With the fetishisation of computer technologies in education, the older sense of technology as pertaining to skill, what the Greeks termed 'techne', seems to have slipped from view. Technology is generally equated with the object itself rather than the facility to use it. A skill such as writing, for example, is rarely considered a technology and…

Two hundred ninety-eight primary teachers (88% female) from across all Australian states and territories reported on the frequency with which they implemented instructional adaptations for struggling writers in their classrooms. They also rated their preparation and self-efficacy for teaching writing. The majority of participating teachers…

Commencing students in universities today are very diverse with regards to their academic preparation, language, and cultural background. Some of these students are also first in family to attend university. With such diverse student profiles and previous learning experiences, it is possible that some students may not be confident to employ the…

This qualitative study focused on educators' perspectives of teaching students with dysgraphia. Dysgraphia can be referred to as a specific learning disorder (SLD) in writing and includes difficulties with handwriting, spelling, and/or composition skills. To explore the educators' experiences, an interpretative phenomenological analysis method was…

Current research suggests that students who struggle with grammar, spelling, mechanics and other "problems of ability," as well as students who suffer from "problems of engagement," as well as those students who see reading and writing as a chore, can benefit from creative writing assignments and learn to enjoy reading and…

There is a strong body of research showing associations between handwriting automaticity and children's writing performance. However, less is known about keyboarding automaticity and young students' writing performance. We investigated the relationship between handwriting and keyboarding automaticity and writing performance in both modalities in a…

Writing native-like has always been a primary purpose for non-native writers of English and, accordingly, many language components have been investigated to develop writers' fluency. One of these language components is syntactic complexity (SC), which is often regarded as a reliable way to grade any texts from easy to difficult. This study aims to…

Research indicates that in disciplines such as social sciences, humanities and to a large extent in qualitative work across disciplines, writing plays a central role in doctoral education. The close association of writing with knowledge construction and identity building is acknowledged in the literature and in practice. Therefore, to facilitate…

Students and teachers from different language backgrounds are at risk of becoming victims of conflicting trends and conventions when writing in English. This study compares conventions of English academic writing at several European universities with what is taught in English-speaking countries. Data were collected with questionnaires and by…

Recent developments in higher education have seen a strong emphasis placed on making graduates "job ready" for their work in the professions. A driver of this agenda has been the many mass-scale surveys conducted with business and industry about the abilities and general employability of graduates. This Australian-based study is focused…

The development of an appropriate authorial voice is considered to be fundamental to successful academic writing in the target language. Voice research in second language (L2) writing, therefore, seeks to delineate voice salience in L2 academic texts, the relationship between voice and high quality academic writing, the second language writer's…

Is oral feedback on thesis writing from supervisors and academic literacy advisors (ALA) based on writing criteria, such as the MASUS (Measuring the Academic Skills of University Students) criteria (Bonanno & Jones, 2007)? The study aimed to investigate the distribution of supervisory and ALA oral feedback in terms of the five MASUS Areas.…

In spite of Krashen's (1985) claims that the only way to acquire a second language is through non-stressful comprehensible input, Swain (1995, 1998, 2005) and others propose that the production of language (speaking or writing), under certain circumstances, is a significant part of the second-language acquisition process. Swain also states that…

Writing is a key area of literacy in the early years, however writing receives less research attention than reading despite its impact on students' learning generally, and literacy development specifically. Writing skills have also been shown to be quite stable--good writers in the early years stay good writers in the later years. Therefore it is…

A major challenge that universities and lecturers face is improving the written output of their students. While many resources are invested in improving tertiary students' writing, lecturing staff and the broader community lament students' abilities. This article reports on a study investigating the characteristics of students' written texts and…