Research thread aims to deepen our understanding of how K-12 students with diverse levels of literacy proficiency exhibit differential use of language. This is achieved by leveraging influential educational theories, such as Hayes' 1996 Cognitive Model of Writing and Berninger & Winn's 2006 Not-so-simple-view of writing.
The development of proficient reading and writing skill is widely recognized as an integral component of K-12 education in the United States, as it empowers individuals to attain their academic, occupational, and personal aspirations. However, the majority of young learners fail to attain mastery in the requisite writing behaviors and skills commensurate with their grade-level expectations. This discernible tendency is substantiated by NCES, revealing that only 27% of twelfth-grade students demonstrated proficiency in writing, characterized by well-organized and coherent text, appropriate transitions, and diverse sentence structure.
The scrutiny of proficient literacy extends beyond K-12 education and is applicable to higher education across diverse disciplines. For example, scientific literacy encompasses an understanding of the mechanisms underlying scientific processes, a discernment of criteria defining valid evidence, and proficiency in interpreting such evidence, etc. A substantial proportion of undergraduate students lack the requisite reasoning and comprehension skills, coupled with insufficient writing proficiency, which hinders their ability to articulate ideas effectively. Consequently, this deficiency significantly impairs the overall quality of their scientific projects.
To date, my research focuses on examining learners’ language use within a three-level language framework comprising lexical, sentential, discourse-level sophistication, accuracy, and diversity. In addition, I will investigate cognitive skills such as writing knowledge resources, motivation and affective stance, working memory, handwriting fluency and mechanical skills which have demonstrated significant impact on learners’ writing performance. This holistic framework is important in delineating distinct writing behaviors and cognitive skills among learners and enabling the identification of their weakness and strengths. Such insights facilitate educators in tailoring targeted interventions, while aiding assessors in crafting evaluation frameworks that incorporate this array of factors. Positioned as a foundational element for both instruction and assessment, this research thread contributes to advancing our understanding of the intricacies inherent in the process of writing acquisition.
Academic Language Use in Middle School Informational Writing
Cherish M Sarmiento, Adrea Truckenmiller, Eunsoo Cho, and 1 more author
Background: Understanding students’ use of academic language within informational writing is a key component of writing development throughout schooling. Additional research on the academic language variables that are most predictive of quality academic writing would be helpful to guide more targeted instruction. Aims: We evaluate Grade 5 and Grade 8 students’ writing (in the genre of descriptive informational writing in response to text) to determine which metrics may be the most indicative of academic language and what role they play in dimensions of writing ability. The roles include contributions to the dimensions of writing quantity, quality, and level of narrativity Sample: Our sample consists of informational writing samples from 285 students from Grade 5 (n = 175) and Grade 8 (n = 110) in a Midwestern State in the United States. Methods: An individual differences design was used to compare several word and sentence level features to determine the degree to which the features signal academic language at the beginning and end of middle school. Results: Results suggest that frequency of longer words may be the most useful measure of academic language in informational writing and that several sentence-level metrics may challenge our current conceptualization of quality writing. Conclusion: Results provide promising avenues for the assessment of malleable aspects of academic language in writing
Exploratory Text Analysis of Student Constructed Responses to NGCI Assessment Items
Heqiao Wang, and C. Kevin Haudek
In CREATE for STEM Conference, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 2023
Assessing students’ scientific writing skills presents a significant challenge in science education, primarily due to the subjectivity and time-consuming nature of the process. To address this challenge, we designed a novel approach that leverages both linguistic and content measures to automatically evaluate students’ scientific writing skills. We conducted exploratory data analysis to identify relevant features that can be incorporated into machine-learning algorithms to enhance model accuracy and reliability. Specifically, we utilized four assessment items in undergraduate environmental science on Food-Energy-Water (FEW)nexus, all of which pertained to cause and effect science assessment. To ensure comprehensive evaluation of response features, we categorized the sub-questions of the cause and effect task into six subtypes, namely effect, tracing, system flows, predict, cause, and devise.Our primary objective is to compare how varying subtypes affect students’ writing about phenomena in FEW nexus. A mixed-method approach was employed to analyze the data. In the quantitative analysis, we extracted 29 theoretically based features from the Coh-Metrix textual analysis tool to identify differences in language use across the four subtypes. In the qualitative analysis, we employed latent topic modeling to investigate the content of students’ responses and determine whether the vocabularies were consistent with the underlying topic content within each subtype. Overall, our approach offers a comprehensive evaluation of students’ scientific writing, which holds promise to inform future automated evaluation of science assessments.
Latent Profiles of Writing-related Skills, Knowledge, and Motivation for Elementary Students and Their Relations to Writing Performance Across Multiple Genres
Our goal in this study is to expand the limited research on writer profile using the advantageous model-based approach of latent profile analysis and independent tasks to evaluate aspects of individual knowledge, motivation, and cognitive processes that align with Hayes’ (1996) writing framework, which has received empirical support. We address three research questions. First, what latent profile are observed for late elementary writers using measures aligned with an empirically validated model of writing? Second, do student sociodemographic characteristics—namely grade, gender, race, English learner status, and special education status—influence latent profile membership? Third, how does student performance on narrative, opinion, and informative writing tasks, determined by quality of writing, vary by latent profile? A five-profile model had the best fit statistics and classified student writers as Globally Weak, At Risk, Average Motivated, Average Unmotivated, and Globally Proficient. Overall, fifth graders, female students, White students, native English speakers, and students without disabilities had greater odds of being in the Globally Proficient group of writers. For all three genres, other latent profile were significantly inversely related to the average quality of papers written by students who were classified as Globally Proficient; however, the Globally Weak and At Risk writers were not significantly different in their writing quality, and the Average Motivated and Average Unmotivated writers did not significantly differ from each other with respect to quality. These findings indicate upper elementary students exhibit distinct patterns of writing-related strengths and weaknesses that necessitate comprehensive yet differentiated instruction to address skills, knowledge, and motivation to yield desirable outcomes.
@article{troia2022latent,title={Latent Profiles of Writing-related Skills, Knowledge, and Motivation for Elementary Students and Their Relations to Writing Performance Across Multiple Genres},author={Troia, Gary A and Wang, Heqiao and Lawrence, Frank R},journal={Contemporary Educational Psychology},volume={71},pages={102100},year={2022},publisher={Elsevier},}
