Pietro Boscolo

Writing to Learn, Writing to Transfer

This chapter is focused on writing to develop thinking and reasoning about complex phenomena in the elementary school. It introduces a study aimed at investigating whether writing as a learning tool could be used by students first for understanding in history and then for understanding in science by transferring a disposition toward writing as a meaningful activity in knowledge construction. Making writing a meaningful activity for students implies leading them to experience the different functions it can have in the learning process: not only to record information, but also to expose, reflect, discuss, argue, and communicate. Thirty-two fifth graders divided in two groups, experimental (writing) and control (non-writing), were involved in the implementation of a history curriculum unit on the discovery of America and of a science curriculum unit on the human circulatory system. The findings provide evidence that writing can be effectively introduced across the curriculum to support higher-order thinking processes in order to produce understanding. The experimental group students were able to transfer the attitude, which characterized their writing activity in history to the domain of science, reaching a deeper conceptual understanding in both disciplines, as well as more advanced metaconceptual awareness of their learning. It may be concluded that if knowledge construction and reconstruction in the classroom is sustained by activities requiring the deep engagement of students as intentional learners who solve knowledge problems, then such an engagement can be activated by writing as a tool for thinking and reasoning to transform knowledge.

Effects of Collaborative Revision on Children’s Ability to Write Understandable Narrative Texts

The chapter focuses on elementary and middle school children’s revision of written narrative texts in an interactive situation. The study had two closely-related objectives. The first was to analyze the effects of collaborative revision on children’s ability to anticipate their readers’ need for comprehension, as well as to check comprehensibility when revising texts written by others. The second objective was to analyze the role of children’s verbal interaction and discussion while revising. Children’s ideas were investigated in a concrete writing-reading situation: that is, a child wrote a text, a classmate gave feedback on its comprehensibility, both discussed the suggested corrections. The hypothesis was that through collaborative revision children might improve their writing skills. A total of 122 students from an elementary and a middle school in Padova (Italy) participated in the study. For each grade level (4, 6, and 8), there was an experimental and a control group. The results showed improvement for the experimental group children both in writing and revising after the collaborative revision sessions. The participants’ attitudes towards revision emerging from peer interaction are presented and discussed.

The construction of expository text

The aim of this study is to analyse the ways in which elementary school children construct an expository text, i.e. a text whose primary objective is to express information and ideas and which is well exemplified in school textbooks. Eighty subjects from grade 2 to 8 were requested to write a text about the wind. The writing task was divided into two main phases: in the first phase each subject dictated his/her ideas to an adult who transcribed them; in the second phase the subject had to write a text using the ideas he/she had expressed. The data showed a developmental trend in expository writing, which concerns particularly three aspects of the written productions: the strategies of content generation used by the subjects, the changes from dictation to text production, and the organization of the final text.

Student Motivation: An Experience of Inservice Education as a Context for Professional Development of Teachers.

Abstract This article focuses on an inservice education experience conducted in a constructivist perspective. The experience was aimed at fostering elementary, middle and high school teachers’ professional development regarding student motivation. Thirty-six teachers from these school levels reflected on their professional experience and practical knowledge in groups conducted and supervised by university researchers. In group work, the participants analyzed and discussed materials and situations from their professional experience, re-elaborated in the light of a constructivist framework. At the end of the intervention, they showed an increased ability and interest in reflecting with colleagues and researchers on their students’ motivational problems, and collaborative planning of educational interventions. The results of the intervention are presented and the possibility of carrying out similar education experiences in the Italian school system is discussed.

Teaching Elementary School Students to Play With Meanings and Genre

We carried out an experimental study with 2 groups of fourth graders through 10 weekly workshops of 90 min each. The experimental group consisted of 66 fourth graders (male = 26, female = 40), the control group consisted of 48 fourth graders (male = 23, female = 25), and both groups included less skilled and skilled writers. The experimental group children were taught and practiced “linguistic games” in which they had to modify narrative texts according to a specific rule or by introducing a new element, with the aim of creating a new and coherent text. The results showed an improvement in the experimental group childrens ability to modify texts and an increase in their liking of narrative. Although differences in posttest writing tasks emerged between less skilled and skilled writers, no difference emerged either in liking of writing or in self-perception of competence.

Instructional strategies for teaching to write: a Q-sort analysis

Abstract Two methods of teaching writing in first grade are adopted in Italian elementary schools: analytic or phonic–syllabic and global. The former starts with the presentation to children of letters which are combined into words and sentences, whereas the latter emphasizes writing as a meaningful activity, and consequently its starting point is represented by words and/or sentences. Twelve first grade teachers (six following the analytic and six the global method) had to Q-sort 85 instructional activities commonly used when teaching to write. From factor analysis applied to the Q-data two factors emerged, one referring to the analytic and the other to the globalistic teachers. The relationship between the two factors and the activities is presented and discussed.

Change as a Process and a Disposition: A Commentary

The chapters of the section are considered and grouped according to two perspectives or dimensions: the object of change and the types of instructional interventions adopted or proposed. A dual view of change emerges; change as a process (conceptual change stricto sensu) and as a disposition (conceptual understanding). The instructional strategies aimed at facilitating change are viewed according to this dual perspective.

Contexts for writing, writing in context

AbstractThe role of context variables is emphasized in recent research on writing, from which a great variety of meanings of the word ‘context’ emerges. The aim of this paper is to investigate some aspects of the identification of context variables in writing research by focusing on three main functions of context: a)context as a condition for communication, i.e. the ground the writer creates in order to communicate with the readerb)context as task environment, i.e. the situational variables (task objectives, motivational aspects, media, etc.) which can influence the writing process and/or productc)context as an interactive framework, i.e. context as constituted by what people are doing, as well as by when and where they are doing it.

Summary writing as a tool for improving the comprehension of expository texts: An intervention study in a primary school

The relationship between summarization and text comprehension is particularly relevant from an instructional perspective. The ability to summarize a text adequately in either oral or written form is a basic tool to assess student comprehension and a learning strategy. The difficulty that children experience with writing adequate summaries has primarily three reasons, which pertain to the reading and writing activities involved in summarization: the complexity of expository texts, which are the typical genre of materials that are to be studied and summarized, the strategies and cognitive processes to be used during summarization, and the specificity of summaries as a writing genre. This chapter focuses on using summaries as a learning strategy. Specifically, it analyzes the effects of writing a summary on expository text comprehension. The chapter analyzes the effects of summary instruction on the expository text comprehension of fourth graders. Keywords: cognitive process; instructional perspective; learning strategy; summarization; text comprehension; writing genre

New Directions in Writing as a Learning Activity

This introductory chapter explains the development of the conceptualization of writing as a tool for learning. Firstly, much research on writing to learn has shifted from a domain-general writing across the curriculum approach, toward a domain-specific writing in the disciplines approach. Secondly, the assumption that the medium of writing inherently elicits learning, which was already widely challenged by 2001, has been superseded by research showing that the effects of writing on learning depend on the cognitive strategies of the writer, and more recently, that such strategies can be taught. Thirdly, there has been a shift from a focus on individual writers carrying out discrete writing activities, toward systems comprised of people implementing practices that combine writing with other kinds of representations and educational activities. Academic and professional writing are intertwined with the construction and internalization of knowledge. Keywords: academic writing; curriculum approach; domain-general writing; learning activity; professional writing