Implementing self regulated strategy development

Harris, K. R., Lane, K. L., Driscoll, S. A., Graham, S., Wilson, K., Sandmel, K., Brindle, M., & Schatschneider, C. (2012). Tier 1, teacher-implemented self-regulated strategy development for students with and without behavioral challenges: A randomized controlled trial. Elementary School Journal, 113(2), 160-191.

Background

The authors noted that the majority of primary school children had problems writing stories and opinion essays, and that many students did not have a positive attitude towards writing.

Aims

The study examined whether self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) instruction, an implementation model teaching cognitive strategies to help students learn, use, and adopt the strategies used by skilled writers, would result in greater gains in writing for students with behaviour challenges (students who have difficulty staying on task) compared to those without, whether SRSD instruction would have differential effects on engagement among these two groups of students, and whether students with higher cognitive ability would make greater gains than those with lower cognitive ability.

Sample

The participants were 10 second-grade teachers, 10 third-grade teachers and 56 second- and third-grade students from three rural American primary schools.

Method

The teachers were first given 12 hours of professional development and then assigned to either the story writing or opinion essay writing condition. In both conditions, they taught the class using the SRSD approach. Students with behaviour challenges were matched with those without challenges. All the students discussed the general planning strategy for writing as well as genre-specific writing strategies. The teachers modelled the writing process using the writing strategies. They also modelled self-instructions for purposes such as goal setting, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement, and coping, and discussed these self-instructions. The students were then given a sheet to chart their own progress. They were taught to memorize the different steps for writing stories or opinion essays. When the students could write their essays independently, the teachers encouraged them to create their own graphic organizer by modelling how to create one. All the students wrote a story and an opinion essay before and after the intervention.

Findings

The results indicated that after the intervention, the students in the story writing group demonstrated large improvements in number and quality of story elements compared to the opinion writing group while the latter had greater gains in opinion elements compared to the former. SRSD instruction did not increase engagement among students with challenging behaviours compared to students without challenging behaviours. The writing gains from SRSD instruction were only related to a small extent to the students’ cognitive abilities. All students benefitted from SRSD instruction.

Implications

The authors suggested that SRSD should be included as part of classroom instruction because it benefitted students with or without challenging behaviours.