Impact Of A Technology-Infused Middle School Writing Program On Sixth-Grade Students’ Writing Ability And Engagement

Process-oriented approaches are increasingly used in schools to improve writing. One of these approaches, known as the writing workshop model, is challenging for teachers to implement without supports. This quasiexperimental study evaluated the effectiveness of a middle school writing program that incorporates this model along with technological supports, professional development, and study units of various writing genres. It assesses gains made over a school year in writing ability and engagement of middle school students whose teachers used the program, called Writing Matters, compared with students whose teachers used the writing workshop model without the program. Three hunderd seventy-one students in 17 classes in 2 middle schools participated. Results showed that, as a group, students who were exposed to Writing Matters over a school year did not make gains in writing ability or gains that differed from students who were not exposed to Writing Matters. However, students with the lowest initial writing ability who were exposed to Writing Matters over the year made significantly greater gains than those with the lowest initial writing ability who were not exposed to Writing Matters. In addition, findings indicate that students in the Writing Matters group did not differ significantly from the comparison students in their writing engagement over time. An analysis of students from the Writing Matters and comparison groups who scored in the lowest quintile of the holistic pretest scores also showed no significant differences in writing engagement. This program shows promise, especially for struggling students. This research is important because of renewed interest in writing instruction and the writing process approach; few empirical studies have been conducted on this instructional approach, especially at the K-12 level.