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Keywords:
SRSD
Writing
Professional development
Self-Regulated Strategy Development
Instruction
a b s t r a c t
We examined the effects of the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) for opinion essay writing
among 380 eighth grade students in six urban middle schools in a major city in Portugal. Fourteen teachers in six urban middle schools in Portugal participated in the present study; 7 of these teachers participated in practice-based professional development (PBPD) in SRSD before implementation, and follow-up
support once instruction began. Schools were matched in pairs based on SES and teacher characteristics;
a member of each pair was randomly assigned to either: (a) teacher led SRSD instruction for opinion
essay writing; or (b) teacher implementation of the schools existing curriculum and language program
prescriptions for opinion writing. Students in the experimental schools were taught strategies for planning and composing opinion essays once a week in 45 min sessions, over a three-month period. Multilevel modeling for repeated measures indicated SRSD instructed students made statistically greater
gains in composition elements than the comparison students immediately after instruction and two
months later. Teachers implemented SRSD with delity and teachers and students rated the intervention
favorably. This study provides initial evidence for replication of the effects of PBPD and SRSD outside of
the United States. Limitations, lessons learned, and directions for future research are discussed.
2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Writing is an important skill that cuts across the school curriculum and is useful for a variety of functions in daily life. Although
writing is important and challenging to learn, in Portugal as in the
United States (e.g., Gilbert & Graham, 2010; Harris, Graham,
Brindle, & Sandmel, 2009), its teaching has been neglected. In Portugal, recent reform of the language arts curriculum resulted in
new guidelines and standards for language arts instruction
(Ministrio da Educao e Cincia/Ministry of Education and
Science, 2009, 2012). These guidelines recognize the importance
of writing, including it as a priority area of instruction. They
require not only the development of writing skills related to
q
This research was supported by European FEDER funding through COMPETE:
(Operational Program for Competitiveness Factors) FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER022660 and by national funding through FCT (Fundao para a Cincia e
Tecnologia/Science and Technology Foundation) under the project PTDC/CPE-CED/
102010/2008.
Corresponding author. Address: Faculty of Psychology and of Sciences of
Education, Rua do Colgio Novo, Apartado 6153, 3001-802 Coimbra, Portugal. Fax:
+351 239 851465.
E-mail address: ifestas@fpce.uc.pt (I. Festas).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
0361-476X/ 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
they are learning, and do not provide much support during implementation, which traditionally is primarily done in isolation.
Congruent with sociocultural and social cognitive theories that
stress the importance of meaningful learning in situated contexts,
PBPD has six critical characteristics: (a) collective participation of
teachers within the same school with similar needs; (b) basing
professional development around the characteristics, strengths,
and needs of the students in these teachers current classrooms;
(c) attention to content knowledge needs of teachers, including
pedagogical content knowledge; (d) opportunities for active learning and practice of the new methods being learned, including
opportunities to see examples of these methods being used and
to analyze the work; (e) use of materials and other artifacts during
professional development that are identical to those to be used in
the classroom, and (f) feedback on performance while learning, and
before using these methods in the classroom, so that understandings and skills critical in implementation are developed. In the
Harris et al. (2012) study, teachers who received PBPD implemented SRSD instruction that resulted in signicant and meaningful changes in student writing outcomes for both story and opinion
essay writing. Teachers implemented SRSD with delity, and SRSD
was viewed as socially valid by teachers and students.
Finally, the few published studies of teacher implementation of
SRSD have all been conducted in the United States, as have
the majority of studies on SRSD. Thus, there is a need to test the
generalizability of SRSD results across populations outside of
the United States. Similarly, PBPD has not been tested outside of
the United States. If PBPD for SRSDs promise is to be actualized,
it is important to test its effectiveness in different contexts. Aggregated, consistent ndings across a variety of studies in a variety of
contexts are necessary to argue that an intervention is reliable and
generalizable (Robinson, Levin, Schraw, Patall, & Hunt, in press).
Recommendations for educational practice must be based upon
such aggregated nding and research syntheses, thus replication
and extension of previous research is critical to the eld.
Despite the difculties Portuguese students experience learning
to write, evidence-based practices in writing have rarely been
tested in this country. Our study extended previous SRSD research
by examining if SRSD instruction was effective when it was implemented by Portuguese teachers who received PBPD for SRSD, and
conducted classwide with Portuguese middle school students.
We examined the effects of SRSD instruction, implemented by
classroom teachers following PBPD, on the opinion essay writing
performance of eighth grade Portuguese students. Previously, we
had adapted SRSD lessons and materials to the Portuguese language and to Portugals educational context (Rebelo et al., 2013).
Eighth grade was selected as the target grade level because such
instruction should help these students prepare for the national
exam that is taken in the ninth grade. Writing opinion essays is
an important part of the school curriculum in eighth- and ninthgrade and is targeted in writing tests and the Portuguese national
exam. Criteria used in the national exam include evaluation of
opinion essays structural elements (premise, reasons and conclusions) (Gabinete de Avaliao Educacional/Educational Evaluation
Ofce, 2013), which are an important part of SRSD for opinion
essays. Furthermore, the language arts teachers in the participating
schools requested a focus on opinion essay writing.
Fourteen teachers in six urban middle schools in Portugal participated in the present study; 7 of these teachers participated in
PBPD for SRSD. The six schools were matched in pairs based on
socioeconomic status and homogeneity/heterogeneity of students
and on teacher characteristics including gender, experience, and
preparation. One member of each pair was randomly assigned to
one of two conditions: (a) classroom teacher implemented SRSD
instruction for opinion essay writing; or (b) teacher implementation of the schools existing curriculum and language program
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
All teachers were female and all taught Portuguese language arts.
Additionally, all of the teachers had an undergraduate degree
obtained from a university in Portugal and only one teacher (in
the comparison group) had a masters degree (no difference was
found concerning this variable: Fishers Exact Test = 1, p = .50).
All of the teachers held a teaching license and all had served as
teachers for a long period of time, ranging between 16 and 34 years
in the experimental group (M = 27; SD = 6.56) and between 23 and
39 years in the comparison group (M = 29.33; SD = 5.54). No statistically signicant difference was found here between the two
groups (t(12) = .686, p = 0.51]. Both groups included teachers
who taught more than one section of language arts and teachers
who taught only one section: in the experimental group there
was 1 teacher with 3 sections, 4 teachers with 2 sections, and 2
teachers with 1 section; in the comparison group there was 1 teacher with 3 sections, 3 teachers with 2 sections, and 3 teachers
with 1 section. Class size ranged from 10 to 23 students in the
experimental group and from 9 to 24 students in the comparison
group.
In Portugal, there are no national guidelines for teacher preparation programs regarding preparation for teaching writing.
Research, however, indicates that preparation to teach writing is
poor (Pereira, 2001). None of the teachers had received either specic preparation in teaching writing in their preparation programs
or professional development on writing instruction during their
careers. In the present study, teachers in the comparison group followed the Portuguese language arts curriculum, while teachers in
the experimental group followed the SRSD model for writing
instruction in opinion essays.
2.3. Students
A total of 380 students (214 in the experimental group and 166
in the comparison group) participated in this study. Initially, there
were 507 students in the 14 eighth grade classrooms, with 285 students in the experimental classrooms (132 girls, 153 boys) and 222
in the comparison classrooms (118 girls and 104 boys). Only 436
students, however, participated in the pre-test (some students
changed schools and others were not present during pretesting),
and of these, consent and assent to participate was obtained for
380 students. Members of the research team collected the following information regarding students from school records: age, gender, grade retentions, grades in language arts and other subjects,
and special education status; occupation and educational attainment of parents were also collected from these records.
The age of the experimental group ranged from 11.92 to
15.42 years (M = 13.33; SD = .44) and the age of the comparison
participants ranged between 12.67 and 16.42 years (M = 13.56;
SD = .65). An independent t-test revealed a statistically signicant
difference in age [t(265.7) = 3.85, p < .001]. Concerning gender,
103 (48.1%) of the experimental group were male and 111
(51.9%) were female, while in the comparison schools the gures
were 72 (43.4%) male and 94 (56.6%) female. The proportion of
males and females in the two groups did not differ statistically
(p = .36).
In the experimental group, 21 students (10%) had repeated one
grade or more, whereas 18 students (11.1%) in the comparison
group had repeated one or more grades. The number of students
repeating a grade in the two groups did not differ statistically
(p = .72). The mean for the number of grade repetitions in the rst
group was .09 (SD = .37), ranging from 0 to 3, and for the comparison schools the mean was .20 (SD = .60) with the same range.
There were four students (1.9%) with special needs in the experimental group and seven in the comparison group (4.3%). These
numbers for the two groups did not differ statistically (p = .20).
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
Time
Groups
Experimental
(n = 214)
M (SD)
Control
(n = 166)
M (SD)
Opinion essay
Pre
Post
Follow-up
3.56 (3.85)
6.07 (3.70)
4.86 (3.20)
3.90 (3.45)
3.62 (2.96)
2.65 (2.34)
Word count
Pre
Post
Follow-up
229.06 (93.30)
176.47 (71.13)
167.00 (69.62)
178.07 (84.37)
148.89 (83.90)
155.41 (95.28)
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
and maintenance (2) (RStudio, 2013). Each of these analyses proceeded in the fashion as described below.
For level-1 variables (time of testing and the outcome variable),
we (1) determined the interclass correlation (ICC) looking at
changes over time of testing; (2) examined if scores for the outcome measure randomly varied among individuals; (3) investigated the form of the relationship between time of testing (i.e.,
pre-test, posttest, and maintenance) and the outcome measure
(i.e., Do scores generally increase, decrease, or show some other
type of relationship with time?); (4) veried whether the relationship between time and the outcome measure was constant among
students or whether it varied on a student-by-student basis; and
(5) examined if the model t improved by incorporating an autoregressive structure with serial correlations and heterogeneity in the
error structure.
We then conducted the analyses by adding the level-2 variables
in order to try to explain the random variation in mean test results
(intercepts) and in time of testing results slope. First, we examined
the impact of adding treatment (SRSD versus comparison) to the
model. Then we examined the effects of treatment, gender, and
age. As noted earlier, there was a small, but statistically signicant,
difference between students age in the two groups. In addition, we
included gender in the analyses, as girls are typically better writers
than boys at these ages (Graham, 2006a).
For both structural elements and number of words, we ran a
model where the level-2 variables included school along with
treatment, gender, and age. However, the model with only treatment, gender, and age provided a better t to the data than the
model where school was also included (structural elements:
AIC = 5897.60; BIC = 5973.02; LogLik = 2933.80; p < 0.0001; number
of words: AIC = 12726.25; BIC = 12806.7; LogLik = 6347.126;
p < 0.05). The model where school was added to treatment, gender,
and age did not converge, even though a model with school as the
only level-2 variable was statistically signicant. As a result, we
only report the results for the model that included treatment, gender, and age.
3.1. Treatment delity
The SRSD writing intervention was implemented with acceptable delity. Observations of 25% of the instructional sessions
indicated that teachers completed 77.86% (SD = 11.61%; range
65100%) of the writing activities. The lower score occurred in only
one class session where the teacher was dealing with behavioral
issues. In addition, SRSD teachers were asked to check each activity
of a lesson as they completed it, using the same checklists. These
checklists were collected at the end of instruction; teachers
reported completing 82.38% (SD = 19.96%; ranged between 44
Table 2
Multilevel regression modeling analyses of the relationship between treatment, age, and gender and time of testing for structural elements in opinion essays.
b
Model with Treatment, Age, and Gender
(Intercept)
Treatment
Age
Gender
Timea
Timeb
Treatment Timea
Treatment Timeb
Age Time (01)
Age Time (02)
Gender Time (01)
Gender Time (02)
3.657
1.400
0.383
0.508
22.650
10.941
36.725
23.890
9.759
1.835
9.236
10.999
SE
DF
0.197
0.231
0.209
0.266
5.398
5.311
6.333
6.231
5.712
5.620
6.183
6.083
752
376
376
376
752
752
752
752
752
752
752
752
18.560
6.055
1.836
2.253
4.196
2.060
5.799
3.834
1.715
0.327
1.494
1.808
0.000
0.000
0.067
0.025
0.000
0.040
0.000
0.000
0.087
0.744
0.136
0.071
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
Table 3
Multilevel regression modeling analyses of the relationship between treatment, age, and gender and time of testing for number of words in opinion essays.
b
Model with Treatment, Age, and Gender
(Intercept)
Treatment
Age
Gender
Timea
Timeb
Treatment Timea
Treatment Timeb
Age Time (01)
Age Time (02)
Gender Time (01)
Gender Time (02)
178.379
28.047
15.959
36.931
351.954
302.809
542.889
72.047
41.22
25.765
74.604
66.591
SE
DF
6.19
7.263
6.55
7.090
98.59
78.203
115.66
91.748
104.31
82.749
112.91
89.571
752
376
376
376
752
752
752
752
752
752
752
752
28.815
3.862
2.437
5.221
3.570
3.872
4.694
0.785
0.395
0.311
0.661
0.743
0.000
0.000
0.015
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.693
0.756
0.000
0.433
0.509
0.457
4. Discussion
Given the complexity of writing, it seems reasonable to expect
special care needs to be taken when teaching it. Nevertheless,
the teaching of writing is neglected in Portugal (Pardal & Festas,
2011) and the United States (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). We provided intensive professional development in SRSD for opinion
essay writing to teachers of eight grade students following the
PBPD model (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Grossman & McDonald, 2008;
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
10
Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
11
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Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004