The Nature and Measurement of Children's Early Composing

Abstract

Young children's writing development (i.e., writing occurring in preschool and kindergarten prior to the skilled, fluent writing associated with formal schooling) is an important predictor of later literacy achievement. Current policy movements, such as the Common Core State Standards, invoke increased composing demands, yet research has often focused on children's growing ability to transcribe (e.g., form letters, spell words) rather than their ability to compose text and generate ideas. The current study examined literature from the past 30 years to determine the prevailing operational definitions of early composing and the ways in which composing has been measured to date. Given inclusion criteria, the authors collected and coded articles to determine trends and prevailing approaches (n = 445). Findings revealed that various theoretical and conceptual frames influenced approaches to assessing children's composing, yielding little shared understanding of the nature and development of early composing. Findings also revealed that tasks used to measure children's early composing development have not always aligned with theoretical notions of early writing, nor have they been properly operationalized in psychometrically sound, valid, and reliable ways. Further, analyses of trends across time yielded insight into the evolving conceptualizations and prioritization of particular aspects of early composing, such as the focus on children's use of conventional encoding in a composing task context. Implications for practice are discussed in light of these findings.

Moving beyond tracing: The nature, availability and quality of digital apps to support children’s writing

“…This apparent paucity of apps containing a composing focus is somewhat unsurprising given the nature of early composing. Composing is understudied with respect to other components of writing, such as handwriting and spelling, and is less well understood (Quinn and Bingham, 2019). Relatedly, composing is generally less of a focus in early childhood instruction (Bingham et al, 2017), despite the focus on composing in both many state early learning standards for preschoolers (Tortorelli et al, 2016) and in the standards predicated by the Common Core beginning in kindergarten (National Governors Association for Best Practices, 2010).…”

Ready, Set, Write: Early Learning Standards for Writing in the Common Core Era

“…Examinations of children’s planning approaches have provided evidence that children as young as 3 years of age can compose a message and that these skills grow rapidly across the preschool years (Campbell, Chen, Shenoy, & Cunningham, 2019; Rowe & Wilson, 2015). In addition, children write differently depending on the way in which they are asked to compose and what supports are provided (Quinn & Bingham, 2019). Moreover, opportunities to verbalize their ideas, including oral retelling of stories, can improve writing quality on composing tasks for children in kindergarten through grade 2 (Traga Philippakos, Munsell, & Robinson, 2018).…”

“…Conceptualizations of writing in early childhood have clear implications for how early writing is supported and measured in classroom contexts (Ng, Nicholas, & Williams, 2010; Quinn & Bingham, 2019; Quinn, Bingham, & Gerde, 2021). Varying conceptualizations about early writing development across preschool and early elementary settings are likely to cause confusion about the nature of writing processes, what children should be able to do at different age levels, and what learning experiences should be provided to children to support this development.…”

Two-year-old and three-year-old children’s writing: the contradictions of children’s and adults’ conceptualisations

“…Children's and adults' conceptualisations of writing include beliefs about learning to write; knowledge and understanding of the purpose and function of writing; approaches to writing; ways of talking about writing; and responses to writing (Ivanic, 2004;Quinn and Bingham, 2018). Research on young children's writing development over the past two to three decades has typically been framed according around one of three orientations; 1. emergent literacy theory, which incorporate stages and phases of writing development (Clay, 1975;1983); 2. sociocultural emphases, which recognize the impact of the range of writing experiences in children's cultural and social environments on children's understanding and motivation to write (Compton-Lily, 2006).…”