Transcription skills are crucial for children's writing development. While much attention has been given to handwriting, students now also use technology-mediated tools like keyboarding and speech-to-text (STT) recognition software. However, less is known about how these modalities compare in writing performance, particularly on standardized tests of writing skills. This study examines differences in transcription skills across three modalities (handwriting, keyboarding, and STT) and three writing tasks (sentence copying, writing fluency, and narrative word production). It also explores children's use of these modalities at school and home, based on caregiver reports. Sixty-four children in the elementary and secondary grades (age: M = 11.03 years, SD = 1.68) participated in the study and completed equivalent tasks in all three modalities. Results showed that children differed on sentence copying and narrative word production based on task modality. For sentence copying, children wrote most when using STT, followed by keyboarding and then handwriting. For narrative word production, children wrote more using keyboarding and STT relative to handwriting. There was no modality effect on sentence writing fluency. Age was most consistently associated with handwriting and keyboarding across writing tasks. In addition, handwriting and keyboarding performance correlated more strongly with each other than either one did with STT. Caregivers reported their children frequently used handwriting and keyboarding at school and home but minimally used STT. We discuss implications of these findings for educational practice and future research.

The science of reading movement has had a strong influence on teaching and research in the last 7–10 years, although writing has received less attention in the movement Graham (2020). This survey of 187 general and 188 special education elementary teachers was conducted to examine their use of writing to support reading, with return rates of 22.9% and 25.3%, respectively. The survey has a conservative margin of error of rate of +/− 7% (which reduced to +/− 5% for many items). Both samples responded to identical questions about their writing to read practices, beliefs, self-efficacy, and training. Results indicated large proportions of teachers (84% of general education and 77% special education) believed writing is effective for improving reading and used many effective practices. However, substantial proportions of teachers reported being uncertain or disagreeing that writing is effective for improving reading, used practices less frequently, and believe the practices to be less effective with younger and low-achieving writers. Regression models showed that special education teachers reported using fewer practices than general education teachers ( p = .026), although there was no statistically significant difference in the frequency of their use of writing to read practices ( p = .423). Teachers’ beliefs were statistically significant predictors of their use of the practices. Recommendations center on emphasizing writing within the science of reading movement, identifying areas for future research.

Writing self-efficacy acts as a catalyst for writing, an engine for engagement, and a determinant of the actions and resources writers apply while composing. As a result, it is important to ensure that school-aged students view themselves as competent writers. This meta-analysis examined if teaching writing improves kindergarten to Grade 12 students' efficacy for writing, what writing treatments enhance efficacy, and whether instructionally induced writing gains predict gains in writing efficacy. Published and unpublished experiments using an experimental or quasi-experimental design (with pretests) provided the data for this review, yielding 105 writing treatment/control comparisons assessing writing self-efficacy in 65 experiments. Teaching writing had statistically detectable and positive impacts on posttest writing self-efficacy (effect size [ES] = 0.30), maintenance writing self-efficacy (ES = 0.61), and writing posttest performance (ES = 0.88). Three specific writing treatments produced statistically detectable improvements in writing self-efficacy: goal setting (ES = 0.65), strategy instruction (ES = 0.47), and feedback (ES = 0.19). Teaching writing skills, however, resulted in a statistically detectable decrement in writing self-efficacy (-0.17). Instructionally induced gains in writing performance predicted gains in writing self-efficacy. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed.

Despite the growing attention to motivation, less is known about international students’ motivational beliefs and attitudes about academic writing. In this study, we aimed to explore the motivational factors influencing international students’ performance in academic English classes at a large public research university in the western United States. Specifically, we examined students’ self-efficacy, goal orientation, beliefs, and affect for writing, along with their malleability, and their contributions to academic achievement in academic English writing classes. The sample comprised 97 students, predominantly from China, enrolled in online academic English courses. Exploratory factor analysis tended to extract more complex models of the motivational constructs than principal component analysis. Students’ self-efficacy and enjoyment of writing significantly increased from the beginning to the end of the 10-week term, suggesting motivational factors’ malleability. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that students’ self-efficacy at the beginning of the term positively predicted their final grades. However, logistic mixed modeling revealed that students who held stronger beliefs about writing as a means of exploring and expressing ideas had lower odds of passing. Our findings contribute to the understanding of international students’ motivation in academic English settings in higher education and offers potential pedagogical interventions to enhance their academic success.

Purpose Phonological awareness (PA), the awareness of sounds in spoken words, is strongly linked to reading outcomes. However, there is an ongoing debate regarding the effectiveness of PA instruction without including print (i.e. PA without exposure to words or letters). Specifically, is PA-only instruction just as effective in improving reading outcomes when compared to print-based instruction (e.g. phonics)? Method Robust variance estimation was used to examine the effectiveness of PA-only instruction across 38 independent studies and 293 effect sizes. The sample consisted of 3,880 participants in preschool through first grade. The average age of participants was 5 years 7 months. Moderator analyzes were conducted to examine differences in effect across outcomes, comparison conditions and participant characteristics. Results PA-only instruction had a moderate overall effect (g = 0.57, 95% CI [0.40, 0.74], p < .001) on reading-related outcomes. PA-only instruction was less effective when compared to print-based instruction (g = -0.54, 95% CI [-0.80, -0.27], p < .001) and less effective for word reading outcomes (g = -0.33, 95% CI [-0.66, -0.01], p = .05) than for PA outcomes (g = 0.64, 95% CI [0.44, 0.84], p < .001). Conclusion PA-only instruction can be beneficial for reading-related outcomes, but the effect varies depending on two important contextual factors: 1) the reading outcome type and 2) the comparison condition. Specifically, PA-only instruction might be less effective in improving word reading outcomes than PA outcomes. In addition, it has less of an effect on reading-related outcomes when compared to print-based instruction like phonics.

Background: Offering students formative feedback on their writing is an effective way to facilitate writing development. Recent advances in AI (i.e., ChatGPT) may function as an automated writing evaluation tool, increasing the amount of feedback students receive and diminishing the burden on teachers to provide frequent feedback to large classes. Aims: We examined the ability of generative AI (ChatGPT) to provide formative feedback. We compared the quality of human and AI feedback by scoring the feedback each provided on secondary student essays. We scored the degree to which feedback (a) was criteria-based, (b) provided clear directions for improvement, (c) was accurate, (d) prioritized essential features, and (e) used a supportive tone. Sample: 200 pieces of human-generated formative feedback and 200 pieces of AI-generated formative feedback for the same essays. Methods: We examined whether ChatGPT and human feedback differed in quality for the whole sample, for compositions that differed in overall quality, and for native English speakers and English learners by comparing descriptive statistics and effect sizes. Results: Human raters were better at providing high-quality feedback to students in all categories other than criteria-based. AI and humans showed differences in feedback quality based on essay quality. Feedback did not vary by language status for humans or AI. Conclusion: Well-trained evaluators provided higher quality feedback than ChatGPT. Considering the ease of generating feedback through ChatGPT and its overall quality, generative AI may still be useful in some contexts, particularly in formative early drafts or instances where a well-trained educator is unavailable.

We report on a meta-analysis designed to test the theory that instruction that involves direct teaching of academic vocabulary and teaching strategies to determine the meaning of unknown words develops students' abilities to infer new words' meanings and builds students' overall vocabulary knowledge. We meta-analyzed 39 experimental and quasi-experimental intervention studies conducted in grades K-5 to examine the effects of these instructional approaches. Results indicate that interventions that targeted word meaning instruction do not show overall positive effects on measures of breadth of vocabulary knowledge. Although strategy interventions are effective in improving word solving skills on near transfer measures, strategy interventions do not significantly impact students' overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge. These findings suggest that direct teaching of vocabulary words may not be effective for building overall vocabulary knowledge among elementary-grade students. More research is needed to examine the potential of teaching strategies to determine the meaning of unknown words.

This chapter focuses upon research related to building pre-service teachers' (PSTs') own competencies in mathematics writing (MW) as well as their skills in teaching MW and integrating MW into their future K-12 classrooms. The authors provide a review of the research with PSTs and MW. Although there is limited research on PSTs and MW, it is likely that many PSTs enter their preparatory programs with limited MW experience and competencies despite expressing beliefs in the value of MW. Therefore, there is a responsibility of mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) to build PSTs' knowledge of the various genres of MW and their purposes, to explicitly teach PSTs to compose high-quality MW themselves, and to provide frequent models of how MW may be integrated into the mathematics classroom across a range of genres. The authors conclude with suggestions for current practice and future research.

Online peer feedback has become prevalent in university writing classes due to the widespread use of peer learning technology. This paper reports an exploratory study of Chinese-speaking undergraduate students’ experiences of receiving and reflecting on online peer feedback for text revision in an English as a second language (L2) writing classroom at a northeastern-Chinese university. Twelve students were recruited from an in-person writing class taught in English by a Chinese-speaking instructor and asked to write and revise their English persuasive essays. The students sought online peer feedback asynchronously using an instant messaging platform (QQ), completed the revision worksheet that involved coding and reflecting on the peer feedback received, and wrote second drafts. Data included students’ first and second drafts, online peer feedback, analytic writing rubrics, revision worksheets, and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative analysis of students writing performance indicated that peer feedback led to students’ revisions produced meaningful improvements in the scores between drafts. The results of qualitative analyses suggested that: (1) the primary focus of peer feedback was content; (2) students generally followed peer feedback, but ignored disagreements with their peers; (3) students strategically asked for clarification from peers on the QQ platform when feedback was unclear or confusing while collecting information from the internet, e-dictionaries, and Grammarly; and (4) students thought they benefited from experiencing the peer-mediated revision process. Based on the results, we provide recommendations and instructional guidance for university writing instructors for scaffolding L2 students’ text revision practices through receiving and reflecting on online peer feedback.

Mathematical writing has gained attention as an essential component of discourse. Assessing and scoring students' writing pieces about mathematics has the potential to allow teachers and researchers to gain insights into the depth of students' understanding beyond what they can express orally, including their use of visual representations and symbolic notation. This chapter presents four approaches to assessing mathematical writing available in the research literature, including holistic rubric, analytic rubric, elements, and mathematics-writing sequences scoring. A description of how student writing samples were scored, and the benefits and limitations of each approach is provided. Considerations to allow teachers and researchers to make informed decisions about scoring students' writing in mathematics are provided.

Introduction and Methods We do not have an accurate count of the number of teachers of students with visual impairments working in the field, and it is a difficult number to estimate. As part of a national survey, states were contacted to estimate how many teachers of students with visual impairments are working in the United States and compared to the estimate developed by the National Plan for Training Personnel to Serve Children with Blindness and Low Vision (NPTP) in 2000. Results and Discussion The estimate calculated from this process is very similar to the estimate from NPTP (2000), indicating that there are roughly the same number of teachers of students with visual impairments in the field now as there were 20 years ago.

Increasingly, students must demonstrate knowledge in mathematics through mathematics writing, yet research lags in understanding how students engage in mathematics-writing tasks. Most available research on mathematics writing focuses on typically achieving students without considering students with mathematics difficulty (MD). In this study, we explored how students with MD who participated in a word-problem intervention randomized-control trial performed on a mathematics-writing task. We sampled 144 third-grade students with MD and evaluated student performance on an explanatory mathematics-writing measure. Overall, students with MD, on a mathematics-writing rubric with five categories, scored between 1 and 2 points out of a possible 5 points for each category. For one of the five rubric categories, Mathematics Content, the students in the word-problem interventions marginally outperformed the students in the business-as-usual condition. On average, students wrote 33.3 words, numbers, and symbols in response to the mathematics-writing prompt with an average of 8.7 mathematics vocabulary words. Of the mathematics vocabulary words used, students most frequently used formal mathematics vocabulary and names for symbolic numbers, with symbolic symbols and general vocabulary used to a lesser extent. The trends in this study will support future research to enhance mathematics-writing instruction.

Three studies examined if teachers’ beliefs about writing predicted their efficacy to teach writing. We surveyed primary grade teachers from Taiwan (N = 782), Shanghai (N = 429), and the United States (N = 214). At each location, teachers completed surveys assessing attitudes toward writing and the teaching of writing, beliefs about students’ progress as writers, and epistemological beliefs about writing instruction, writing development, and writing knowledge. We examined if each of these beliefs made unique and statistically significant contributions to predicting efficacy to teach writing after variance due to all other predictors, as well as personal and contextual variables, was controlled. With one exception, these three sets of beliefs each accounted for unique variance in predicting teacher efficacy at each location. There was, however, variability in unique variance in teacher efficacy scores accounted for by specific beliefs across locations and the factor structure of various measures by location.

Three studies examined if teachers' beliefs about writing predicted their efficacy to teach writing. We surveyed primary grade teachers from Taiwan (N = 782), Shanghai (N = 429), and the United States (N = 214). At each location, teachers completed surveys assessing attitudes toward writing and the teaching of writing, beliefs about students' progress as writers, and epistemological beliefs about writing instruction, writing development, and writing knowledge. We examined if each of these beliefs made unique and statistically significant contributions to predicting efficacy to teach writing after variance due to all other predictors, as well as personal and contextual variables, was controlled. With one exception, these three sets of beliefs each accounted for unique variance in predicting teacher efficacy at each location. There was, however, variability in unique variance in teacher efficacy scores accounted for by specific beliefs across locations and the factor structure of various measures by location.

We used multivariate generalizability theory to examine the reliability of hand-scoring and automated essay scoring (AES) and to identify how these scoring methods could be used in conjunction to optimize writing assessment. Students (n = 113) included subsamples of struggling writers and non-struggling writers in Grades 3–5 drawn from a larger study. Students wrote six essays across three genres. All essays were hand-scored by four raters and an AES system called Project Essay Grade (PEG). Both scoring methods were highly reliable, but PEG was more reliable for non-struggling students, while hand-scoring was more reliable for struggling students. We provide recommendations regarding ways of optimizing writing assessment and blending hand-scoring with AES.

Following the closure of schools in the spring 2020 semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed two surveys to understand how the pandemic affected elementary education in the U.S. First, we distributed a survey at the end of the spring 2020 semester to understand how school closures impacted delivery of instruction. Second, we conducted a follow up survey in November 2020 to determine the nature of instruction provided to students when schools did or did not re-open in Fall 2020 and understand teachers’ perceptions of student learning and achievement during the pandemic. Each survey was sent to a sample of over 9,000 teachers who were randomly selected to be representative of the population of the U.S. Results indicated that many students did not receive direct instruction in academic skills during the spring 2020 semester. Although by late fall 2020 teachers reported broad use of some form of in-person instructional model, teachers indicated that many of their students were not ready to transition to the next grade level and that achievement gaps were larger in fall 2020 than in typical years. These findings have important implications for practices during potential school closures in the future.

Although many school districts made efforts to provide instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic (including in-person, remote, and blended/hybrid options the length of instruction time and delivery models have varied from district to district. This disruption in education has been projected to result in a significant learning loss, which may be particularly profound for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, leading to widening opportunity gaps. However, there is limited empirical data that can provide important contextual background for understanding the impact of the pandemic on student learning. Therefore, we conducted a national survey with a random sample of 582 elementary school teachers to understand the instructional changes that occurred, the amount of academic content instruction provided to students, and teachers perceptions of the learning supports needed and provided to students during the 2020–2021 school year. Results indicated that most teachers relied on alternative forms of instruction and experienced changes in delivery models but reported low instructional effectiveness. Compared to typical years, teachers reported significant decreases in curriculum coverage; the number of students who received needed interventions, and students who were ready to transition to the next grade level during the 2020–2021 school year. Teachers also reported greater impacts on instruction for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Follow-up analyses using prior school achievement data corroborated the findings that higher school achievement was associated with smaller impacts on student learning and delivery of instruction.

Although many school districts made efforts to provide instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic (including in-person, remote, and blended/hybrid options the length of instruction time and delivery models have varied from district to district. This disruption in education has been projected to result in a significant learning loss, which may be particularly profound for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, leading to widening opportunity gaps. However, there is limited empirical data that can provide important contextual background for understanding the impact of the pandemic on student learning. Therefore, we conducted a national survey with a random sample of 582 elementary school teachers to understand the instructional changes that occurred, the amount of academic content instruction provided to students, and teachers’ perceptions of the learning supports needed and provided to students during the 2020-2021 school year. Results indicated that most teachers relied on alternative forms of instruction and experienced changes in delivery models but reported low instructional effectiveness. Compared to typical years, teachers reported significant decreases in curriculum coverage; the number of students who received needed interventions, and students who were ready to transition to the next grade level during the 2020-2021 school year. Teachers also reported greater impacts on instruction for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Follow-up analyses using prior school achievement data corroborated the findings that higher school achievement was associated with smaller impacts on student learning and delivery of instruction.

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to assess the overall effects of automaticity training of fundamental literacy component skills (i.e., letter names/sounds, individual words) on reading fluency and comprehension. Another purpose was to assess if the effects of automaticity training varied for reading fluency and comprehension. We identified 11 research studies involving students in Grades 1–6 that met the inclusion criteria for this meta-analysis. A total of 83 effect sizes (Hedges g , corrected for sample size bias) were extracted from these studies. These studies were double-coded for specific features (e.g., student age, student grade, type of automaticity training). We meta-analyzed the effect sizes using a multi-level meta-analytic model and examined whether the outcome measure type (comprehension or fluency) moderated the effects of automaticity training. We also analyzed for publication bias. The overall effect size for automaticity training of fundamental literacy component skills on reading fluency and comprehension was 0.28, although it was not statistically significant. Shifting units of analysis approach indicated there was a statistically significant effect found for reading fluency outcomes [ g = 0.48 (CI = .23, .72)] but not for reading comprehension (ES = 0.17 ns). Limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.