Note-taking is a commonly applied pedagogical strategy across all areas of education. In higher education specifically, there has been an increasing push to get students involved in collaborative note-taking in order to increase their engagement with the contents and to inspire deeper and more meaningful learning. However, there is a lack of…

Purpose: The overarching purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which differences existed in Grade 4 STAAR Writing performance by student economic status, gender, and language status. In the first article, the purpose was to investigate the extent to which student economic status (i.e., Not Poor, Moderately Poor,…

Reading, writing, and mathematics are widely regarded as foundational academic skills upon which many other academic skills depend. Consequently, each receives a considerable allocation of resources for instruction, assessment, and intervention in K-12 education (Hooper, 2002). An additional indicator of the importance of these skills is the…

Pedagogical shifts that incorporate multimodal and digital literacies challenge the world in which literacy teachers have lived and worked. Effective professional development (PD) experiences may increase teachers' knowledge and enlarge their teaching paradigms about writing instruction. The current study explored ways PD might encourage teachers…

This paper describes an investigation of the relationship between students' writing knowledge and second language writing performance. Metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge contribute significantly to writing performance. As a foreign language, 78 undergraduate students took a writing knowledge class and a writing proficiency test. The…

This study reports on validation of a writing motivation survey and its relationship with a variety of indicators of academic performance of 566 undergraduate students drawn from six US postsecondary institutions. A writing motivation survey was used to capture students' writing goals, confidence, beliefs, and affect. Two research questions are…

This study examined the effect of progress monitoring frequency and scoring metric on curriculum-based measurement of written expression (CBM-WE) progress monitoring estimates. The writing progress of 116 second-grade students receiving a classwide writing fluency intervention in their general education classrooms was monitored across 13 weeks…

This study explored possible reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing by investigating the effects of two different test designs and scoring criteria on Iranian IELTS candidates' obtained grades in IELTS and World Englishes (WEs) essay writing tests. To this end, first, a WEs essay writing test was preliminarily designed. Then, 17…

The aims of the current project were to: (a) describe lexical diversity, morphologically complex word use (MCW), and writing quality ratings of 5th-grade students with diverse language backgrounds and (b) to examine the relationship between analytical components and writing quality ratings with performance on measures of language and literacy…

This study explores the impact of mind mapping on the writing of English as a Foreign Language [EFL] among Saudi learners and the bilateral effects of mind mapping and other writing processes. Little research has been devoted to the effect of electronic mind mapping as a mediating tool. Despite the cyclical nature of writing processes, the…

Standardized tests provide information about student achievement that are vital to understanding how well students are learning the state standards. The problem addressed in this study was the underachievement of 52% of third-grade students in the target district in English Language Arts on a state standardized test. Poor reading skills can cause…

The rapid decline in Australian students' performance on the "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN) writing test is an issue of national concern. This paper presents the first investigation into patterns of achievement and progress on the NAPLAN writing test across the tested year levels (3, 5, 7 and 9) between…

Despite the importance of analytic text-based writing, relatively little is known about how to teach to this important skill. A persistent barrier to conducting research that would provide insight on best practices for teaching this form of writing is a lack of outcome measures that assess students' analytic text-based writing development and that…

This article reports on a qualitative secondary data analysis of a study of upper elementary students' narrative writing progress in U.S. rural schools. It compares students working online in pairs with those working alone. We explain why the intervention had some positive effects for struggling writers but few effects for skilled writers. The…

Academic language has been identified as an important focus for instructing students about the quality of written composition they need to be successful in college and career. However, the role of academic language in written composition achievement is not well understood. This study explores the role of academic language skills in students'…