Research on Writing and Literacy || Introduction to Special Issue: Research on Writing and Literacy

Hammill Institute on Disabilities

Introduction to Special Issue: Research on Writing and LiteracyAuthor(s): Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris and Charles A. MacArthurSource: Learning Disability Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4, Research on Writing and Literacy(Autumn, 1995), pp. 250-252Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511232 .

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INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL ISSUE: RESEARCH ON WRITING AND LITERACY

Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris, and Charles A. MacArthur

During an interview several years ago, a fifth-grader provided us with a very cogent description of what good writers do when they write:"Well, they take all of their brainstorming ideas and put them on a piece of paper and just write the rough draft. Then, they come back and find mistakes and think of some other ideas and do it over again."

This exposition reminded us of a more sophisticated description of the act of writing by Irving Wallace, a famous contemporary novelist. When writing a novel, he often began by making outlines, developing scenes and characters, and working out the sequence of the story in his head and then roughly on paper-making changes as he went along. Once a first draft was completed, he would return to it again and again, underlining story problems that needed additional work and revising as he went along (Wal- lace & Pear, 1977).

Students with learning disabilities, however, often employ a different, less sophisticated, strategy when composing (Englert & Raphael, 1988; Graham, 1990). These students typically generate text as ideas come to mind, with each preceding phrase or sentence stimulating the generation of the next idea. Little attempt is made to evaluate or rework ideas or text in light of other goals, such as whole-text organiza- tion, the needs of the reader, or the constraints imposed by the topic. This retrieve-and-write process functions like an automated and encapsulated program, operating largely without metacognitive control (Graham & Harris, 1994a; McCutchen, 1988).

An important goal in writing instruction for students with learning disabilities, therefore, is to steer them toward other modes of writing that require more reflection, resourcefulness, and goal-oriented behavior. How can we accomplish this goal? At the most basic level, we must provide opportunities for students to engage in frequent and meaningful writing.

The nineteenth century writer William Hazlitt maintained that, "The more a man writes, the more he can write" (Burnham, 1994). This axiom possesses considerable face validity. However, students with special needs are often provided few opportunities for writing during the school day. Palinscar and Klenk (1992), for example, observed that special education teachers often limit students' experiences with writing to filling out worksheets and copying words. Similarly, Christenson, Thurlow, Ysseldyke, and McVicar (1989) reported that teachers allocated only about 20 minutes a day to writing for students with special needs, and almost half of this time was aimed at helping students acquire the mechanics of writing. It is difficult to imagine that students will develop effective strategies for planning and revising, an awareness of the needs of the reader, or adequate knowledge about how to write, if they are not encour- aged to write frequently and for extended periods of time (Graham & Harris, 1994b).

Any benefits that may result from increasing children's opportunities to write may be undermined, however, if students do not value the topics and tasks they are asked to write about. We are reminded of a conversation where the Peanuts character Charlie Brown asks Linus if he knows why English teachers go to college for four years? Charlie Brown answers his own rhetorical question by emphatically inform- ing Linus that they do this so that they can make stupid little kids write stupid essays on what they did all

STEVE GRAHAM, Ed.D., is Professor, University of Maryland. KAREN R. HARRIS, Ed.D., is Professor, University of Maryland. CHARLES A. MacARTHUR, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, University of Delaware.

250 Learning Disability Quarterly



stupid summer. We have no doubt that the frequency and types of writing children experience in school will influence how they feel about writing and the degree to which writing is a meaningful part of their lives. Ultimately, we want all of our young writers to exhibit the exuberance of the celebrated author Thomas Wolfe, who was seen by a neighbor chanting, "I wrote 10,000 words today, I wrote 10,000 words today" (Saltzman, 1993).

While frequent and meaningful writing is necessary to children's growth as writers, it is not sufficient. If we are to help students with learning disabilities adopt modes of writing that require more reflection, resourcefulness, and goal-oriented behavior, we also need to create learning environments where they take responsibility for initiating and directing their writing efforts, work collaboratively with others, observe the teacher and others grapple with the process of writing, and assess and refine their internal vision of writing, and themselves as writers (Graham & Harris, 1994a). While such principles can help us build a classroom environment where students with learning disabilities can prosper and grow as writers, we also believe that teachers need to explicitly teach (within this meaningful context) skills and processes that are essential to the development of effective writing (Harris & Graham, 1994). This includes strategies for planning, revising, and regulating the writing process as well as the basic skills needed to pro- duce text. In providing such instruction, it is important that we maintain a reasonable balance among meaning, process, and form.

THE SPECIAL ISSUE As the foregoing discussion illustrates, learning to write is a complex task that requires the purposeful in-

tegration of a variety of principles into a cohesive instructional framework. In the current special issue of the Learning Disability Quarterly, three studies that employed multifaceted approaches to teaching writing are presented. The first article by Englert, Garmon, Mariage, Rozendal, Tarrant, and Urba examines the effects of the Early Literacy Project (ELP) on students in grades one through four with learning and other de- velopmental difficulties. ELP is an integrated reading-writing program that incorporates five principles of teaching and learning: the involvement of students in meaningful and integrated literacy activities, participa- tion in a community of supportive and collaborative learners, development of literacy strategies for regulating reading and writing processes, construction of social dialogues about literacy, and enactment of temporary and adjusted support responsive to students' current level of literacy development. Implementation of the ELP curriculum by experienced teachers had a strong impact on improving both the writing and the reading skills of special needs resource-room students in the primary grades. Because resource-room teachers are more likely to focus their efforts on teaching reading than writing (Graham & MacArthur, 1991), we were particularly excited about the findings from the study by Englert and her colleagues, as it provides an excellent example of how both can be taught effectively at the same time.

The second article by MacArthur, Graham, Schwartz, and Schafer concentrates specifically on writing and involves students with learning disabilities in the upper-elementary grades. In this study, word processing and strategy instruction were incorporated into the popular process approach to writing. The principles underlying this curricular model were similar to those in the study by Englert and her colleagues. These included the involvement of students in meaningful writing in a supportive social context, development of cognitive and metacognitive writing processes and strategies, and the enactment of adjusted and temporary support during the learning of skills and strategies. The combination of word processing, strategy instruction, and the process approach resulted in an improvement in the quality of students' narrative and expressive writing. Interestingly, the program had only a minimal effect on improving the mechanics of students' writing. MacArthur and his colleagues suggest that while teachers attended to mechanics through mini-lessons and the teaching of an editing strategy, they may have deemphasized mechanics, placing more emphasis on meaning and process. Other researchers have observed that issues of form and mechanics may be downplayed by process teachers (DeGroff, 1992; Fitzgerald & Stamm, 1990).

The third article by Berninger, Abbott, Whitaker, Sylvester, and Nolen examines the effects of instruction on composing processes (planning, writing, reviewing, and revising) as well as on handwriting and spelling skills. Students who had writing difficulties at the end of third grade participated in a series of tutorials during the summer where each of the above skills was emphasized during each session. Participa-

Volume 18, Fall 1995 251



tion in the tutorials resulted in improved performance on measures of composing, handwriting, and spelling. increasing the amount of writing students did also improved their handwriting fluency, while providing additional instruction on phonological and orthographic awareness improved students' spelling. Perhaps just as importantly, Berninger and her colleagues found that the students in their study had diverse writing and processing problems and were equally diverse in their response to instruction.

The fourth and final article by Nolet and Tindel focuses primarily on assessment rather than instruction. In a effort to boost the amount of writing students do, schools have increasingly incorporated writing activities into content area classrooms. This concept of writing across the curriculum has coincided with an increased emphasis on performance assessments (involving writing as well as other skills) both in the classroom and as a means for evaluating school effectiveness. In the study by Nolet and Tindel, the validity of two performance measures, an evaluation essay and a compare-and-contrast essay, was exam- ined. Both of these measures were tied to twoweek units of instruction delivered in two sections of a mainstreamed seventh-grade science class. As the authors cautioned, the use of such measures with students with learning disabilities (who also have writing problems) may not yield valid inferences about their ability to engage in critical thinking in a content domain such as science.

We hope that you will find the articles in this special issue meaningful and that they will serve as a spring- board for incorporating new ideas into your classroom or provide additional inspiration and ideas for your research. We would like to thank our contributors for their outstanding contributions to this special issue.

REFERENCES Burnham, S. (1994). For writers only. New York: Ballantine Books. Christenson, S., Thurlow, M., Ysseldyke, J., & McVicar, R. (1989). Written language instruction for students with

mild handicaps: Is there enough quantity to ensure quality? Learning Disability Quarterly, 12, 219-229. DeGroff, L. (1992). Process-writing teachers' responses to fourth-grade writers' first drafts. Elementary School Jour-

nal, 93, 131-144. Englert, C., & Raphael, T. (1988). Constructing well-formed prose: Process, structure, and metacognition in the in-

struction of expository writing. Exceptional Children, 54, 513-520. Fitzgerald, J., & Stamm, C. (1990). Effects of group conferences on first graders' revision in writing. Written Com-

munication, 7, 96-135. Graham, S. (1990). The role of production factors in learning disabled students' compositions. Journal of Educa-

tional Psychology, 82, 781-791. Graham, S., & Harris, K.R. (1994a). The role of self-regulation in the writing process. In D. Schunk & B. Zimmer-

man (Eds.), Self-regulation of learning and performance: Issues and educational applications (pp. 203-228). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Graham, S., & Harris, K.R. (1994b). Implications of constructivism for teaching writing to students with special needs. Journal of Special Education, 28, 275-289.

Graham, S., & MacArthur, C. (1991). Introduction: Research and practice in writing. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 6, 200.

Harris, K.R., & Graham, S. (1994). Constructivism: Principles, paradigms, and integration. Journal of Special Edu- cation, 28, 233-247.

McCutchen, D. (1988). "Functional automaticity" in children's writing. Written Communication, 5, 306-324. Palinscar, A., & Klenk, L. (1992). Fostering literacy learning in supportive contexts. Journal of Learning Disabilities,

25, 211-225. Saltzman, J. (1993). If you can talk, you can write. New York: Warner Books. Wallace, I., & Pear, J. (1977). Self-control techniques of famous novelists. Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis,

10, 515-525.

Requests for reprints should be addressed to: Steve Graham, Department of Special Education, University of Mary- land, College Park, MD 20742.

252 Learning Disability Quarterly



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Research on Writing and Literacy || Introduction to Special Issue: Research on Writing and Literacy