The Quality of Recent Studies in Content-Area Writing in Secondary Classrooms

Miller, Diane M.; McTigue, Erin M.; Scott, Chyllis E.

doi:10.1177/2381336915617602

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…For instance, only including studies published in English give more prominence to research derived from specific countries and may overlook relevant advancements in the assessment of writing motivation originating from other parts of the world. In addition, to lessen limitations related to the quality of included studies, like Camacho et al ( 2021 ) and Miller et al ( 2018 ), the present review only includes peer-reviewed studies, as these studies have undergone the rigorous demands of the peer-review process, which is generally accepted “as a method to ensure a level of academic credibility” (Miller et al, 2015 , p. 467). However, even though relevant as a quality threshold, this criterion can be a source of bias.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Writing Motivation: a Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports

et al. 2023

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For attaining success in writing, motivation is essential. Crucially, instruction is dependent on knowing the student’s capabilities and inner drives. To date, research on writing has yet to establish a consistent framework for assessing writing motivation, and often fails to acknowledge students’ self-reports, rather favoring evaluations of students’ writing motivation made by others, such as teachers and researchers. This limbo state originates partly from a general skepticism towards the trustworthiness of elementary students’ self-reports. Nonetheless, the validity of such self-reports has been acknowledged in adjacent fields, such as reading. Aiming to establish a knowledge base from studies addressing students’ voices, the present study adopts the method of a systematic review and investigates how writing motivation has been assessed in empirical studies (1996–2020) through K-5 students’ self-reports. Of the 7047 studies identified through database search, 56 met the inclusion criteria and are examined in this review. Results indicate that (a) storytelling is the genre most used to operationalize writing in the investigations, (b) surveys and interview questions measuring students’ attitude towards writing are the most common type of self-report used, and (c) students’ voices are weighted differently across the studies. Findings suggest that future research should (1) work to counteract existing biases in writing tasks, (2) provide a rationale for their choice/design of measure of motivation, and (3) report clearly whose voices are being heard (e.g., students’, teachers’, or researchers’) and the appropriateness of this choice regarding study purpose, design, and findings.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Writing Motivation: a Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports

et al. 2023

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“…We subjected the data from this mixed-method study to quantitative textual analysis (QTA; Bolden and Moscarola, 2000 ; Kelle, 2004 ). QTA is a branch of qualitative content analysis and assumes that (1) words that tend to appear together (i.e., in close proximity) in a given context may be interpreted as related to the same lexical theme or concept within the discourse under study ( Brier and Hopp, 2011 ) and (2) traditional statistical techniques may be used to analyze narrative data ( Miller and Riechert, 2001 ). We applied co-word analysis (CA, Greenacre and Blasius, 2006 ) to the adolescents’ responses to the question “If you had to describe, using one phrase, image, or metaphor, what it is like to be a girl/boy your age these days, what would you write?” The value of using CA to analyze this type of material is that it enables researchers to represent the structure of their data by converting a set of proximity measures into visual distances corresponding to specific locations within a spatial (Cartesian coordinate system) configuration ( Borg et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaphors of adolescence during COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed-method analysis in relation to well-being and alexithymia

Farina,

Pepe

2024

Front. Psychol.

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IntroductionDuring the pandemic, young people experienced a general increase in stress levels in their home and school environments and in their relationships with peers and family, largely due to restrictions on freedom of movement and social isolation. The ability to identify sources of stress and respond positively to them, using both personal and environmental resources, seems to be key to maintaining an acceptable level of well-being. This study investigates the association between alexithymic traits, self-perceived well-being, and self-representations in adolescents as expressed via narrative metaphors during the COVID-19 epidemic.MethodsThe sample comprised 229 Italian adolescents (51.1% females, mean age = 16.64). The research design was based on an exploratory, parallel, mixed-method approach. A semi-structured online interview was used as the major data gathering tool including both standardized quantitative questionnaire and open-ended questions. Data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, quantitative textual analysis and multidimensional co-word correspondence analysis.ResultsMain findings reveal a general low level of perceived well-being associated with alexithymia, affecting adolescents’ lexical choices for their metaphors. Alexithymia-related low levels of well-being correspond to metaphors in which confusion and overpowering emotions predominate. Vivid pictures indicating vitality and a bright view on the future is often correlated with high levels of well-being.DiscussionOverall, these novel findings appear to show an interactive effect of perceived well-being and alexithymia on adolescents’ ability to identify and describe their own condition. Furthermore, metaphors emerge as powerful tools for investigating well-being in adolescents since closely related to inner states.

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“…In addition, literacy research has traditionally emphasised reading over writing (e.g. Miller et. al., 2015;, including in the field of disciplinary literacy (e.g.…”

Section: Literacy Studies Across Disciplinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work descriptions written by third-graders: An aspect of disciplinary literacy in primary craft education education

Törmälä

Kulju

2023

JoWR

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This study focuses on disciplinary literacy in primary craft education. Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialised ways of reading, writing, and speaking in a particular discipline. In Finland, crafts is an obligatory school subject, and pupils are supposed to conceive and manage a complete crafts process, including documentation. However, disciplinary literacy in crafts has rarely been studied, let alone at the primary level. In this study, we explored the quality of a sample of work descriptions produced by third-graders. The data included digitally produced work descriptions (N=79) written by 42 third-grade pupils in a Finnish primary school. Based on a qualitative analysis, six main dimensions of work descriptions as a textual genre emerged: word count, crafts vocabulary, structure, spelling, multimodality, and self-assessment. The quality of work descriptions was analysed quantitatively according to scoring criteria based on these dimensions. A cluster analysis indicated that there were three groups of work descriptions with respect to their level of disciplinarity: limited, emerging, and advanced descriptions. The results show that the structure of the disciplinary texts develops first, and subject-specific vocabulary stabilises after that. The paper discusses the foundation for disciplinary literacy in primary craft education.

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The Quality of Recent Studies in Content-Area Writing in Secondary Classrooms

Cited by 9 publications

References 33 publications

Assessing Writing Motivation: a Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports

Assessing Writing Motivation: a Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports

Metaphors of adolescence during COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed-method analysis in relation to well-being and alexithymia

Work descriptions written by third-graders: An aspect of disciplinary literacy in primary craft education education

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