Compared with writing, research on

Compared with writing, research on the teaching of reading, the focus of many of the
chapters in this volume, has a much longer and richer history. Moreover, reading instruction and
its outcomes have been accorded preeminence by policymakers, educators, researchers, and the
public, and consequently there has been a large investment by many stakeholders in reading
research and instruction. Likewise, there is great concern about America’s capacity to prepare a
globally competitive workforce for increasingly technically demanding jobs, especially those
which place a premium on math and science knowledge and skills. Thus, calls for action and
funding opportunities in math and science instructional research abound. In this context, it is
little wonder that writing is the most neglected of the three “Rs” (National Commission on
Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges, 2003). According to Juzwik et al. (2005), writing
research historically has been (a) comparably underfunded, (b) mostly descriptive rather than
experimental in nature, and (c) typically conducted in post-secondary education settings. I will
not attempt to explicate cause-effect relationships among these factors or to account for the
current state of writing research; suffice it to say that instructional research in writing is not as
mature as that in reading and does not enjoy the same level of distinction or rally as much
concern as the other two “Rs.”
The yield of such diminished status is seen in the poor performance of America’s
children and youth on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; Persky, Daane,
& Jin, 2003). The NAEP for writing is administered approximately every four years to a
representative sample of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Each student responds to two 25-minute
narrative, informative, or persuasive prompts accompanied by a brochure with guidelines for
planning and revising the compositions. Each paper is rated on a 6-point rubric, and this score is
converted to a scale score (ranging from 0-300). The scale score corresponds to one of four
3
levels of performance—below basic, basic (partial mastery of fundamental knowledge and
skills), proficient (solid mastery needed to perform challenging academic tasks), or advanced
(superior mastery). According to published NAEP data, only 28% of 4th graders, 31% of 8th
graders, and 24% of 12th
graders achieved at or above a proficient level of writing performance
in 2002. Nevertheless, two-thirds of 4th graders and about one-half of 8th and 12th graders
reported that they like to write and that they believe themselves to be good writers in a 1998
NAEP student survey (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999). Apparently, many
students are overly optimistic about their composing skills. This is in line with empirical work in
several domains which has demonstrated that many students, especially males and individuals
who are less competent on a given task, tend to overestimate their ability (e.g., Alvarez &
Adelman, 1986; Kruger & Dunning, 1999; Meece & Courtney, 1992; Stone & May, 2002).
Although there are many factors to which we can attribute these alarming statistics, we
must acknowledge that there is often less than optimal writing instruction in classrooms (cf.
Bridge, Compton-Hall, & Cantrell, 1997; Graham & Harris, 2002; Palincsar & Klenk, 1992;
Troia, 2005; Wray, Medwell, Fox, & Poulson, 2000). Even teacher self-report data from the
1998 NAEP suggest this is the case: nearly 7 out of 10 teachers indicated they employ processoriented
instruction to teach composing, yet no more than a third of those same teachers said
they spend 90 minutes or more per week teaching writing (National Center for Education
Statistics, 1999). For teachers to be able to adeptly use a process approach to teaching writing, 90
minutes per week is a bare minimum (e.g., Graves, 1983), but most teachers who espouse such
an approach appear to be devoting less than that to their instruction. Similarly, Graham, Harris,
Fink, and MacArthur (2003) found that only slightly more than half of primary grade teachers
across the nation reported making more than one or two instructional adaptations for struggling