A mixed-methods study to identify effective practices in the teaching of writing in a digital learning environment in low income schools

Highlights

• Students wrote more often, used open ended templates and composed digital learning objects.

• Students engaged in discussions requiring critical thinking or critical literacy.

• Students were less often given constrained practice tasks such as worksheets or games.

Abstract

This paper reports on the teaching practices identified as effective for students' writing progress in a digital learning environment. The study is situated within a design-based research partnership between researchers and a group of urban schools serving culturally diverse students from low income communities who have implemented a digital pedagogy innovation which includes student device ownership, wireless access and a shared pedagogical approach. The research design logic was to select demonstrably effective teachers as ‘case studies’ in order to understand what effective teachers in the innovation did that promoted greater progress in writing. Qualitative analyses of selected teachers' class sites and students' individual blogs identified features of teaching practice hypothesised to promote student development in writing. To strengthen our understandings, teachers were interviewed to check the comprehensiveness and validity of our interpretation. Classroom observations from these case study teachers were compared with observations from a larger group of teachers to investigate whether identified practices were differentially employed by these effective teachers. Finally, the effects on student writing achievement of the relative presence of these practices in all observed classes were predicted using a hierarchical linear model. Our findings indicate effects of using digital tools in ways that promote complex compositional tasks, discussion and critical thinking. The study adds to a growing number of studies that investigate the nature of effective pedagogy within a digital environment. It contributes to the identification of promising practices for the design of more effective instruction in writing within classes that have ubiquitous digital access.

Introduction

In considering how learning to write might occur in digital classes we draw on a theoretical frame in which development is conceived as a co-construction between learners and more expert others, through which learners come to know the goals, the actions and the conditions relevant to recurrent activities (Gee, 2001) within the ongoing practices that occur within and across settings and groups (Rogoff, 2003). In learning to write, such development entails increasing expertise in achieving one's communicative goals (Kress, 1993). These activities are dependent on resources and mediated by tools in those settings. Within these relatively stable patterns, learners are conceived as active. Individually and collaboratively, learners are engaged in constructing new ideas and ways of participating in activities by negotiating, internalising or transforming the meanings available to them, thereby becoming increasingly agentive in their expertise (Göncü & Gauvain, 2012).

Given this conception of development, learners develop writing expertise by coming to know the goals and actions recurring in the activity of writing, through interaction with others using tools and resources within that environment. Using this frame provides a means to interpret the interventions that have commonly been identified as effective in supporting students to develop expertise in writing, through meta-analysis (e.g., Graham and Perin, 2007, Graham et al., 2012) and through narrative review (Myhill, Fisher, Jones, Lines, & Hicks, 2008). These classroom practices can be characterised as developing expertise through students' strategy use, for example in Self-Regulated Strategy Development (Graham & Harris, 2005) or their knowledge about writing, for example through teaching of text structure (Rose, 2009). Increased expertise is supported through tools (e.g. word processing) (Graham and Perin, 2007, Morphy and Graham, 2012) and discussion about writing (Myhill et al., 2008). Tutorial properties of these approaches can be described as a combination of explicit instruction in aspects of writing, and in-task support while students write (Graham & Harris, 2016). The tools and resources that teachers and students draw on include models, rubrics, indicators, mnemonics and frames to support these activities (Myhill et al., 2008, Graham et al., 2012).

Whereas studies of effective practices focus on the planned teaching activity to support development, studies of effective teachers foreground the role of the teacher to create an effective learning environment and design appropriately challenging, purposeful and extended writing tasks (Gadd & Parr, 2017). Within this frame, researchers have identified a number of ways that teaching practices are effectively employed. Langer (2001), for example, in a study of highly effective schools, identified that the teachers in those sites consistently provided a supportive environment, which she described as characterized by balance, variety, and authenticity. Interaction patterns in these teachers' classes were designed to extend children's thinking often in collaboration with peers, and included thinking about the nature of learning through metacognitive conversations and connections. Similarly, Parr and Limbrick's (2010) study of six effective teachers of writing concluded that a feature of the supportive environment provided by the teachers stemmed from clarity about the aims, specificity of the goals and coherence between these goals and the activities in which children were engaged (Parr & Limbrick, 2010). Theoretically, these features are supportive through tutorial properties which enhance the ability of learners to understand the goals and actions required to succeed in the writing endeavor, and the provision of support and tools to achieve those goals.

Increasingly, digital environments are becoming part of the educational tools available to teachers and writers. Word processing has been found to be a supportive tool for composition length compared with traditional writing modes (Bangert-Drowns, 1993) and supportive of students having difficulty learning to write (Morphy & Graham, 2012). In digital environments, where all students have access to digital devices, they also have access to the internet and the vast array of digital resources. Moreover, in such environments, teachers can curate resources and support via class sites. Zheng, Warschauer, Lin and Chang's meta-analysis (2016) suggests an average effect size of Cohen's d = 0.2 (e.g., Durlak, 2009) for writing achievement in 1-1 learning environments.

Arguably, in a digital environment, the changes in outcome are dependent upon changes in pedagogy to support writing (Zheng, Warschauer, Lin, & Chang, 2016). It is argued that digital learning environments offer potential increases in autonomy, collaboration, personalisation and creativity (McLoughlin & Lee, 2008). Studies identify increased writing quantity (Grimes & Warschauer, 2008) and increased engagement in writing processes (Lowther et al., 2012, Yang and Wu, 2012). In terms of tutorial properties, studies of digital learning environments identify potential for an increase in learning-focused interactions and higher level thinking skills (Grimes and Warschauer, 2008, Lin and Dwyer, 2006, Somekh et al., 2007, Yang and Wu, 2012). In their survey of writing teachers, Purcell, Buchanen, and Friedrich (2013) reported that teachers see benefits for connecting with an audience, collaboration and creativity. These descriptions provide initial evidence that, within the digital environment, there is opportunity for the nature of school writing activities to change given teachers' beliefs and the nature of their practices. There is also evidence that the nature of the support to achieve writing expertise can be different, through increased in-task support from peers and teachers, (and arguably the self) given the digital opportunity for ongoing iterations, and the opportunity to access resources and tools that support that process (Sylvester & Greenidge. 2009). However, all these studies agree that the positive potential for writing can only be realised through pedagogy that supports these enhancements, while avoiding associated pitfalls.

Theoretically then, more effective teaching will result from the extent to which the digital learning environment is employed in ways that promote greater expertise in writing. Empirically, there is some evidence to suggest that in digital environments a number of practices known to be effective in writing instruction can be enhanced through digital pedagogy. Studies identify increased engagement in writing, either through more writing or through more activities that support writing development, such as revising or evaluating one's writing or analysing other people's writing (Zheng et al., 2016). Similarly, studies document the possibility for shifts in the nature of the writing that children undertake (Grimes & Warschauer, 2008), offering the balance, variety and authenticity similar to those documented within the task environments provided by effective teachers (Langer, 2001). Moreover, changes are documented for enhanced interaction between children and the groups they belong to, for example through greater opportunity for discussion (Maninger & Holden, 2009) and responsive teaching (Russell, Bebell, & Higgins, 2004). Finally, more effective instruction might arise from the greater opportunity for in-task support; from the teacher (Corn, 2009), through support from peers (McLoughlin & Lee, 2008), or from the tools which students can draw on within writing activities.

New Zealand has a history of innovative and effective literacy programmes emerging from local innovations in which teachers, either in professional groups or in association with researchers, design and implement new teaching approaches to become more effective (McNaughton, 2011). The present study is situated within an improvement initiative in a self-formed group (cluster) of urban schools serving low income communities, with high proportions of indigenous Māori or Pacific Nations descent. The programme is a digital learning initiative developed by the schools supported by a charitable trust. This initiative has formed a partnership with researchers to develop a design-based research collaboration. The overall shared objectives of the collaboration are to increase student achievement so as to achieve greater equity, and in so doing identify what parts of the programme can and should drive further improvement.

Within the innovative nature of the schooling initiative, new understandings about effective pedagogy in that context are needed, so that novel approaches are not just innovative, but also educationally sound. To support that aim, in this article we use an analysis of the pedagogy of six of the most effective teachers of writing within the innovation to describe the features of current practices that are hypothesised to contribute to outcomes. We then test these hypotheses by checking whether the distribution of practices looks different in case study teachers' classes than in a wider sample of teachers, and by testing whether use of these practices can be associated with accelerated progress for students across one year. In doing so we seek to contribute to the body of work focussed on how technology might contribute to educational processes and outcomes (Bebell & O'Dwyer, 2010).

Given the evidence that pedagogy is a key to improved instruction in digital environments, the current study seeks to use the likely variability in teaching approaches within a digital learning innovation in order to understand how the approaches might best be used to support progress in writing. The innovation has involved a research partnership using design-based research in iterative cycles to design, test and redesign practices to enhance instruction. Our intention was to understand the effectiveness where it occurred, so that observed effectiveness within the constraints of the particular context might drive further innovation. The reviewed research and theory suggest specific sites within classes that offer explanatory power, namely: the nature and quantity of students' engagement in writing, the effectiveness of tutorial properties, the in-task support through interaction and the use of tools and resources. This explanatory power, we argue, will support further redesign and scaling within the immediate context, while simultaneously advancing theoretical understanding of the pedagogy that underlies successful digital innovations.