Elicitation of knowledge transformational reports while children write narratives.

Abstract

Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) proposed a model of children's writing, labeled "knowledge-telling," which they characterized as being simple and linear in nature. By contrast, their model of more expert writing is described as "knowledge transformational," because it is more sophisticated in its involvement of complex problem-solving processes. These researchers report that children, and even most adolescents, do not write at a level that would implicate knowledge-transformational processes, especially in expository prose writing. Their evidence contrasts with the reports of process-based writing researchers (such as Graves, 1985;, who through ethnographic investigations have described youthful writing as more representative of transformative processes than the "knowledge-telling" model might predict. Alternative research approaches are needed to evaluate these conflicting claims regarding the developing writing process. A stimulated-recall procedure, which enabled protocol analyses to be performed on participants' in situ comments, was employed with 53 twelve-year-old children to examine their reports of their own writing processes. A narrative-writing task was used as a context for these children in which to comment on their writing as they wrote. The protocols of the sessions were recorded, transcribed, and evaluated for evidence of transformative problem-solving behaviors (largely as identified by Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), including: extended start-up time, time-monitoring, task completion time, note-making, oral reports of planning, audience awareness, and revision of story plans, and the use of a range of sources for story ideas. Many of these sixth-grade participants showed evidence in their protocols of at least one, and some, as many as five of the targeted transformative behaviors. Gender effects included performance quality, and time monitoring: Girls wrote higher quality stories, and boys monitored time more during writing. Writing quality, in turn, related to planning and revision indices, which correlated with each other, and planning related to audience awareness. Revi-

Cognitive and Motivational Challenges in Writing: Studying the Relation With Writing Performance Across Students' Gender and Achievement Level

“…In this respect, a major limitation of the present study is that we measured students' applied writing strategies solely by means of self‐report questionnaires. Indeed, previous research has indicated that novice writers often fail to plan their text in advance (Cameron & Moshenko, ), have difficulties with generating sentences fluently (McCutchen et al., ), and poorly revise their text by focusing on surface‐level aspects (McCutchen et al., ). In the present study, however, students reported rather high levels of thinking, planning, revision, and control strategies.…”

“…Compared with students in the lower grades, the automation of basic writing skills is increased, enabling upper elementary students to engage in higher order writing skills and strategies (e.g., revising; Berninger et al., ). Previous research, however, has showed that applying these higher order writing skills remains cognitively challenging for this age group, as they often fail to prewriting planning (Cameron & Moshenko, ), have difficulties with generating sentences fluently (McCutchen, Covill, Hoyne, & Mildes, ), and poorly revise their text by focusing mainly on surface‐level aspects (e.g., spelling; McCutchen, Francis, & Kerr, ).…”

Student- and instruction-level predictors of narrative writing in third-grade students

“…Students who do not receive instruction in advanced planning spend little time planning before writing (De La Paz, 1997;Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986). A considerable amount of instructional support is necessary to teach children how to plan conceptually in order to improve the quality of written text (Cameron & Moshenko, 1996;De La Paz & Graham, 2002;Page-Voth & Graham, 1999). While evidence supports the importance of learning advanced planning skills in writing development, less is known about whether overall time allocated to planning instruction or the specific instructional practices are more closely related to increased writing quality.…”

Combining Traditional And New Literacies In A 21st‐Century Writing Workshop

“…Although planning is an important part of the writing process (Hayes & Flower, ), young children typically do not devote much time to planning (Bereiter & Scardamalia, ). In fact, Cameron and Moshenko () found the “start‐−−up time” (i.e., planning time) of 53 sixth graders to be between 15 seconds and 387 seconds, with the average being just over two minutes. Similarly, fifth and sixth graders identified with lear−ning disabilities spent less than one minute planning, even though they were prompted to plan before writing and encouraged to take as much time as needed to do so (MacArthur & Graham, ).…”