An investigation of self-regulated strategy development as a framework to enhance student writing in an Australian mainstream classroom

摘要

This research aimed to investigate self regulated strategy development (SRSD), an instructional approach which has been developed over the past 30 years as a framework to scaffold students’ writing by bringing “together powerful strategies for writing and critical strategies for self-regulation of the writing process” (Harris, Graham, Mason & Friedlander, 2008a, p. 4). The ultimate goal being to teach students to become independent users of the cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies used by successful writers.udThe study used a mixed method quasi-experimental approach with a treatment and a comparison group of two Year 5 mainstream classes (59 students). The intervention, implementation of the SRSD model (independent variable) with the treatment group, was carried out in the classroom, during the writing period, over seven weeks, of two 45-minute lessons per week.udThere was a range of assessment tools measuring the four dependent variables: writing improvement, self-regulatory behaviours, writing understandings and writing confidence. Codeable quantitative data from writing samples and surveys, and qualitative data from interviews were collected from students. Pretest, post-test and maintenance data for both the Treatment and Comparison groups were collected for each of the four dependent variables. Statistical analysis was undertaken to establish differences both within and between the two groups over the three time periods of the study.