A Historical Writing Apprenticeship for Adolescents: Integrating Disciplinary Learning With Cognitive Strategies

Abstract

This study explored the extent to which an 18‐day history and writing curriculum intervention, taught over the course of one year, helped culturally and academically diverse adolescents achieve important disciplinary literacy learning in history. Teachers used a cognitive apprenticeship form of instruction for the integration of historical reading and writing strategies and content learning with the goal of improving students' historical argument writing. The intervention had positive and significant results for each writing outcome. After controlling for variables associated with students' incoming abilities, the researchers found moderate to large effects for all participants. Relative to basic readers in the control condition, those participating in the intervention scored higher in historical writing and writing quality and wrote longer essays; these results translate into effect sizes of .45 on basic readers' historical writing, .32 on their overall writing quality, and .60 on the length of their papers. Teachers implemented the reading and writing curriculum intervention with high levels of implementation fidelity, leading the researchers to explore additional factors that contributed to students' success after accounting for teacher effectiveness. The results indicate further benefits dependent on the degree to which students completed the curriculum.

Review of the Interactive Writing Lesson Provided for Turkish Hearing-Impaired University Students

“…This finding of the research is in parallel with the results obtained by Wolbers, Dostal & Bowers (2012). Hearing-impaired students are known to need longer time and more repetitions for the improvement of these skills (Campra, 1994;Dostel & Wolber, 2014;De La Paz et al 2016;Paul, 1998;Schirmer, 2000;Williams, 2011;Wolber, 2007;Wolbers et al 2015). When the final test results were analysed in general, it was determined that the improvement made by the students were in relation to their initial language levels and students with higher language levels made more progress.…”

Historical Literacy Research for Students with and at Risk for Learning Disabilities: A Systematic Review

“…More recently, De La Paz et al. () expanded their work with 1,029 ethnically diverse eighth‐grade students who were taught to compose historical arguments. The sample contained 269 students who were at risk and 72 students receiving special education services.…”

Reconciling Disciplinary Literacy Perspectives With Genre‐Oriented Activity Theory: Toward a Fuller Synthesis of Traditions

“…Similarly, De La Paz et al. () claimed to apply a cognitive apprenticeship instructional strategy to promote disciplinary literacy, yet the important question of motives for action seems incompletely addressed. Although both Whitney, Ridgeman, and Masquelier () and Pytash () explored pedagogical attempts to use genre to promote better teaching and learning, an activity theory perspective on genre might have helped these researchers complicate their conclusions about the ease with which novices in an activity system successfully performed disciplinary genres.…”