By Anna Beck and Dr. Courtney Hattan
Introduction
Welcome to our first blog post! We are the Writing Skills Development Program – an educational psychology lab focusing on the relationship between the development of writing skills and cognitive processes, and the efficacy of evidence-based writing strategies in students, Pre-K through 7th grade. We are currently in year 3 of a 5-year replication study funded by the Institute for Educational Science (R305R220020) investigating the impacts of Self-Regulated Strategy Development1 on 6th-grade ELA students in the southeastern United States.
As we gear up for our third year in this study, we wanted to create this blog to explain a bit more about our study, emergent observations and findings, and SRSD as a whole. To accomplish this, we are starting with a core component of SRSD: self-regulation.
What is Self-Regulation?
Dr. Karen Harris developed SRSD in the 1980s as a model for effective, student-supporting writing instruction2. At the crux of this model is the process of self-regulation. While the definition of self-regulation has changed over the years, Harris cites processes such as self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement, self-instruction, goal setting, and self-assessment as key elements of self-regulation, supported across multiple theories3.
All these elements involve an ability to not only monitor one’s behaviors and thoughts, but to alter these processes to achieve a more desirable outcome. Examples of self-regulation can be found in many aspects of life, such as creating a study plan to break the material down into smaller subsections or employing a specific breathing pattern to cope with anxiety, or more simply to make decisions to organize a task or a daily schedule.
Self-regulation is therefore rooted deeply in our ability to reason and make sense of the world around us, and to make adjustments when things don’t go as planned. Our abilities to perform and function in daily aspects of life require us to be able to process and change direction when necessary; life requires flexibility. This is a key skill for students as they develop in their academic careers and encounter more complex information, especially as young writers.
Why is Self-Regulation Important for Writing?
The application of self-regulation in writing is exceedingly important for students as they learn written communication. Writing is a complex process that requires the use of various cognitive abilities, physical capabilities, and external demands in an ever-moving recursive process4. To put it plainly, writing is hard! It requires students to juggle many internal and external processes that may be difficult for them to handle at once, and this complexity increases with age and associated school demands. This is why self-regulation is so important.
According to Harris, instructional techniques like SRSD allow students to “learn to self-regulate the writing process and the multiple demands of writing (e.g., affective, behavioral, and cognitive) using goal setting, self-instructions, self-monitoring of progress, and self-reinforcement”3. By providing students with a framework to handle all the demands of writing, we provide them with a greater opportunity to succeed academically, grow in self-efficacy, and ultimately, improve the quality of their communication via writing5.
In our next post, we will explore how SRSD is taught to students and the specific tools they use throughout the writing process. Stay tuned to learn more about our research and the wonderful world of SRSD!
— The Writing Skills Development Program
Sources
- Harris, K. R., & Graham, S. (2009). Self-regulated strategy development in writing: Premises, evolution, and the future. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 6, 113–135.
- Harris, K. R. (1982). Cognitive behavior modification: Application with exceptional students. Focus on Exceptional Students, 15(2), 1–16.
- Harris, K. R. (2024). The self-regulated strategy development instructional model: Efficacious theoretical integration, scaling up, challenges, and future research. Educational Psychology Review, 36(4), 104.
- Hayes, J.R. (2012). Modeling and remodeling writing. Written Communication, 29, 369-388.
- Harris, K. R., Santangelo, T., & Graham, S. (2008). Self-regulated strategy development in writing: Going beyond NLEs to a more balanced approach. Instructional Science, 36(5), 395-408.