Writing is a means of assessing academic achievement across almost every subject area in American education, making the development of effective writing skills a vital part of academic development. Students with disabilities often have underdeveloped writing skills, and students with emotional and behavioral disorders particularly struggle with the self-regulation skills that are necessary for writing exercises. A new study by Penn State researchers indicates that struggling middle-schoolers can improve their writing skills by utilizing the Self-Regulated. Strategy Development (SRSD) method for quick writing.
Dr. Linda Mason and Dr. Rick Kubina were awarded a $1.8 million grant by the National Center for Special Education Research to develop an intervention that addresses the problems noted in middle school students' writing. Their goal was to test the SRSD method for quick writing in the classroom, particularly for use on students with emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD). The majority of prior research for adolescents with EBD has addressed behavioral outcomes, rather than academic outcomes. The current project is the first to examine an academic writing intervention for the EBD population, which is at high risk for failure and school drop-out. The outcomes for both academic and behavioral performance target an under studied area and promise to provide new directions in intervention for middle school students with EBD. The SRSD instructional intervention is designed to promote writing independence by teaching students cognitive and self-regulating strategies for facilitating the writing process. Previous research has demonstrated its effectiveness with improving writing fluency for elementary students, therefore researchers were hopeful the intervention would also prove to be effective for older students.
Quick writing was selected as the target task for intervention. A quick write is generally a brief response assignment used to assess content learning. Students must write a short answer to a specific question that requires either an informative or persuasive response. It is usually timed and informal and is often used in the secondary classroom. Typically, students with learning or emotional disabilities are given extra time to complete the task, however that type of accommodation isn't necessarily helpful for students with eEBD.“Research has shown that children with emotional behavior disorders will generally write for two to three minutes and then stop,” said Mason, associate professor of education and co-funded by the Children, Youth and Families Consortium
Students with EBD also show greater variability in the quality of their writing than other students at their grade level, so one of the main goals of the instructional intervention was to facilitate consistency. Researchers theorize this can be achieved by teaching students to set goals, self-regulate, self-instruct and self-reinforce writing strategies. Penn State researchers conducted four separate studies using the SRSD method for a persuasive writing technique called POW (Pick ideas, Organize notes, Write and say more) +TREE (Topic Sentence, Reasons, Examine,Ending). The intervention typically involved a period of six 30-minute instructional sessions in which an instructor conducted lessons with guided practice. Responsibility for self-regulation and strategy gradually shifted from instructor to student by scaffolding instruction.
Mason and colleagues conducted a series of four studies using SRSD intervention, including one quasi-experiment that encompassed four urban charter schools, five case studies in an alternative setting, a teacher intervention in small groups in a special education classroom, and a one-on-two intervention in an inclusive middle school. “Capturing our target population has been our biggest difficulty,” said Mason, citing the fact that adolescents with EBD often change schools frequently.
In their quasi-experiment, 400 students were evaluated with a pre-test, and 60 were chosen for intervention based on deficits in their writing fluency relative to their peers. Ultimately, 32 students participated in the SRSD intervention, including 11 students with disabilities. . In all four of the studies, the intervention significantly improved students' writing as measured by researcher developed measures of writing quality and length of writing and by Woodcock-Johnson standardized tests of writing fluency. In addition, students' attention or time on task improved quantitatively following the intervention. Students reported that they liked the intervention and felt that it should be taught to other middle school students. They also noted that they were using the strategies they learned in their classroom and in testing situations.
Mason suggests that teachers may need to reconsider the extended-time accommodation for students with emotional behavioral disorders. “They may need other accommodations, like breaks or some one-on-one instruction,” said Mason.“But the study did show that these kids can do it, and we can change the attitudes of students about writing. They definitely can perform academically.”
Mason and Kubina are in the process of analyzing the data from their final studies. In the future, they hope to scale up the research on the SRSD method for writing intervention and do efficacy trials with at-risk populations.