Marked variability was also observed in classroom practices both within and across schools and this fact was reflected in the large variability noted in kindergartners’ writing performance.     

The effects of peer assessment on learner autonomy: An empirical study in a Chinese college English writing class

The study reports on a one-semester-long intervention study of peer assessment in a college English writing class. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of peer assessment on learner autonomy (LA). Seventy English major sophomores from an independent college in China participated in the study, who were randomly divided into two groups of 35 students each. Traditional teacher feedback was used in the control group while peer assessment was adopted for the experimental group. A questionnaire on LA was administered to both groups as the pre-test and the post-test. A number of ANCOVA analyses were run to measure the effects of peer assessment on students’ LA. The results indicate that peer assessment enhanced the students’ learner autonomy. Peer assessment significantly reduced learners’ dependence on the teacher and boosted the students’ confidence in learning ability, while failing to make noticeable improvement in the other aspects of LA.