Collaborative writing of argumentative syntheses by low-performing undergraduate writers: explicit instruction and practice

AbstractIn writing argumentative syntheses from multiple and contradictory sources, students must contrast and integrate different perspectives on a topic or issue. This complex task of source-based argumentation has been shown to be effective for learning, but it has also been shown to be quite challenging. Because of the challenges, educational interventions have been developed to facilitate performance through such means as explicit instruction of strategies and students ’ engagement in collaborative writing. Whereas these interventions have been beneficial for many writers, some students continue to perform poorly. The present study builds on prior research into collaborative writing of source-based argumentative syntheses by focusing on these students who experi ence difficulty with this academic task. Undergraduate psychology students who had previously underperformed on the argumentative task were organized into 56 pairs to participate in one of four versions of an intervention program, which differed in terms of the extent of support provided. The most c omplete program included collaboration as well as explicit instruction in argumentative synthesis writing and in the collaboration process. Statistical analyses were carried out with two ANOVAs with planned comparisons as well as two mediation models. Results showed that the pairs of students who re ceived this most complete program significantly improved the quality of their synthesis in two dimensions, argument id...
Source: Reading and Writing - Category: Child Development Source Type: research