NCTT SPECIAL REPORT THE IMPACT OF THINKING-BASED LEARNING ON STUDENT WRITING

Two significant and independent research projects in New Zealand and in Saudi Arabia have shown dramatic improvement in student writing based on the use of techniques developed in her classroom by Rebecca Reagan, a retired Lubbock, Texas, teacher. These techniques combine teaching for good thinking and then helping students learn how to translate that into good writing. In the research projects two types of writing were monitored: persuasive writing, and expository writing.

Both research projects used standard research techniques such as "blind" reading, multiple readers, and mixing standard and thinking-based writing. As many variables as possible in both studies were controlled: the same texts were used, same grade levels were compared, same teacher-assignments, etc. They both incorporated the standards of good writing issued by the Ministry of Education in both countries into the scoring rubrics.

The result was that in both studies the thinking-based writing scored in some cases almost double what the standard writing was scored. Here are graphs showing some of these results. The NZ study graph makes the starting point the results of the standard writing, giving it a base value of 1.4. In the graph of the Saudi study the standard and thinking-based writing scores appear side-by-side. The Saudi study distinguishes different grade levels; the New Zealand study amalgamates them. In both cases the comparison of standard and thinking-based writing is positive and dramatic.

New Zealand Study	Saudi Arabia Study

The instructional techniques used in these studies were the same that were originally used by Ms Reagan in her classroom in Texas. In the control groups and the experimental groups the content was usually held constant, but the instructional techniques were different. In the control groups the teachers used standard rote-learning techniques, followed by writing assignments. In the experimental groups two stages of instruction took place. First, there was an episode of instruction in the use of specific thinking skills infused into content instruction (specifically, skillful decision making, employing an extended strategy that took students through a consideration of options and consequences before they made a decision, and extended comparing and contrasting, in which students reflect on and draw conclusions from the important similarities and differences they identified between two things). Then, when the students completed this thinking-based activity, guidance by the teacher was provided in the use of various writing frameworks in which a paragraph-by-paragraph plan is developed to transition from the thinking to the writing. Thinking strategy maps and specific thinking-oriented graphic organizers were used by all the teachers in the experimental groups to help the students "download" and make visible their thinking. One key feature of this technique is that the completed graphic organizers of the students are then treated as pieces of pre-writing, and the writing frameworks (called “writing maps”) help the students to move ideas from their graphic organizers to their writing.

One very important insight into the writing process that follows from all of this is that helping students do some careful thinking about something before they write about it is a prerequisite for good writing.

The connection between the New Zealand teachers, the Saudi Arabian teachers, and the original developer of these techniques in Lubbock, Texas was through the work of The National Center for Teaching Thinking, which disseminated these techniques worldwide through articles, the NCTT website, and through workshops sponsored by NCTT. Consistency in the use of these instructional techniques was monitored and guided by NCTT-certified teacher-trainers in these studies.

Whereas previously many teachers using the experimental thinking-based learning techniques could produce only anecdotal and qualitative data (surprisingly "superb" pieces of writing from students who had, previously, not done well at all in their writing), these quantitative results now give their conclusions about the effectiveness of these techniques firm support. But still, these are only two studies, in only two countries (in New Zealand 14 teachers from 5 schools participated, whereas in Saudi Arabia 11 teachers from the same school participated), and while they demonstrate the power of thinking-based instructional techniques to cut across social, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries, their results point out the need to expand such research to other countries and school systems.

We hope that this news report has that result.

We close this report with a piece of writing from a 5th grade student to Mrs. Preston, a character in the novel Shiloh, about what he thinks is best to do when she discovers that her son, Marty, is hiding a dog he found from its owner, a man who abuses animals, because he fears that the owner will beat the dog since he escaped from him. Prior to this this student was struggling with his writing.

Our judgment all along, since the development and first uses of these thinking-based instructional techniques for good writing, has been that anything that can bring out this kind of writing in ordinary 5th grade students ought to be celebrated by all educators. These recent studies confirm this judgment.

NOVEMBER 1, 2011 ROBERT J> SWARTZ

APPENDIX

Here are a few examples from these studies of contrasting control group writing and experimental group writing (in this case pre writing and post writing by the same students). The first set is expository writing based on comparing and contrasting. The second is a piece of persuasive writing based on the animal story Lester and Clyde, by James Reese. These are from the New Zealand study. Most from the study in Saudi Arabia are in Arabic.

1.Expository Compare/Contrast Writing

Standard Instruction Pre Writing

Thinking-Based Instruction Post Writing

2.Persuasive Writing (A letter to Clyde about Lester based on the story Lester and Clyde by James Reese)

Standard Instruction Pre-Writing

Thinking-Based Instruction Post-Writing

3. Rubric for Evaluating Student Writing in the New Zealand Study