| |
Tynjala, Paivi; Lucia Mason & Kirsti Lonka (Eds.).
(2001). Writing as a Learning Tool: Integrating Theory
and Practice. Dordrecht, Boston & London: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
219 pp.
$79 (Cloth) ISBN 0-7923-6877-0
$46 (Paper) ISBN 0-7923-6914-9
Reviewed by David K. Pugalee
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
February 17, 2004
The editors have assembled a noteworthy collection of chapters that
blend theoretical and practical perspectives on writing as a tool
for learning. Though several of the chapters deal with content
specific approaches, all contributions explicate the general
principles of writing as a mediating tool for learning. The
chapters make clear distinctions relative to the requirements of
the structures and relationships that shape writing in specific
domains. In the prologue, Olson (pp. 1-5) argues that personal
literacy comes into contact with societal literacy primarily
through schools where individuals learn how to read specialized
documents of the institutions as well as how to write them,
particularly in meeting requirements of specialized institutions
such as science, literature, law, and economics. He points out
that literate societies recognize the importance of writing and
reading on learning and extends the idea of literacy to
conceptualizations of how to read, write, and use written texts
in specialized domains. The authors of the nine chapters in this
book describe the writing-to-learn practices supporting writing
as a cognitive tool that shapes the construction of meaning and
mediates thinking.
The editors author an introductory chapter providing a
substantive review of the historical perspectives for the
writing-to-learn movement through constructivist and social
constructivist lens considering the impact of research on
learning and writing. Writing to learn is viewed not only in
terms of cognitive structures but the cultural discourse that
shapes the foundation for those structures. Writing is related
to problem-solving, linking thinking and learning through
transformative and generative processes that positively impact
learning. A synthesis of the conditions that must be present for
writing to function as a useful and effective tool for thinking
and learning is presented. The editors provide a concise yet
descriptive synopsis of what makes writing work for
learning.
Nelson’s chapter elucidates how constructivism as a
theory for supporting writing and learning. She examines
connective dimensions including connections among ideas,
connections among texts, connections among authors, and
connections across disciplines and domains. These connective
dimensions support the notion that language as a social function
is the basis of all higher mental functioning as posited by
Vygotsky (1978, 1987). The link between composing and learning
is explored, specifically through consideration of the
relationship between reading-writing acts, summary writing, and
critiquing. Learning as connections among texts includes a
substantive and contemporary discussion of the function of
hypertexts in providing environments characterized by flexibility
and multiplicity. Learning as connections among authors and
across discipline domains points to the authoritativeness and
authenticity of the writing-to-learn pedagogy, particularly as
writing relates to the disciplines.
Tynjala relates the aims of higher education to development of
writing-to-learn activities that move beyond reproductive
learning toward reflective and metacognitive writing connecting
writing with other forms of learning. The pedagogical
implications of writing as supporting metacognitive and
reflective behaviors are situated in socio-constructivist
principles. The author describes forms of writing in higher
education within this framework including examination
preparation, essay writing, thesis and research writing, summary
writing, journal writing, collaborative writing, project-based
learning tasks, and integrated tasks combining reading, writing,
and group discussions. The author describes how different
benefits from these various forms of writing contribute to the
development of expertise.
Domain specific effects of writing are considered within the
contexts of English and social studies in a chapter by Nystrand,
Gamoran, and Carbonaro. The relationship between classroom
discourse and writing is investigated in a quantitative study
involving 48 ninth-grade social studies classes and 54
ninth-grade English classes. The study found that writing and
oral discourse extends the scope of one another. Writing in the
two subjects was found to serve different purposes with social
studies writing activities focusing more on development of
students’ cloze reading processes. Content specific
studies of this nature point out the need for further study on
the varied learning ecologies formed through interactions of
multiple forms of classroom discourse including oral and written
language forms. Understanding the pedagogical models that
characterize effective writing-to-learn programs in various
content domains is essential if the instructional potential of
such learning tools is to be realized. Rich language
environments promoted through multiple forms of discourse appear
to enhance writing. The study described by the authors supports
the idea that discourse communities facilitate the progression of
learning, particularly when discussion and revision are
components of such models (also described in research on
communication in mathematics, see Lesh & Doerr, 2000).
“Writing to Learn, Writing to Transfer” by Boscolo
and Mason gives attention to writing in the development of
thinking and reasoning at the elementary school level. Their
work focuses on fifth grade students’ writing to reason
about complex phenomena in history and science. In this study,
writing was implemented as a conceptualization tool supporting a
variety of purposes related to specific classroom tasks involving
recording results, ideas, and information reasoning, expressing
communicating and discussing ideas, etc. The authors report four
primary findings from their research. First, students were able
to write for different aims requiring an active manipulation of
information that supported an understanding of history. Second,
writing facilitated a better understanding of new history topics
at three levels: restructuring content, change of explanations,
and change of some beliefs about the nature of history and the
role of the historian. Third, writing in history appeared to
transfer to writing as a learning tool in science. Students
showed capability to transfer the nature to be engaged in writing
as a meaningful activity. Fourth, students who transferred the
uses of writing from history to science demonstrated a deeper
conceptual understanding of the new topic and a deeper
metacognitive awareness. This study provides evidence that the
disposition to engage in meaningful writing as a tool for
learning history transfers to the specific domain of science.
This suggests that general attitudes related to the nature of
knowledge and learning can be generalized from situated and
contextualized activities within one domain to the contexts and
activities in another domain. Such dispositions exemplify
students making sense of their learning for oneself, involving
thinking processes such as producing, applying, and extending
knowledge as characteristic of mathematicians and scientists
(Connolly, 1989).
Two related studies of sequential writing tasks in science
with secondary school students is the focus of a chapter by Hand,
Prain, and Yore. The studies examine outcomes from the use of
single writing-to-learn tasks and sequential tasks on responses
to lower-level and higher-level cognitive science test
questions. Goals of writing tasks included learning science
knowledge, enhancing the understanding of science, and developing
metacognitive abilities. Students who participated in the
writing-to-learn tasks performed better on higher-order test
questions in each of the studies but not for lower-level
questions. The results imply that a sequence of writing tasks
can facilitate students’ review and revision of their
science understanding with such repetition not adversely
affecting interest in the topic. These sequential tasks can
support new links between concepts enhancing understanding and
encouraging knowledge transformation. Several challenges in
using writing activities in school science are identified:
students’ current understandings of the nature and
reasoning demands in science, implementation and teaching issues,
and effective design of tasks. The study also confirmed the
researchers’ assumptions that effective task sequence
requires students to transform knowledge through addressing
content and rhetorical issues, addressing generic and discursive
demands, and considering audience needs. While no single task
sequence is likely to address all these components, one or more
of these can be the focus of the tasks and instruction. These
implications raise important instructional design questions.
First, students need explicit support in understanding the
functions of writing in science and the strategies to support
these functions. Second, new demands are made on what teachers
and students are expected to know about the nature of science and
scientific reasoning through writing-to-learn tasks in
science.
Slotte and Lonka report on the effect of note taking on the
content and quality of essay-type responses on written
examinations. They report positive effects from note taking on
both content knowledge and the linguistic features of the
essays. The subjects of their research use note taking
strategies spontaneously including construction of study tools
such as notes, concept maps, and underlining. Participants read
a lengthy and cognitively demanding text passage so that they
could respond to essay-type tasks related to the reading. As
such the authors support note taking as a transformative rather
than reproductive process that affects deep level cognitive
representations. The authors employed an assessment model based
on the work of Kijk and Kintsch (1983) to analyze the text
materials and notes of more than 1200 applicants for university
entrance exams in terms of their underlining, note taking, and
concept mapping. This model differentiates between forms of
mental representation constructed while learning from text.
These include a surface memory or actual words and phrases, a
text base in which a coherent representation of the textual
material is formed, and a situation model where textual content
is integrated into the student’s knowledge system. The
authors report a general positive impact of note taking, but
raise questions about how the type of notes taken, the nature of
the writing tasks, and the writing conditions differentially
affect essay writing on related tasks. Their work has several
implications for teaching including how to teach note taking
strategies and the importance of distinguishing between the
effect of notes on the ability to provide content, or develop a
cohesive argument, or the interplay between the two.
The integration of various learning tasks into portfolio
assessment is the focus of a chapter by Linnakyla. The author
argues that it is not the form or media used in a collection of
student work that makes it a portfolio but the self-assessment
and reflection during producing, composing and selecting the
material for the product, and the evaluation of the process,
outcomes and progress of individual learning. Writing may
include process-related notes, mind-maps, learning logs, diaries
or journals, essays, reports, posters, or research papers. The
goal of the portfolio should be to enhance learning. The author
argues that the learner and others involved in the process should
negotiate the diverse qualitative criteria used in assessing the
portfolio. The processes of writing, reading, and reflecting
provide students an opportunity to encounter their own learning.
The author discusses how portfolios can be used effectively in
technology supported learning contexts which require diverse
writing skills, mastery of the writing process and application of
effective writing strategies. The author provides informative
and cautionary notes about elements and processes that should be
considered in constructing digital portfolios. Flexibility with
organization and display of content and ideas as well as the
ability to connect to various representational schemes in
multiple ways (Gibson & Barrett, 2003) give electronic
portfolios the potential to reshape the reflective behaviors that
characterizes the entire process making it a learning as well as
assessment tool.
Though technological advances such as computers have
tremendously affected writing, research on the impact of such
technologies is only beginning to provide substantive direction
that relates the use of technologies in writing-to-learn
applications. Hartley and Tynjala discuss how these technologies
provide new possibilities and purposes for writing. Working from
the assertion that writing involves thinking and learning, the
authors discuss how writing is facilitated by new technologies
though it is less clear whether the processes of writing,
thinking, and learning changes when using technology. The
authors point out individual differences in the planning,
drafting, and revising behaviors of writers, but also reason that
regardless of writing styles that communicating with the reader
remains the goal of writing. The processes of planning,
revising, and editing serve to make the intended meanings of such
communication clearer. Examples of technology aided writing are
given within four levels of complexity: simple programs used for
word processing (allows for deletions, substitutions, moving
text, and formatting for printing); more modern programs that
build on the first level by adding style, spelling and grammar,
indexing and referencing options; more complex programs that aid
in planning and organizing material (outliners, templates, and
‘idea’ processors); and computer-based writing
environments that include a whole suite of programs. Examples of
writing in environments that include cooperative and
collaborative processes, electronic email, worldwide web,
hypertexts, hypermedia, computer conferencing, and voice
recognition are provided along with brief descriptions of related
research. Details are provided of four lines of inquiry in
research related to writing and technology. In general, reports
emphasize positive aspects of these technologies. This is
consistent with the conclusions from a meta-analysis of research
on writing and technology (Goldberg, Russell & Cook, 2003).
This study consistently found that students who used technology
to write produced more text that tended to be of higher quality
than those who used paper and pencil. These effects were larger
for middle and high school students. The analysis also found
that students revised more between drafts when technological
tools were used and the revisions contributed to a higher quality
of writing. Hartley and Tynjala caution that such technologies
also involve usage problems such as hardware and software
limitations, user resistance, and abilities to select and apply
the appropriate tools. The authors call for continued emphasis
on addressing challenges in computer and program design in order
to provide increasingly useful and user-friendly systems for both
individual and collaborative writing and leaning.
Overall, the chapters provide a rich collection of
theoretical and practical discussions of writing as a tool for
learning. While the disciplines represented in the book provide
a broad spectrum of writing across the curriculum, a growing body
of knowledge relative to writing in mathematics is not
represented; however, the ideas developed in the chapters provide
useful information for reflecting on writing-to-learn processes
in general. The focus of the work on writing as a learning tool
offers a valuable resource for practitioners and academics.
References
Connolly, Paul (1989). Writing and the ecology of learning.
In Paul Connolly and Teresa Vilardi (Eds.), Writing to Learn
Mathematics and Science, pp. 1-14. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Gibson, D. & Barrett, H. (2003). Directions in electronic
portfolio development. Contemporary Issues in Technology and
Teacher Education, [Online serial], 2(4). Available:
http://www.citejournal.org/vol2/iss4/general/article3.cfm
Goldberg, A., Russell, M., & Cook, A. (2003). The effect
of computers on student writing: A metaanalysis of studies from
1992 to 2002. Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment,
2(1). Available from http://www.jtla.org.
Lesh, Richard. & Doerr, Helen M. (2000). Symbolizing,
communicating, and mathematizing: Key components of models and
modeling. In Paul Cobb, Erna Yackel, & Kay McClain (Eds.),
Symbolizing and Communicating in Mathematics Classrooms:
Perspectives on Discourse, Tools, and Instructional Design,
pp. 361-184. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Publishers.
Van Dijk, T. A. & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies
for discourse comprehension. New York: Academic
Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher
Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1978.
Vygotsky, L. S. Thinking and Speech. New York:
Plenum, 1987.
About the Reviewer
David K. Pugalee is an associate professor in
the College of Education at the University of North Carolina
– Charlotte and coordinates the doctoral program in
curriculum and instruction. His research interest is
mathematical literacy focusing on the relationships between
mathematical learning and communication. A major focus of his
work is written text as a learning tool in mathematics.
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment