Science

Science
Education
LEARNING
The Effects of Writing-to-Learn

Activities on Elementary Students
Conceptual Understanding: Learning
About Force and Motion Through
Writing to Older Peers
YING-CHIH CHEN,1 BRIAN HAND,2 LEAH McDOWELL3
1STEM Education Center, University of Minnesota, 320 Learning & Environmental
Sciences, St. Paul MN 55108, USA; 2N297A Lindquist Center, Department of Teaching
and Learning, College of Education, University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242, USA;
3Haine Elementary School, Cranberry Township PA 16066, USA
Received 25 April 2012; accepted 2 April 2013
DOI 10.1002/sce.21067
Published online 14 August 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
ABSTRACT: This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine

whether fourth-grade students who engaged in collaboratively writing letters to 11th-grade
students performed better on tests of conceptual understanding of a unit on force and
motion than students who did not. The participants included 835 fourth-grade students
and 416 11th-grade students from four elementary schools and one high school in the
United States. Students in treatment groups were asked to write three letters for exchange
at the beginning/during/completion of an 8-week teaching unit about force and motion.
The structure of writing was based on three components of arguments: question, claim, and
evidence. A comparison of the pre- and posttest results indicated that students who engaged
in collaborative letter-writing tasks performed better than students who did not. The preand
posttest results also showed that female, special, low socioeconomic status, and gifted
students benefited the most from the collaborative letter-writing tasks. Through the letterwriting
exchange activities, the fourth-grade students were supported and encouraged to
learn difficult concepts by the 11th-grade students. The more the 11th graders asked the
fourth graders for explanation and clarification of the concepts in the letters, the more the
Correspondence to: Ying-Chih Chen, e-mail: chen2719@umn.edu
C
2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
746 CHEN ET AL.

fourth-grade students learned. Two factors related to argumentative writing were identified
as predictors of success on students achievement tests: overall cohesiveness, with an
emphasis on embedding multiple modal representations in the text and the strength of the
relationship between claims and evidence. This study suggests that there is a pedagogical
need to build support structures to help students understand the role of audience, the function
of multiple modal representations, and the quality of evidence for supporting knowledge
claims in argumentative writing, as this could lead to a better understanding of scientific
concepts. C _ 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 97:745771, 2013
INTRODUCTION
Developing literacy in science for all students has become an essential goal within
international school science education in the past few decades (Bybee, McCrae, & Laurie,
2009; Feinstein, 2011; Millar, 2006). For instance, the U.S. National Science Education
Standards states, Scientific literacy has become a necessity for everyone (p. 1, National
Research Council [NRC], 1996). In the United Kingdom, the Beyond 2000 report suggests
that the science curriculum from 5 to 16 should be seen primarily as a course to enhance
scientific literacy (p. 9; Millar & Osborne, 1998). In Australia, a major research report for
the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs highlights that the purpose of
science education is to develop scientific literacy which is a high priority for all citizens
(Goodrum, Hackling, & Rennie, 2001, p. ix). Reports from other countries express similar
positions. However, despite the ubiquity of the term scientific literacy in current reform
documents, the consensus about the practical implications of adopting it as an essential aim
of science education is uncertain.
Wellington and Osborn (2001) contended that knowing and understanding the language
of science is an essential component of scientific literacy (p. 139). That is, language is
a means of advancing students conceptual understanding, metacognitive processes, and
critical reasoning skills, and of ultimately promoting student scientific literacy. Norris and
Phillips (2003) further addressed the critical role of language for integrating a fundamental
sense (i.e., being able to read/write science texts and various modes of representation) and
a derived sense (i.e., being knowledgeable about science contents) of scientific literacy, and
pointed out that without language, there is no science.
Yet, scientific language is meaningful only when used in authentic contexts (Wallace,
2004).While students bring their own everyday language to the science classroom, science
as a discipline uses its own specialized language with a particular function. Meaningful
learning, then, occurs when students use scientific language to communicate and explain
their own experiences or everyday events (Brown & Spang, 2008; Lee, 2002). That is,
students need to be able to make a connection between everyday language and scientific
language. Gee (2004) further asserted that it is the job of teachers to design authentic
contexts so that students experience a need and a purpose for communicating in scientific
discourses.
However, science teachers currently provide few opportunities for students to make
meaningful connections between the language they use in everyday life and the language
they use in science classrooms (Rivard & Straw, 2000). The National Assessment of
Educational
Progress reported that science instruction in the United States is predominantly
accomplished through teacher lecturing, which stresses the transmission and memorization
of scientific knowledge (Anderson, 2012). A national survey conducted by Pasley, Weiss,
Shimkus, and Smith (2004) reported that 62% of science lessons in the United States are
low in quality and produce passive learning environments in which students generally have
few opportunities to integrate their knowledge into a coherent conceptual system. Beyer and
Science Education, Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 745771 (2013)
EFFECTS OF WRITING-TO-LEARN ACTIVITIES 747

Davis (2008) stated that the typical science classroom is taught without concern for
integrating
scientific language with students everyday language and without the conceptual coherence
needed to make the knowledge provided ameaningful explanation of the naturalworld.
Writing has been recognized as a promising learning tool for engaging students in an
authentic
context through making the connection between everyday and scientific language,
especially when students write to audiences other than their teachers (Ede & Lunsford,
1984; Gunel, Hand, & McDermott, 2009). Activities calling for students to write to different
audiences require integrating and translating across three communicates of language:
everyday language, audience language, and scientific language (Yore & Treagust, 2006).
Through this process, students are expected to think about how to present the material in
a fashion most appropriate to a particular audience. In this sense, writing to a nonteacher
audience encourages students to clarify and elaborate concepts, strengthen the connections
between major concepts, and alter their own knowledge in some manner. To this point,
many studies involving student-writing activities have used imagined audiences that left
students unable to receive feedback or further interact with the audience to whom they
were
writing. Although an imagined audience might be invoked, an audience that is present
should be providing feedback and engaging actively in the construction of the argument
(Berland&Forte, 2010, p. 431) so that students can negotiate with their audience and revise
their ideas within an authentic context.
Moreover, research on writing-to-learn and collaborative instruction has suggested that
structured small-group writing results in increased learning for the individuals involved
(Keys, 1994; Storch, 2005). Peer discussion can scaffold students ability to develop
concepts
and solve problems, as members of a collaborative group attempt to come to consensus
through a process of meaning negotiation. This discussion creates an authentic context in
which students, acting like scientists, more readily generate texts by posing ideas,
evaluating,
and justifying each others work.
Several studies have found that students can achieve deeper conceptual understanding
when they engage in argumentative writing as opposed to when they engage in expressive
writing (e.g., Gleason, 1999). That is, students should construct persuasive arguments by
using and understanding the components of questions, claims, data, and evidence. More
importantly, students also need to understand the relationships between questions, data,
and
claims as well as howthese relationships can be organized to formulate convincing evidence
for a given task and audience (Kelly, Regev, & Prothero, 2008; Ryu & Sandoval, 2012;
Zembal-Saul, 2009).With this in mind, Choi, Hand, and Greenbowe (in press) asserted that
any evaluation of the quality of an argument must focus on the following components: the
clarity of the claims, the sufficiency of evidence, and the relationship between questions
and claims and between claims and evidence.
Although it has been shown that argumentative writing is a powerful genre through
which to promote student conceptual understanding in science, current research has also
suggested that students have a great deal of difficulty crafting high-quality written scientific
arguments in terms of the relationship between questions, claims, and evidence, the quality
of evidence, and the conceptual quality of a claim (McNeill, Lizotte, Krajcik, & Marx,
2006; Sampson & Clark, 2008). diSessa (2004) argued that complete conceptual
understanding
of a science concept requires dealing with the multiple modes of representations
of that concept, such as tables, graphs, diagrams, and symbols. Thus multiple modes of
representation
become important because using different representations can make difficult
scientific concepts more intelligible by increasing the likelihood of progressing toward
more coherent conceptual understanding (Yore & Treagust, 2006. p. 308). In this study,
the use of multiple modes of representation is viewed as a critical component of writing to
make the concepts more complete and coherent.
748 CHEN ET AL.

Building on these considerations, this study assumes that to be scientifically literate,
students must be able to read and write texts, connect different language systems, and
construct the components of a scientific argument. The present study examined the impact
of
writing argumentative letters to an audience other than the teacher on promoting
conceptual
understanding. Themajority of studies on argumentative writing have been conducted at the
college level rather than at elementary levels; additionally, teaching science as argument in
elementary classrooms is rare (Chen, 2011; Pasley et al., 2004). Zembal-Saul (2009) argued
that elementary science requires a movement away from focusing on fun hands-on
activities,
to creating environments where students can use argument as a critical tool to construct
and
critique meanings. Yet, few studies have investigated the conceptual understanding benefits
of writing to a nonteacher audience. The relationship between collaborative argumentative
writing activities and individual knowledge gain also needs to be examined. It also remains
uncertain which of the components of argumentative writing are important in determining
the quality of writing that assists students to further understand a given concept. Thus,
this study focused on an 8-week, writing-to-learn activity designed to support fourth-grade
students conceptual understanding by having them collaboratively write argumentative
letters to 11th-grade students at the beginning/during/completion of a unit on force and
motion. Research questions that guided the study included the following:
1. Do students completing the collaborative writing-to-learn activity, a letter exchange
with older students, perform better on tests of conceptual understanding of the unit
on force and motion than students who do not?
2. Does the collaborative writing-to-learn activity enhance the conceptual understanding
of different subgroups (gender, low socioeconomic status [SES], individualized
education program [IEP], and gifted students) over students in these subgroups who
did not participate in the activity?
3. On what core concepts in tests of conceptual understanding do students completing
the collaborative writing-to-learn activity perform better than students who do not?
4. What is the relationship (if any) between writing quality and student conceptual
understanding on tests of the unit on force and motion?
5. Which writing components are significant predictors of student conceptual understanding
on tests of the unit on force and motion?
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Writing as a Model of Learning
An initial model of writing-to-learn was proposed by Emig (1977), who argued that the
process of writing is important for learning, because it generates a powerful instance of
self-provided feedback, establishes explicit systemic conceptual groupings, and represents
the most available means for efficient recording of abstract formulations. This constant
back-and-forth of process and product, work, and reward, is what makes writing so central
to learning.
In adopting these writing-to-learn practices, Galbraith (1999) suggested that writing can
be viewed as an epistemological tool, that is, it can be seen as a process that leads to the
construction of knowledge. Galbraith went on to sketch a dual-processmodel of writing. The
first part of this model is the knowledge-transforming process as described by Bereiter and
Scardamalia (1987). This process involves the evaluation and modification of determinate
ideas in working memory to create a mental model of the text that satisfies rhetorical goals.
However, Galbraith (1999) argued that this process does not create new ideas. Instead, it

selects and organizes existing ideas directly retrieved from episodic memory (p. 146).
The second part of the model is the knowledge-constituting process, which assumes that
the writers knowledge is also represented by implicit relationships corresponding to the
fixed connection between subpropositional units in a constraint satisfaction network. The
distinctive feature of the knowledge-constituting process is thus the dialectic between
the writers implicit disposition toward a topic and the explicit text. The two parts of
Galbraiths model are complementary in their effects in that both are required for effective
writing. The knowledge-constituting process is responsible for synthesizing conceptually
coherent ideas, but needs the knowledge transforming process in order to ensure that
content
is presented in a rhetorically appropriate form (Galbraith, Torrance, & Hallam, 2006,
p. 1341).
In expanding Galbraiths model to science classrooms, Cavagnetto, Hand, and NortonMeier (2009) suggested that clarification and formation of conceptual understandings can
occur among peers when writing in group/pair work. Peers ideas, feedback, and critique
may lead students to a deeper level of reflection and serve as a stimulus for further
oscillation
between disposition and linguistic knowledge. That is, collaborative writing occurs within
the group context and the discourse is under scrutiny from a collective body rather than
separate individuals. Such collaboration shows that students have a joint responsibility
for the production of the text and are encouraged to immediately negotiate their ideas
with peers throughout the process (Onrubia & Engel, 2009). This may promote a sense
of co-ownership and hence encourage students to contribute to the decision making on
all aspects of writing: concept, structure, and representation. However, the current use of
collaborative writing in science classes tends to be limited to only the beginning stages
of a unit, for brainstorming purposes, or to the final stages for peer review. The focus is
often on the product of the writing, rather than on the process. Storch (2005) found that
when students are asked to peer review, they tend to focus on errors at the sentence and
word level, suggesting that the process of writing still remains a private act and assessment
function (Chen & Tsai, 2009) in which writers cannot immediately negotiate with peers,
identify the weaknesses of their ideas, and debate those ideas for clarification and further
modification.
To be able to effectively use writing-to-learn strategies, then Midgette, Haria, and
MacArthur (2008) argued that audience is a critical factor in both rhetorical knowledge and
in the factors representing and restricting this knowledge, which ultimately influence writers
learning outcomes. The features of the audience that make writing especially desirable
in promoting science learning will be discussed as follows.
Role of Audience in Writing-to-Learn Activities
Audience is central to rhetoric, for rhetoric is concerned with how words move an
audience, influence their actions, persuade their judgment, change their minds (Blakeslee,
2001, p. xi). Hand and Prain (2006) further elaborated the role and function of audience
in writing-to-learn activities. They suggested that in completing a writing-to-learn task,
students engage in three translation activities of language within rhetorical knowledge.
First, students must translate science language to their everyday language to understand
the
scientific concepts. Second, they translate their understood meaning to audience language.
Students then need to translate back into science language when completing the writing
assignments. Such translations require students to significantly reflect upon and clarify
their understanding of the concepts. This type of translation may be particularly relevant
in physics courses due to the reliance on the translation between the vocabulary and
terminology of most students everyday language and science language (e.g., matter,
weight,
750 CHEN ET AL.

mass, gravity). For example, in everyday usage, the term weight is commonly used to
mean mass, which scientifically is an entirely different concept. When students engage
in a writing-to-learn task, they have to translate the everyday meaning of weight to the
scientific meaning by connecting and clarifying the terms mass, gravity, force, and matter
(i.e., weight is a force that results from the action of gravity on matter). They then have
to translate the meaning of weight to audience language. If students are writing to
younger peers, for instance, they need to do this without using language that is too difficult.
Therefore, they might describe the meaning of weight as the force exerted on an object
due to gravity. They might also give an example, like the difference between a persons
weight on earth and on the moon. Finally, the students need to translate back into science
language to make sure the meaning they have interpreted is scientifically correct.
Awareness of different audiences, and the acts of translation required to write to those
audiences, may therefore impact students conceptual learning (Midgette et al., 2008).
A quasi-experimental study conducted by Gunel, Hand, and McDermott (2009) examined
whether the audience forwhich they composed scientific explanations impacted high school
students conceptual understanding. They found that students who wrote for peers or
younger students performed significantly better on conceptual questions than those writing
for teachers or parents. Hand and his colleagues (Hand, Hohenshell, & Prain, 2007; Hand
& Prain, 2006) pointed out that when students are asked to write to a teacher, they
generally
share information by using big words and expect the teacher to be able to understand them.
In contrast,writing to a younger audience or peers requires students to expand, simplify, and
elaborate their emerging understanding for real readerships. Thus, writing to an audience
other than the teacher becomes much more cognitively demanding because the writing
tasks
are much more likely to be transformative or constitutive in nature due to the translation
demands placed on the students (Klein, 2006).
However, an awareness of audience is not the only factor that affects student cognition;
audience feedback also plays a crucial role in developing a writers ability to reflect,
clarify, and revise writing (Lindblom-Ylanne & Pihlajamaki, 2003; Nelson & Schunn,
2009). According to Berland and Forte (2010), to engage students in a meaningful writing
activity, they should receive feedback from an authentic audience and interact with that
audience, not just invoke students awareness of an audience. The audiences need to ask
questions, evaluate arguments and offer alternatives (p. 4), and then students can make
their judgments and evaluate the feedback. Audience feedback is thus a vehicle to drive
students to identify the weaknesses in their ideas, strengthen those ideas by seeking more
evidence, and clarify their conceptual understanding. Consequently, students are compelled
to take charge of their learning, and their motivation for learning can be enhanced.
Argumentative Writing
Another critical factor that might affect the outcome of student learning through writing
is the genre used (Klein, 1999; Rivard, 1994). There has been considerable debate about
which genresincluding formal or structural featuresstudents should learn if they are
to develop deeper conceptual understandings (Halliday & Martin, 1993). A number of
contemporary research projects, especially those related to conceptual learning in science,
have demonstrated the power of argumentative writing to contribute more to learning than
traditional writing such as note taking (e.g.,Kerlin,McDonald,&Kelly, 2010). For example,
Hand,Wallace, and Yang (2004) found that students who completed argumentative writing
performed better as a group than those who completed a more traditional writing task.
Along the same lines, Ruiz-Primo, Li, Tsai, and Schneider (2010) collected students

science notebooks from eight inquiry-based middle school classrooms in five states in
the United States and concluded that engaging in the construction of high-quality written
arguments may be related to higher levels of learning performance. These studies
suggested
that argumentative writing greatly enhanced students conceptual understanding because
it obliged them to engage in persuading others by coordinating the elements of argument,
such as data, questions, claims, and evidence.
The use of argumentative writing is also supported by scholars in the field of cognitive
science (Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004; Kuhn, 2010). Klein (2006)
provided a relevant theoretical description of the distinction between argumentative writing
and traditional writing in his article contrasting first- and second-generation cognitive
science perspectives. First-generation cognitive science views language as a window into
thinking in which individual words were thought to represent concepts, and clauses and
sentences were thought to represent propositions (p. 148). In this perspective, language,
such as writing, is considered a by-product of thought, rather than a source for constructing
knowledge. Traditional writing tasks generally align with this view. In contrast,
secondgeneration
cognitive science views language as largely metaphorical and narrative; writing
is considered to be fuzzy and contextually specific. This view proposes that language, and
writing in particular, when applied to disciplines such as science, can be used not only to
communicate ideas but also to shape them by strengthening the connections between
related
aspects of concepts. In this way, the act of writing can become a knowledge-constructing
tool for students dealing with novel science concepts. The use of argumentative writing
closely parallels the view of second-generation cognitive science and the practices of actual
scientists, because students engage in the narrative and scientific reasoning process via
the elements of argument. Grimberg and Hand (2009) found that argumentative writing
promoted scientific cognitive learning in both high- and low-achievement students.
Sandoval and Millwood (2005) expanded the academic discussion about argumentative
writing by suggesting that coherently crafting a high-quality written argument should not
be constrained to textual writing alone. Lemke (1998) pointed out that to do science, to talk
science, to read and write science, it is necessary to juggle and combine in canonical ways
verbal discourse, mathematical expression, graphicalvisual representations, and motor
operations in the natural world (p. 90). Much of science is abstract and explanatory, and
there are rarely situations where a single representation, such as tabulated data, is
effective
for all tasks (Yore & Treagust, 2006, p. 309). For example, in the unit on force and motion,
a combination of velocitytime graphs, accelerationtime graphs, tables, and vector icons
is used to represent the concept of the relationship between time, velocity, and acceleration
in a coherent way that cannot be achieved through using text alone. Mayer (2003) takes this
argument further by asserting that the construction of rich understandings is accomplished
when students grasp how different modes all relate to a similar concept and can then
translate their understanding between different modes.
The importance of utilizing multiple representations to learn science has also been
supported from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Ainsworth (1999) pointed out that
as students move between modes, they are forced to cognitively process information in
the language of one mode in a way that it can be used with another mode. Gunel, Hand,
and Gunduz (2006) utilized the term translation in describing this process and stated that
students construct deep understandings of the meaning between modes through reasoning.
This translation process parallels Galbraiths (1999) cognitive models of writing. That is,
translation between different modes is the process of generating alternative instantiations
from students definition of the rhetorical problem and content spaces, likely leading
to evaluating one mode by using another mode. Evaluating one mode by using another
752 CHEN ET AL.

mode enables the writer to identify gaps within their understanding, and hence offers the
potentialthrough filling these gapsto develop ones understanding (p. 151). However,
McDermotts (2009) study indicated that using multiple modes of representation does not
guarantee this outcome when those alternative modes are simply added to texts without
explanation. Rather, rich understandings occur only when students effectively connect
multiple modes with text in a coherent way.
Although argumentative writing has been shown to be a powerful strategy for fostering
the learning of science, such writing is difficult for students (Kerlin et al., 2010). Previous
studies have shown that students have difficulty constructing appropriate evidence to
support
their knowledge claims (Kelly, Chen, & Prothero, 2000) and that they tend to express these
claims with little backing to support them (Bell & Linn, 2000). Some researchers have also
found that students in general do not articulate their ideas very frequently to make a
coherent
argument (McNeill et al., 2006). Additionally, Sandoval and Millwood (2005) found that
students may simply add different modes of representation within written arguments with
little explanation. Although numerous studies on argumentative writing have suggested its
impact and the difficulties of students learning in science, little is known about which
aspects of argumentative writing might be critical and potential components of students
learning outcomes. If we can gain a better understanding of this, an explicit instruction in
the components of argumentative writing can be designed to overcome students difficulties
and ultimately to advance learning outcomes (Midgette et al., 2008).
The Structure of Argument

Although educational researchers agree upon the important role of argumentative writing
for knowledge construction in science, there exist, to a certain degree, various definitions
of the argument structure, supported by different researchers due to their theoretical
perspectives and research program goals (Sampson & Clark, 2008). To guide data analysis
and interpretation, this study identifies the structure of scientific argument as consisting
of three interrelated components: question, claim, and evidence (Hand, 2008).
This particular framework was created to aid data analysis and interpretation in this
study.
Question. In understanding natural phenomena, identifying the research question is the
first step of the process of argument-based inquiry. Questions are recognized as such if the
student encounters an uncertainty or perceives a difficulty needing to be solved. Once a
question has been identified, students pursue a solution by surveying related information,
formulating assumptions, interacting with the question, and observing the results. In this
regard, a question is a sentence posed in an interrogative form for the first step of
processing
a discussion or conducting an investigation.
Claim. A claim is a tentative statement that one knows not only what a phenomenon is
but also how it relates to other events, why it is important, and how this particular view
of the phenomenon came to be (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000). A claim is not just a
statement of ones opinions but must also answer the question and be supported by and fit
the evidence.
Evidence. Evidence in its broadest sense includes anything that is used to determine or
demonstrate the truth of a claim (Sandoval & Millwood, 2005). Evidence is accumulated
through observations of phenomena that occur in the natural world or that are created as
experiments in a laboratory or in reading materials. Essentially, evidence is an explanation
consisting of data and reasoning to show how or why the claim is true. A high quality
of scientific evidence is needed to sufficiently and appropriately support the claim to

make it valid (Peker & Wallace, 2010; Sampson, Grooms, & Walker, 2011). In addition,
to construct high-quality evidence and complete the idea to support a claim, multimodal
representations of that idea become important to coordinate and judge the data as sound
and
coherent evidence. As argued by Lemke (1998), they [scientists] combine, interconnect,
and integrate verbal text with mathematical expressions, quantitative graphs, information
tables, abstract diagrams, maps, drawings, [and] photographs (p. 88) to represent a
concept
more completely.
PRESENT STUDY
Given the importance of collaborative writing, audience awareness, and feedback, in
the present study, a writing-to-learn activity was designed in which students were asked
to write letters to older peers who provided feedback and further communicated with
them via collaborative writing. The physics topics of force and motion were used as a
conceptual domain. Given the rationale that there are benefits to student engagement with
argumentative writing, this study sought to examine the impact of collaborative writing
argumentative letters to older peers on individual knowledge gain and to postulate which
writing components are significant predictors of student conceptual understanding on tests
in terms of the structure and quality of argument.
METHODS
Research Design
The present study used a quasi-experimental and pre/posttest design with control and
treatment groups to examine whether completion of writing-to-learn activities improved
students conceptual understanding on test questions. Students in a treatment group were
asked to collaboratively write three argumentative letters to older peers that contained
explanations of the concepts they had learned at the beginning/during/completion of the

teaching unit. The treatment group was composed of several small groups that contained
two to four students, depending on each teachers instructional settings. We were keen to
understand the impact of the letter-writing exchange activities on student science learning,
and thus we asked teachers in control groups to maintain their current pedagogical practices
without using letter-writing activities. The intent was to ensure that the instruction time
for each group was the same except that the treatment classes completed collaborative
letter-writing activities. The study took place within the context of a unit on force and
motion that was taught for 8 weeks. Both treatment and control groups were administered
the same pre/posttest at the same time to examine the impact of the collaborative
letterwriting
exchange activities on students conceptual understanding of the unit on force and
motion.
Participants
This study occurred in the fall of two successive years. The participants included fourthgrade
students from four elementary schools and 11th-grade students from one high school
in the same district of a northeastern state in the United States. Fourth-grade and 11thgrade
students were included in the study because they were learning the same unit at the same
time in this district. Because this study is an attempt to examine the effect of corresponding
with older peers on students conceptual understanding of force and motion concepts, the
754 CHEN ET AL.

TABLE 1
Number of Students and Classes for Treatment Group and Control Group in
the Two-Year Project
Group First Year Second Year Total Number of Students
Treatment group Fourth grade: 145
(7 classes)
Fourth grade: 316
(18 classes)
Fourth grade: 461
Eleventh grade: 150
(9 classes)
Eleventh grade: 266
(14 classes)
Eleventh grade: 416
Control group Fourth grade: 309
(16 classes)
Fourth grade: 68
(4 classes)
Fourth grade: 377
Total number of 604 684 1288
students
test, analysis, and comparison were only administrated to the fourth-grade students. An
overview of participants in the 2-year study can be found in Table 1.
The First-Year Study. The first-year study was designed as a preliminary investigation of
the impact of letter-writing exchange activities on fourth-grade student science learning (as
reported by Chen, Hand, &McDowell, 2010). This study included 145 students in writingtolearn treatment groups and 309 students in control groups at the fourth-grade level.
One hundred fifty 11th-grade students from one school were assigned to writing-to-learn
treatment groups. The 11th-grade students were asked to write three letters for exchange
with fourth-grade students. The fourth-grade student participants were 95% European-
American with the remaining 5% from a variety of ethnic origins. The 11th-grade student
participants were 94% European-American with the remaining 6% from a variety of ethnic
origins.
The results of the first-year study showed that the fourth-grade students who completed
letter-writing tasks outperformed students who did not by using ANCOVA with pretest
measures as covariates and the posttest as a dependent variable in the model (F (1, 453) =
15.491, p < .001 partial 2 = .263). To obtain a better understanding of the impact of the
letter-writing exchange activities, we repeated the same procedure with the same teachers
at the same schools the next year to examine student conceptual understanding of the
same
topic, force and motion.
The Second-Year Study. Owing to the initial successful results from the first year, more
teachers who had originally been in the control group were willing to join the writing-tolearn
project. As a result, the writing-to-learn treatment groups in the second year rose to
include 316 students, and the control group included 68 students at the fourth-grade level.
Two hundred sixty-six 11th-grade students were assigned to writing-to-learn treatment
groups. The fourth-grade student participants were 94% European American with the
remaining 6% from a variety of ethnic origins. The 11th-grade student participants were
97% European American with the remaining 3% from a variety of ethnic origins. However,
the relatively small sample size of the control group compared to the treatment group may
have reduced the validity and power of the research in the second year. In addition, the
second-year project repeated the same procedure during the same learning unit and was
conducted at the same educational setting as the first-year project. The appropriate data
analysis for this study is therefore to collapse the two samples together to balance the

TABLE 2
Writing Tasks in the Beginning/During/Completion of the Teaching Unit
Number of Letter Writing Tasks
First Eleventh grade:
Design a question to ask, based on the concepts that will be
needed by the fourth graders to complete the final design
challenge.
Fourth grade:
Make claims to answer the question and (or) make a new
question for the 11th-grade students.
Support claim with evidence from experience or class
investigations. Be sure to include a thorough explanation of
reasoning in an evidence-based scientific explanation.
Teachers can introduce different ways to show evidence:
diagrams, charts, tables, etc.
Second Eleventh grade:
Evaluate, critique the rationale, and suggest revisions to the
fourth graders ideas.
They may pose another question for the fourth-grade students,
but the question must still be related to concepts involved in the
fourth-grade curriculum, possibly on a deeper level or with
additional examples.
Fourth grade:
Same as the task of the first letter.
Third Same as the task of the second letter.
participant numbers in the treatment and control groups so that there is more power and
higher validity, which will produce more definitive and stable results (Gunel, Hand, &
Prain, 2007). As a result, 461 fourth-grade students were in the treatment group and 377
students were in the control group.
The Writing-to-Learn Activity
The design centered on teaching a physics unit about force and motion for 8 weeks
to fourth- and 11th-grade students. At the beginning of the teaching unit, the 11th-grade
students were asked to write a letter to fourth graders in which they designed a question
focused on the concepts that the fourth graders would need to understand or the concepts
that the 11th graders were interested in or confused about. The fourth-grade students were
asked to respond in letters to the 11th graders questions with evidence-based explanations.
The writing tasks of the second and third letters were similar to the first letter, as illustrated
in Table 2.
Appendix A includes the general guidelines for the fourth- and 11th-grade students in
the treatment group. The participating teachers codeveloped and discussed a specific lesson
plan incorporating these desired core concepts to help ensure consistency of presentation
of the lesson in different groups. Students in the treatment group were taught the argument
structure by using the concepts of force and motion as examples. The teachers also
introduced
them to the concept of using multiple modes of representations to show evidence
within their written letters. Students in the control group did not receive these guidelines,
756 CHEN ET AL.

TABLE 3
The Description and Item Distribution of Each Core Concept
Number
Core Concept Concept Description of Items
A: Force balancea A force is any push or pull on an object. An unbalanced
force is needed to make a resting object move, to
bring a moving object to rest, or to change the
direction of a moving object.
9
B: Force and speeda A force can change the speed of an object. Greater
forces can change the speed of an object faster than
smaller forces.
4
C: Frictionb Friction is a force that occurs when two surfaces rub
together. Friction opposes motion.
2
D: Force and massb If the same force is applied to a lighter vehicle and a
heavier vehicle, the speed of the lighter vehicle will
change more than the speed of the heavier vehicle.
2
E: Air resistancec Air resistance is a force that can slow the speed of a
moving vehicle.
2
F: Energyc Energy can be stored in a rubber band and released to
turn an axle or spin a propeller to make a vehicle
move.
2
Note. One of the 20 items in the test contained both Core Concept A and Core Concept B.
aThe concepts are emphasized within the national curriculum at the elementary level.
bThe concepts are not emphasized within the national curriculum, but those concepts are
useful to know for elementary students.

cThe concepts are difficult for elementary students and not necessary for them to learn and
not necessary for them to learn at this time.
and teachers in the control group were asked to make sure that students did not receive
additional instruction dealing with the concepts covered in the unit of study to assure equal
time on task for all classes.
Data Source
The data source included two types of assessment data to evaluate the impact of the
writing-to-learn activity and how the fourth-grade students crafted a scientific argument:
pre/posttest data and the students three written letters.
Pre/posttest. Prior to studying the topic, all fourth-grade students were required to
undertake
a pretest that consisted of 20 multiple-choice questions. The same test was also
administered to the students at the completion of the teaching unit. The test was developed
by Horizon Research Institution to gauge the effectiveness of upper level elementary
school students learning performance on force and motion. The test consists of six core
concepts addressed within the national standards: (a) force balance, (b) force and speed,
(c) friction, (d) force and mass, (e) air resistance, and (f) energy (NRC, 1996). The detailed
descriptions of each core concept and the number of questions associated with the core
concepts are illustrated in Table 3. Responses were on a 0/1 scale. The multiple-choice

questions were assessed for reliability by computing standardized Cronbach alpha; the
internal consistencies were 0.67 for the pretest and 0.74 for the posttest.
Three Written Letters. All fourth-grade students written letters were evaluated by adapting
the argumentative writing rubric provided in Appendix B. The rubric was focused on
six components that were modified from the previous study to assess the quality of
students
written arguments (Chen, 2011; McDermott, 2009). The six components were (a)
the clarity of the claim, (b) the relationship between the question and the claim, (c) the
relationship between the claim and the evidence, (d) the sufficiency of the evidence, (e)
the overall cohesiveness, and (f) the text assessment. The first four components focused
on the argumentative structure and were scored using a four-point scale from 0 to 3. The
component of the overall cohesiveness focused especially on the degree of the ability to
connect the multiple modes together and with the text. Seufert (2003) asserted that deep
conceptual understanding is only truly realized when students are able to create connections
both within and between different representations, as opposed to merely adding multiple
modes into their written products with a lack of explanation. This suggests that a higher
degree of cohesiveness in a written product, including connecting the multiple modes
together,
is likely to be beneficial in promoting a better understanding of science concepts.
The component of the overall cohesiveness was scored using a 10-point scale from 0 to 9.
The component of text assessment focused on the general writing (e.g., grammar, spelling,
and organization of writing) and was scored using a 16-point scale from 015. As a result,
the argument scores could range from 0 to 36, with higher scores representing a higher
quality argument (see Appendix A). All of the written letters were scored by an external
rater to ensure independence of assessment and to increase the reliability of scoring.
To understand what core concepts students discussed in the three written letters, all
written letters were reviewed by the same rater and coded based on the six core concepts.
Twenty percent of the written letters were scored and coded by a second independent rater
to estimate the interrater reliability by Pearsons coefficient. The interrater reliability was
0.86 for the writing rubric and 0.95 for the core concepts.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Analysis of Covariance
To address Research Questions 13, a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was

conducted to analyze potential differences between the two groups in terms of achievement
on the multiple-choice questions of the posttest. Scores on the pretest were included as
the covariate, scores on the posttest were used as the dependent variable, and the group
was included as the independent variable in the model. The statistical significance was
determined at an alpha level of .05 for all statistical tests. Nonsignificant results were not
reported.
Linear Correlation
To addressResearch Question 4, a linear correlation analysiswas conducted to investigate
the relationship between students writing quality over six components, as noted earlier.
758 CHEN ET AL.

Regression Analysis
To address Research Question 5, a forward linear regression analysis was conducted
to determine which writing components were significant predictors of student conceptual
understanding on achievement tests.
Effect Size
In this study, effect size was reported to recognize the magnitude of the treatment effect
on students learning using Cohens d, which is widely used in social science because it
enables us to measure the difference between the means relative to the variation within
the
groups (Hays, 1994, p. 411). The criteria for identifying the magnitude of an effect size is
as follows: (a) A trivial effect size is below 0.2 standard deviation units; (b) a small effect
size is between 0.2 and 0.5 standard deviation units; (c) a medium effect size is between 0.5
and 0.8 standard deviation units; and (d) a large effect size is 0.8 or more standard deviation
units (Sheskin, 2004).
Assumption Test
Prior to conducting statistical analysis, three general statistical assumptions were involved
in this study: normality, linearity, and homogeneity. A simple graphical method and
normal probability plots of model residuals along with the KolmogorovSmirnov test were
used to examine the normality assumption. Analyses showed that the normality assumption
was met for the test. Similarly, the linearity assumption was addressed by plotting
standardized
residual values against the predicted values. An examination of the normal QQ plots
obtained through the SPSS Explore procedure showed that the patterns of lines resembled
the linearity of the test. Finally, the homogeneity assumption was examined using Levenes
test for equal variance. The result indicated that this study did not violate the homogeneity
assumption (F(1, 836) = 0.346, p = .557).
RESULTS
Research Question 1: The Impact of the Writing-to-Learn Activity
on Student Achievement Tests
The results showed that the effect of pretest total scores was statistically significant, F(1,
835) = 172.131, p < .001, partial 2 = .171, and the main effect of groups was statistically
significant, F(1, 835) = 13.70, p < .001, partial 2 = .016. That is, students in the treatment
group outperformed students in the control group on multiple-choice questions, even though
students in the control group performed better on the pretest than those in the treatment
group.
The mean scores and standard deviation for the control and treatment groups on the preand
posttest are shown in Table 4.
Research Question 2: Treatment Effect on Subgroups
We conducted further ANCOVAs to investigate which subgroup students benefit from the
writing-to-learn tasks, including classifications based on gender, lowSES, IEP students, and
gifted individualized education program (GIEP) students. Total scores on the posttest were
used as the dependent variable, the group (treatment or control) and subgroups (gender,
SES, IEP, or GIEP) as independent variables, and scores on the pretest as the covariate.

TABLE 4
Sample Sizes, Mean Scores, and Standard Deviation for Each Subgroup in
the Control Group and Treatment Group in Pretest and Posttest on MultipleChoice Questions
Pretest Posttest
Group N M SD n M SD
Total Control 377 7.98 2.87 377 10.79 3.11
Treatment 461 7.93 2.66 461 11.47 2.89
Gender: Female and male
Female Control 181 7.46 2.72 181 10.08 3.03
Treatment 233 7.61 2.54 233 11.30 2.87
Male Control 191 8.47 2.96 191 11.52 3.00
Treatment 225 8.20 2.75 225 11.64 2.91
Low socioeconomic status (SES): Free/reduced lunch
Control 48 7.15 3.13 48 9.75 3.49
Treatment 57 6.95 2.26 57 10.81 2.60
Individualized Education Program (IEP)
Control 74 7.01 2.82 74 9.20 3.44
Treatment 81 6.70 2.52 81 10.30 3.08
Gifted Individualized Education Program (GIEP)
Control 37 10.27 2.72 37 12.51 2.38
Treatment 45 9.73 2.45 45 13.62 2.18
Results showed that females in the treatment group performed better than females in
the control group, F(1, 411) = 18.415, partial 2 = .149, p < .001. The covariate pretest
score was statistically significant, F(1, 411) = 71.769, partial 2 = .043, p < .001. However,
there was no significant difference for male students in the treatment and control
groups.
Results showed that students with low SES in the treatment group performed better than
students with low SES in the control group, F(1, 102) = 4.371, partial 2 = .141, p = .039.
The covariate pretest score was statistically significant, F(1, 102) = 19.554, partial 2 =
.161, p < .001.
Results showed that IEP students in the treatment group performed better than IEP
students in the control group, F(1, 152) = 7.826, partial 2 = .05, p = .006. The covariate
pretest score was statistically significant, F(1, 152) = 61.871, partial 2 = .29, p < .001.
Results showed that GIEP students in the treatment group performed better than GIEP
students in the control group, F(1, 79) = 6.196, partial 2 = .073, p = .015. The covariate
pretest score was statistically significant, F(1, 79) = 5.317, partial 2 = .063, p = .024.
Sample sizes, mean scores, and standard errors for each subgroup in the control and
treatment groups are given in Table 4.
Research Question 3: Treatment Effect on Core Concepts
We further examined on which core concepts students in the treatment group performed
better by using ANCOVAs, with six subcore concept scores on the posttest as the dependent
variable, six subcore concept scores on the pretest as the covariate, and the groups as the
independent variable.
760 CHEN ET AL.

The results showed that the effect of Core Concept A (force balance) on pretest scores
was statistically significant, F(1, 835) = 46.573, p < .001, partial 2 = .053, and the main
effect of the groups was marginally significant, F(1, 835) = 3.695, p = .05, partial 2 =
.004. The effect of Core Concept B (force and speed) on pretest scores was statistically
significant, F(1, 835) = 65.195, p < .001, partial 2 = .072, and the main effect of the
groups was statistically significant, F(1, 835) = 6.569, p = .011, partial 2 = .008. The
effect of Core Concept C (friction) on pretest scores was statistically significant, F(1, 835)
= 26.644, p < .001, partial 2 = .031, and the main effect of the groups was statistically
significant, F(1, 835) = 17.287, p = .02, partial 2 = .008. The effect of Core Concept D
(force and mass) on pretest scores was statistically significant, F(1, 835) = 14.239, p <
.001, partial 2 = .017, and the main effect of the groups was statistically significant, F(1,
835) = 9.42, p = .002, partial 2 = .002. The effect of Core Concept E (air resistance) on
pretest scores was statistically significant, F(1, 835) = 56.525, p < .001, partial 2 = .063,
and the main effect of the groups was statistically significant, F(1, 835) = 8.467, p = .004,
partial 2 = .01. The results did show that, except for Core Concept F (energy), students in
the treatment group performed better on Core Concepts A, B, C, D, and E than students in
the control group.
Mean scores and standard deviation for the six core concepts are given in Table 5.
To understand why students performed better on Core Concepts A (force balance), B
(force and speed), C (friction), D (force and mass), and E (air resistance), but not on Core
Concept F (energy), a careful examination of the core concepts and of the frequency with
which each core concept was discussed in the writing-to-learn activity was conducted,
shown in Table 6. This analysis revealed that students focused more on discussing Core
TABLE 5
Mean Scores and Standard Errors for the Control Group and Treatment Group
in Pretest and Posttest on Multiple-Choice Questions (n = 377 for the Control
Group; n = 461 for the Treatment Group)
Pretest Posttest
Group M SD M SD
Core Concept A: Force balance (nine items)
Control 3.71 1.58 5.96 2.29
Treatment 3.70 1.62 6.24 2.01
Core Concept B: Force and speed (four items)
Control 1.96 0.86 2.25 0.78
Treatment 1.97 0.86 2.38 0.71
Core Concept C: Friction (two items)
Control 0.73 0.69 1.07 0.62
Treatment 0.68 0.65 1.24 0.64
Core Concept D: Force and mass (two items)
Control 0.60 0.70 0.91 0.77
Treatment 0.59 0.70 1.07 0.74
Core Concept E: Air resistance (two items)
Control 0.55 0.70 1.05 0.77
Treatment 0.53 0.69 1.19 0.79
Core Concept F: Energy (two items)
Control 0.44 0.60 1.32 0.65
Treatment 0.49 0.61 1.38 0.66

TABLE 6
The Frequency with Which Each Core Concept Was Discussed in the Three
Letters
Core First Second Third Total
Concept Letter Letter Letter Number Percentage
A: Force balance 29 22 14 65 6.9
B: Force and speed 17 16 29 62 6.6
C: Friction 65 78 88 231 24.7
D: Force and mass 46 37 40 123 13

E: Air resistance 20 21 28 69 7.4
F: Energy 1 12 10 23 2.5
Other
Inertia 53 39 27 119 12.7
Gravity 112 26 8 146 15.6
Centrifugal force, surface tension 25 50 23 98 10.5
Total 368 301 267 945
Note. Some letters consisted of discussions of more than one core concept.
Concept C (23.9%), Core Concept D (13%), and other related concepts (12.6% for inertia,
15.5% for gravity, 10.5% for centrifugal force and surface tension). However, only 2.8% of
the discussion during the writing-to-learn task was related to Core Concept F. This result,
to a certain degree, might explain why those fourth-grade students in the treatment groups
performed much better on Core Concepts C and D but showed no statistical significance
on Core Concept F.
Research Question 4: The Relationship Between the Quality of Writing
Tasks and Conceptual Understanding on Tests
Because students were collaboratively engaged in writing argumentative letters, the
relationship between the quality of writing tasks and conceptual understanding on tests
were analyzed based on groups. Table 7 presents the relationship between the average
group score across all three letters for six components and the average group gain score
on pre- and posttests. As shown in Table 7, there were statistically significant correlations
between the student group gain score and five components ofwriting quality,which included
the clarity of the claim, the relationship between question and claim, the sufficiency of
TABLE 7
Correlation Between the Quality of Writing for Six Components and the Average
of the Group Gain Score
Component Average of Group Gain Score
The clarity of the claim 0.409*
The relationship between question and claim 0.233*
The sufficiency of the evidence 0.269*
The relationship between claim and evidence 0.458*
The overall cohesiveness 0.537*
Text assessment 0.087
Note. *p < .001 (two tailed).
762 CHEN ET AL.

TABLE 8
Forward Regression Analysis with Average Group Gain Score as Dependent
Variable
Independent Variable SE R2 _R2 F
Model l
The overall cohesiveness 0.676 0.095 .289 50.70*
Model 2
The overall cohesiveness 0.515 0.116 .319 .03 29.01*
The relationship between claim and evidence 0.681 0.290
Note. *p < .001.
evidence, the relationship between claim and evidence, and the overall cohesiveness (r =
.409, .233, .269, .458, and .537 for claim alignment, evidence sufficiency, evidence support,
and cohesiveness, respectively, p<.001). This result indicates that students achievement is
positively related to the quality of the five writing components. Stated differently, students
who scored higher on those five writing components were likely to score higher on the
posttest and vice versa.

Research Question 5: Potent Predictor(s) for Student Achievement
A forward linear regression analysis was conducted to determine which writing components
were the predictors for the students gain score. A summary of the regression model is
presented in Table 8. The results showed that the overall cohesiveness and the relationship
between claims and evidence are the potent variables in predicting student performance
on tests, F(2, 184) = 29.01, p < .001, R2 = .319. The overall cohesiveness is the first
significant predictor to be selected into the model, and the relationship between claims and
evidence is the second selected predictor. Therefore, the results indicate that helping
students
understand and improve these two writing components may enhance their conceptual
understanding of science. This model accounted for 31.9% of the variance interpretation.
Cohen d Effect Sizes
The Cohen d index was calculated as a meta-analysis (Hedge & Olkin, 1985) to illustrate
the magnitude of the effect produced by the treatment on total scores, each subgroup, and
the six core concepts. The effect size results of each subgroup are shown in Table 9; the
effect size results of the total score and six core concepts are shown in Table 10.
TABLE 9
Cohen d Effect Size on Each Subgroup
Subgroup Pretest (I) Posttest (J) Effect Size Difference (I J) Scale
Female 0.06 0.41 0.35 Small
Male 0.09 0.04 0.13 Trivial
IEP 0.08 0.34 0.42 Small
Low SES 0.07 0.34 0.41 Small
GIEP 0.21 0.49 0.70 Medium
Note. indicates that students in the control group performed better than students in the
treatment group.

TABLE 10
Cohen d Effect Size on Total Scores and the Six Core Concepts
Effect Size
Concept Pretest (I ) Posttest (J ) Difference (I J) Scale
Total score 0.02 0.23 0.25 Small
Core Concept A: Force balance 0.01 0.13 0.14 Trivial
Core Concept B: Force and speed 0.01 0.19 0.18 Trivial
Core Concept C: Friction 0.07 0.27 0.34 Small
Core Concept D: Force and mass 0.01 0.21 0.22 Small
Core Concept E: Air resistance 0.03 0.18 0.21 Small
Core Concept F: Energy 0.08 0.09 0.01 Trivial
treatment group.
The effect size calculation for gender indicated that using letter-writing tasks resulted
in a small effect for females (d = 0.35) and a trivial effect for males (d = 0.13) when
compared to female and male students in the control group. The effect size calculation for
IEP students indicated that letter-writing tasks resulted in a small effect (d = 0.42). The
effect size calculation for low SES students indicated that letter-writing tasks resulted in a
small effect (d = 0.41). Finally, the effect size calculation for GIEP students indicated that
letter-writing tasks resulted in a medium effect (d = 0.70).
The effect size calculations for multiple-choice question total score indicated that using
letter-writing tasks resulted in a small effect (d = 0.25) when compared to the control
group. The effect size for Core Concepts A (force balance) and B (force and speed) was,
respectively, trivial (d = 0.14 and 0.18). The effect size for Core Concept F (energy)
was almost naught (d = 0.01). However, the effect size calculations for Core Concepts C
(friction), D (force and mass), and E (air resistance) were, respectively, small (d = 0.34,
0.22, and 0.21). Based on the effect size results, students who performed letter-writing
tasks benefitted regarding Core Concepts C, D, and E more than Core Concepts A, B,
and F.
DISCUSSION
Results of the quasi-experimental study indicate that students who were collaboratively
engaged in writing argumentative letters for older peers performed statistically significantly
better on the multiple-choice questions than those studentswho were not. Subgroup
students
in the treatment group whowere female, lowSES, IEP, and GIEP also performed statistically
significantly better on multiple-choice questions than those students in the control group.
These findings provide evidence in support of emerging theories on the value of using this
kind of writing-to-learn activity in developing students conceptual understandings of force
and motion (Gunel et al., 2009). Teachers in science classrooms can view writing tasks like
these as easily adaptable and as a potential instruction for advancing students conceptual
understanding in all areas of science.
One of the most significant contributions of the collaborativewriting-to-learn activitywas
the potential for providing students the opportunity to give and receive immediate feedback
from peers. Such collaborative and immediate negotiation among fourth-grade students in
small groups stimulated the construction and critique of various positions as several points
of view were evaluated and modified to form a consensus and new ideas through gradual
764 CHEN ET AL.

refinement of ambiguous, figurative, and partial meanings. The collaborative writing of the
group could thus be described as progress discourse, which Bereiter (1994) defined as
that which attempts to reach a new understanding that everyone involved agrees is
superior
to their previous understanding (p. 6), and which moves beyond the situation in which
students write individually.
Although the writing-to-learn activity produced a statistically positive impact on student
achievement compared to the control group, the difference in total raw scores between the
two groups was only around 0.8 of 20 (see Table 4). This result raised essential issues
about statistical and practical significance: What does the statistical significance mean
for educational practice?, and How much does the writing-to-learn activity impact student
learning? Before answering these questions, let us carefully consider the nature and
structure
of the writing-to-learn activity in this study. Table 6 indicates that 86.5% of the questions
asked by 11th-grade students focused on difficult concepts that are not emphasized in or
necessary to learn at the fourth-grade level based on the national curriculum: Core Concepts
C (friction), D (force and mass), E (air resistance), F (energy), and others (inertia, gravity,
centrifugal force, and surface tension). In addition, 38.8% of the questions focused on the
concepts of inertia, gravity, central forces, and surface tension, which are not addressed in
the fourth-grade curriculum and learning goals. These difficult concepts discussed during
the writing-to-learn activity had never been tested on the pre/posttest. Therefore, the effects
of the writing-to-learn activity, to a certain degree, could not completely be reflected by
students test scores in the study. This may have resulted in a positive, but small, impact on
students achievement test scores.
The reason the 11th-grade students asked questions about such difficult concepts was,
in large part, because they were learning about those concepts themselves as part of the
11th-grade curriculum, and therefore considered them critical components of the unit on
force and motion. The 11th-grade students thus encouraged the fourth-grade students to
learn these difficult concepts through the writing-to-learn activity. Practically, the more the
11th-grade students asked in the letters, the more the fourth-grade students learned. For
example, in comparing Tables 6 and 8, the most frequent question being discussed focused
on Core Concept C (friction). Owing to this, the fourth-grade students produced the largest
effect magnitude (0.34) on this core concept compared to other concepts, although it was
only evaluated via two test items in the pre/posttest. In contrast, the 11th-grade students
were not learning Core Concept F (energy) during the writing-to-learn activity; thus only
2.5% of their questions focused on Core Concept F (energy). As a result, the fourth-grade
students produced the smallest effect magnitude (0.01) on this concept among the six core
concepts. Based on the evidence, the researchers propose that this kind of writing-to-learn
activity encourages fourth-grade students to learn difficult concepts and could provide a
solid foundation for them to learn the unit on force and motion in the future. The
letterwriting
exchange activities became much more cognitively demanding beyond what the
fourth-grade students needed to learn. The more they discussed and explained the
concepts,
the more they learned. However, these speculations, to a certain degree, go beyond the
focus of this study and will require more targeted research to substantiate.
Building on the findings of this study, the researchers suggest that there is another
level of collaborative process in the writing-to-learn activities that occurred between the
fourth- and 11th-grade students. When the fourth-grade students wrote letters for exchange
with the 11th graders, the fourth graders were not only required to translate the scientific
language for their audience, they also entered the zone of proximal development
(Vygotsky, 1978) in which they learned about the difficult concepts of force and motion
while supported by more capable 11th-grade students, thereby encouraging and advancing
the fourth-grade learning on the unit. The effect size data again supports the contention that

the fourth-grade students benefited more on difficult concepts, such as Core Concepts C
(friction), D (force and mass), and E (air resistance). Through the letter-writing exchange
activities, the 11th-grade students continuously asked questions and gave feedback to the
fourth graders to provide scaffolding for their ideas, encouraging them to reflect on their
own ideas, and to negotiate with their peers. The 11th-grade students thus fostered the
negotiation of meaning in the zone of proximal development and helped the fourth-grade
students to construct knowledge both publicly and privately.
The results derived from this study have shown that students conceptual understanding
increases when the quality of their writing products is higher. In considering the link
between the quality of students argumentative writing and their performance at the end
of the learning unit, the magnitudes of the correlations indicated that engaging students in
the construction of high-quality argumentative writing might be related to higher levels of
learning performance. The results confirm the notion of Ruiz-Primo et al. (2010, p. 22) that
engaging students in the construction of explanations is likely to have a positive impact
in students learning and achievement of the content. This study points to the value of
teaching students a concept or idea by using argumentative writing while learning science.
Furthermore, in examining the structure of argumentative writing in this study, the
regression
analysis reveals that the overall cohesiveness achieved by using multiple modes of
representations and the relationship between claims and evidence are two critical predictors
of students achievement on test scores. In this regard, the researchers suggest that while
incorporating argumentative writing in science classrooms, it is necessary to focus more on
these two components to improve the quality of students written arguments and ultimately
their learning in science. On the other hand, the researchers suggest that there appears to
be some link between the students abilities to embed multiple modes of representations
in text and the explanatory power to build rich evidence to support claims for a reasonable
argument. Previous studies have indicated that students usually have difficulty coming up
with solid evidence to support claims (e.g., Berland & Reiser, 2009; Gleason, 1999; Kuhn,
2010; McNeill et al., 2006). The researchers believe that having students embed multiple
modes of representations as a means to build evidence supporting claims and scientific
arguments appears to be advantageous to overcoming these difficulties. As science

concepts
are represented through different modal forms, students need to be provided with
opportunities to engage with these representation practices.
The results also reveal that the writing-to-learn activity benefits all subgroups, except
male students. In terms of gender difference, these results are not surprising, since female
students typically gain more learning outcomes than do males on writing tasks (Midgette
et al., 2008). Thus, the results of this study add to the growing body of research on gender
differences in learning from writing. The surprising result is that, among the subgroups,
gifted students gained most from the writing-to-learn activity in this study. It is speculated
that writing is a combination ofmany skills (Geisler, Hessler, Gardner,&Lovelace, 2009,
p. 220), especially involving metacognition, self-monitoring, and critical thinking. Gifted
students in particular are strategic and more likely to understand and generalize a strategy
for developing those skills in a relatively short period of time. However, these speculations
go beyond the purpose of the current study. More examination is needed to determine both
why male students experience only small gains from the writing-to-learn activity and what
strategies gifted students incorporate into their writing processes.
IMPLICATIONS
Two major implications arose from this study. The first addresses the concept of science
as communication in writing as reflected by A Framework for K-12 Science Education
766 CHEN ET AL.

(NRC, 2012). The new framework for K-12 science education clearly emphasizes that
Communicating in writ[ing] . . . is another fundamental practice of science . . . scientists
are required to engage in dialogues with lay audiences about their work, which requires
especially
good communication skills (p. 7475). Although communication competence can
be challenging for middle and high school students, the results from this study suggest that
even elementary students can successfully engage in the practice. By having to explain
science
concepts to a nonteacher audienceolder peers in this studystudents were required
to engage with connections among everyday language, scientific language, and audience
language, rather than replicating scientific language for the teachers as often occurs in
traditional classrooms assignments. From Kleins (1999) perspective, this translation work
demands a strong focus on using writing as a learning tool and ultimately generating new
knowledge, not just utilizing a knowledge telling process (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987).
In particular, by needing to evaluate feedback from their peers, the students actively had to
examine their knowledge to better communicate with their audience and to make decisions
about the appropriate forms of explanations. The rhetorical element of the audience thus
required students to provide a rich explanation of the science words being used. Science
classrooms need to be designed to utilize those resources.
The second implication reflects the core practice of science that of argumentation (Kuhn,
2010). The new framework indicates that science simply cannot advance if scientists are
unable to communicate their findings clearly and persuasively (p. 75). Argumentative
writing
is a structured genre that includes questions, claims, and evidence to explicitly engage
students in persuasive tasks. Students can construct arguments to explain a phenomenon
by using such structures. The results reveal that elementary students understanding of
the scientific content can be influenced by their ability to effectively use evidence in their
argumentative writing. However, learning to progress through this argumentative writing
is itself a cognitively demanding task and may necessitate the scaffolding of a specific
lesson focused on multimodal use to form coherent evidence in the support of a claim.
Teachers should help students understand the value of multiple modal representations for
strengthening the relationship between claim and evidence (Wu & Puntambekar, 2012). In
studying the role of argumentative writing, it is also important to consider other aspects of
audience feedback and teacher instruction. In our future work, we will explore the
interactions
between writers and audiences, as well as other scaffolding tools, and will study how
they influence student learning in science.
APPENDIX A
Guidelines for Fourth-Grade Students Letter-Writing Exchange
1. Answer the question in the letter from your high school partners and explain your
thinking by using supporting evidence.
2. Evidence can come from your experience and/or from the investigations you are
conducting in science class. It can include the data you collect in experiments and
your observations.
3. Consider different ways to explain your thinking about the concepts of force and
motion. How could you use diagrams, pictures, charts or graphs to help explain your
ideas?
4. Think about how you can convince them that you understand the science concepts.
A good scientific argument makes a claim and supports the claim with evidence plus
your thinking about why and how it makes sense.

5. If your high school partners suggest an experiment to test one of your ideas, think
about how you can control the variable so that you have a fair test.
Guidelines for 11th-Grade Students Letter-Writing Exchange
1. What physics concept are the fourth-grade students dealing with in their responses?
2. Did the fourth-grade team provide evidence to support its claims? If not, ask them
for the evidence.
3. What feedback or questions can you pose to help them think more clearly about the
concept?
4. If your fourth-grade team proposed or conducted an experiment to test an idea consider
the following for your response:
Have they controlled variables to be able to conduct a fair test?
To what degree do the results support the conclusion?

APPENDIX B
Rubric for Writing Evaluation
Score
Component 0 1 2 3
The clarity of the
claim
Does not make a
claim or makes
a scientifically
incorrect claim
Makes a
scientifically
correct but
incomplete
claim(s)
Makes multiple
claims but some
are scientifically
incorrect and
incomplete
Makes multiple claims
which are
scientifically correct
and complete
The relationship
between
question and
claim
Does not make
connection
between claim
and question
Makes weak
connection
between claim
and question
Makes moderate
connection
between claim
and question
Makes strong
connection
between claim and
question
The sufficiency
of evidence
Does not provide
evidence
Provides one
piece of
evidence
Provides two
pieces of
evidence
Provides three pieces
of evidence
The relationship
between claim
and evidence
Does not provide
explanation, or
just rephrases
the claim
Provides
inappropriate
and inadequate
explanation, or
just reports data
as evidence
Provides
appropriate but
inadequate
explanation
Provides appropriate
and adequate
explanation
partially based on
interpretation of
investigation data
0369
The overall
cohesiveness
Only uses one
mode (text) to
explain the
concept(s) in
writing
More than one
mode (text) is
used in
explaining the
concept(s), but
separated from
the text
More than one
mode (text) is
used in
explaining the
concept(s), and
attempts to tie
to the text
More than one mode
(text) is used in
explaining the
concept(s) and tied
to the text
768 CHEN ET AL.

Score
Component 0 3 6 9
No example is
provided to
explain the core
concept(s)
Examples or
modes are
provided, but
not throughout
the writing
Examples or
modes are
carried out to
explain the idea
in most of the
writing
Examples or modes
are consistently
carried out to
explain the
concepts
throughout the
writing
Each concept is
separated and it
is difficult to see
the relationship
between them
Concepts are
loosely
connected with
each other
Demonstrates the
closed
relationship
between each
concept
Demonstrates a
strong line of
concepts through
the text, and these
concepts show a
closed relationship
to one another
0 5 10 15
Text assessment Enough errors in
spelling,
punctuation,
capitalization or
grammar to
cause the
reader to pause,
decode, or
reread to make
sense of the text
Few errors in
spelling,
punctuation,
capitalization, or
grammar
No errors in
spelling,
punctuation,
capitalization, or
grammar
Sentences are
grammatically
correct, fluent, and
fairly easy to get
through
No key term is
underlined,
highlighted, or
identified
A few key terms
are underlined,
highlighted, or
identified, but
are not
adequate
Some key terms
are underlined,
highlighted, or
identified
Key terms are
underlined,
highlighted, and
identified
Does not consider
the audiences
language
Although clearly
aware of an
audience, the
writer only
occasionally
speaks directly
to that audience
Most language
meets the
demands of the
audience
Language is
appropriate, easy
to understand, and
meets the demands
of the audience
Text
characteristics
do not match
intended writing
type
Text
characteristics
partially match
intended writing
type
Most text
characteristics
match intended
writing type
Text characteristics
totally match
intended writing
type
Hard to identify
the main theme
or concept:
what is the
writers main
point or
purpose?
Most conceptual
scientific
knowledge is
confusing and
still needs
clarification
Conceptual
scientific
knowledge and
big ideas are
evident and
correct in much
of the writing
Conceptual scientific
knowledge and big
ideas are evident
and correct
throughout the
project

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Ilmu Pengetahuan
Pendidikan
SEDANG BELAJAR
Efek Penulisan-to-Learn
Kegiatan di Siswa SD '
Konseptual Memahami: Belajar
Tentang Angkatan dan Motion Melalui
Menulis untuk Peer Lama
Ying-chih CHEN, 1 BRIAN TANGAN, 2 Leah McDowell 3
1 STEM Pusat Pendidikan, University of Minnesota, 320 Belajar Lingkungan
Ilmu, St. Paul MN 55108, USA; 2 N297A Lindquist Pusat, Departemen Pengajaran
dan Pembelajaran, Sekolah Tinggi Pendidikan, University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242, USA;
3 Haine SD, Cranberry Township PA 16066, USA
Menerima 25 April 2012; diterima 2 April 2013
DOI 10,1002 / sce.21067
Diterbitkan online 14 Agustus 2013 di Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
Abstraksi Penelitian / posttest ini kuasi-eksperimental dan pra dirancang untuk menguji
apakah siswa kelas empat yang terlibat dalam kolaborasi menulis surat kepada 11 kelas
siswa dilakukan lebih baik pada tes pemahaman konseptual unit pada kekuatan dan
gerak dari siswa yang tidak. Para peserta termasuk 835 siswa kelas empat
dan 416 siswa kelas 11 dari empat sekolah dasar dan satu sekolah tinggi di
Amerika Serikat. Siswa dalam kelompok perlakuan diminta untuk menulis tiga surat untuk pertukaran
di awal / selama / penyelesaian unit mengajar 8-minggu tentang gaya dan gerak.
Struktur penulisan didasarkan pada tiga komponen argumen: Pertanyaan, klaim, dan
barang bukti. Perbandingan hasil pra-dan posttest menunjukkan bahwa siswa yang terlibat
dalam tugas-tugas menulis surat-kolaboratif yang dilakukan lebih baik daripada siswa yang
tidak. Preand The
Hasil posttest juga menunjukkan bahwa wanita, khusus, status sosial ekonomi yang rendah, dan
berbakat
mahasiswa paling diuntungkan dari tugas menulis surat-kolaboratif. Melalui letterwriting yang
kegiatan pertukaran, siswa kelas empat yang didukung dan didorong untuk
mempelajari konsep-konsep yang sulit oleh siswa kelas 11. Semakin banyak anak kelas 11 meminta
siswa kelas empat untuk penjelasan dan klarifikasi dari konsep dalam surat-surat, semakin banyak
Korespondensi: Ying-Chih Chen, e-mail: chen2719@umn.edu
C
2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
746 CHEN ET AL.

siswa kelas empat belajar. Dua faktor yang berhubungan dengan tulisan argumentatif diidentifikasi
sebagai prediktor keberhasilan pada tes prestasi siswa: kekompakan secara keseluruhan, dengan
penekanan pada embedding beberapa representasi modal dalam teks dan kekuatan
hubungan antara klaim dan bukti. Studi ini menunjukkan bahwa ada pedagogis yang
perlu membangun struktur dukungan untuk membantu siswa memahami peran penonton, fungsi
dari beberapa representasi modal, dan kualitas bukti untuk mendukung pengetahuan
klaim secara tertulis argumentatif, karena hal ini dapat menyebabkan pemahaman yang lebih baik
ilmiah
. Konsep C _ 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 97: 745-771, 2013
PENDAHULUAN
Mengembangkan literasi sains untuk semua siswa telah menjadi tujuan penting dalam
ilmu pendidikan sekolah internasional di beberapa dekade terakhir (Bybee, McCrae, &
Laurie,
2009; Feinstein, 2011; Millar, 2006). Misalnya, US National Science Education
Standar menyatakan, "melek ilmiah telah menjadi kebutuhan bagi setiap orang" (hal. 1,
National
Research Council [NRC], 1996). Di Inggris, Beyond 2000 laporan menunjukkan
bahwa "kurikulum ilmu 5-16 harus dilihat terutama sebagai kursus untuk meningkatkan
literasi sains "(p 9;. Millar & Osborne, 1998). Di Australia, sebuah laporan penelitian utama
untuk
Departemen Pendidikan, Pelatihan dan Urusan Pemuda menyoroti bahwa "tujuan
ilmu pendidikan adalah untuk mengembangkan literasi sains yang merupakan prioritas
tinggi untuk semua warga negara "
(Goodrum, Hackling, & Rennie, 2001, hal. Ix). Laporan dari negara lain mengungkapkan
serupa
posisi. Namun, meskipun di mana-mana istilah "literasi sains" dalam reformasi saat ini
dokumen, konsensus tentang implikasi praktis mengadopsinya sebagai tujuan utama
ilmu pendidikan tidak pasti.
Wellington dan Osborn (2001) berpendapat bahwa "mengetahui dan memahami bahasa
sains merupakan komponen penting dari literasi sains "(hal. 139). Artinya, bahasa
sarana memajukan pemahaman konseptual siswa, proses metakognitif, dan
keterampilan penalaran kritis, dan pada akhirnya meningkatkan literasi sains siswa. Norris
dan
Phillips (2003) lebih lanjut membahas peran penting bahasa untuk mengintegrasikan dasar
akal (yaitu, mampu membaca teks ilmu pengetahuan / tulis dan berbagai modus
representasi) dan
rasa berasal (yaitu, menjadi pengetahuan tentang isi ilmu) keaksaraan ilmiah, dan
menunjukkan bahwa tanpa bahasa, tidak ada ilmu.
Namun, bahasa ilmiah bermakna hanya bila digunakan dalam konteks otentik (Wallace,
2004) .Sementara siswa membawa bahasa sehari-hari mereka sendiri untuk kelas ilmu
pengetahuan, ilmu
sebagai suatu disiplin menggunakan bahasa khusus sendiri dengan fungsi tertentu. Berarti
belajar, maka, terjadi ketika siswa menggunakan bahasa ilmiah untuk berkomunikasi dan
menjelaskan
pengalaman mereka sendiri atau kejadian sehari-hari (Brown & Spang, 2008; Lee, 2002). Itu
adalah,
siswa harus mampu membuat hubungan antara bahasa sehari-hari dan ilmiah
bahasa. Gee (2004) lebih lanjut menegaskan bahwa itu adalah tugas dari guru untuk
merancang otentik
konteks sehingga siswa mengalami kebutuhan dan tujuan untuk berkomunikasi di ilmiah
wacana.
Namun, guru sains saat ini memberikan sedikit peluang bagi siswa untuk membuat
hubungan yang bermakna antara bahasa yang mereka gunakan dalam kehidupan seharihari dan bahasa
mereka gunakan dalam kelas sains (Rivard & Straw, 2000). The National Assessment of
Educational
Kemajuan melaporkan bahwa instruksi sains di Amerika Serikat didominasi
dicapai melalui ceramah guru, yang menekankan transmisi dan menghafal
pengetahuan ilmiah (Anderson, 2012). Sebuah survei nasional yang dilakukan oleh Pasley,
Weiss,
Shimkus, dan Smith (2004) melaporkan bahwa 62% dari pelajaran ilmu di Amerika Serikat
adalah
rendah dalam kualitas dan menghasilkan lingkungan belajar pasif di mana siswa umumnya
memiliki
beberapa peluang untuk mengintegrasikan pengetahuan mereka ke dalam sistem

konseptual yang koheren. Beyer dan
Pendidikan Sains, Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 745-771 (2013)
PENGARUH MENULIS-TO-BELAJAR KEGIATAN 747

Davis (2008) menyatakan bahwa kelas sains khas diajarkan tanpa kepedulian untuk
mengintegrasikan
bahasa ilmiah dengan bahasa sehari-hari siswa dan tanpa koherensi konseptual
diperlukan untuk membuat pengetahuan yang disediakan penjelasan ameaningful dari
naturalworld tersebut.
Menulis telah diakui sebagai alat pembelajaran yang menjanjikan untuk melibatkan siswa
dalam otentik
konteks dengan membuat hubungan antara sehari-hari dan bahasa ilmiah,
terutama ketika siswa menulis untuk khalayak selain guru-guru mereka (Ede & Lunsford,
1984; Gunel, Tangan, & McDermott, 2009). Kegiatan menyerukan bagi siswa untuk menulis
ke berbagai
khalayak membutuhkan mengintegrasikan dan menerjemahkan di tiga berkomunikasi
bahasa:
bahasa sehari-hari, bahasa penonton, dan bahasa ilmiah (Dahulu kala & Treagust, 2006).
Melalui proses ini, siswa diharapkan untuk berpikir tentang bagaimana menyajikan materi
dalam
mode yang paling tepat untuk audiens tertentu. Dalam hal ini, menulis untuk nonteacher
sebuah
penonton mendorong siswa untuk mengklarifikasi dan menjelaskan konsep, memperkuat
koneksi
antara konsep utama, dan mengubah pengetahuan mereka sendiri dalam beberapa
cara. Untuk saat ini,
banyak penelitian yang melibatkan kegiatan siswa-menulis telah menggunakan "penonton
membayangkan" yang tersisa
siswa dapat menerima umpan balik atau lebih berinteraksi dengan penonton kepada siapa
mereka
sedang menulis. Meskipun penonton membayangkan mungkin dipanggil, "penonton yang
hadir
harus memberikan umpan balik dan terlibat secara aktif dalam pembangunan argumen "
(Berland & Forte, 2010, hal. 431) sehingga siswa dapat bernegosiasi dengan penonton dan
merevisi mereka
ide-ide mereka dalam konteks otentik.
Selain itu, penelitian tentang menulis-untuk-belajar dan instruksi kolaboratif telah
menyarankan bahwa
Hasil penulisan kelompok kecil terstruktur dalam meningkatkan pembelajaran bagi individu
yang terlibat
(Keys, 1994; Storch, 2005). Diskusi rekan dapat perancah kemampuan siswa untuk
mengembangkan konsep
dan memecahkan masalah, sebagai anggota dari kelompok usaha kolaboratif untuk datang
ke konsensus
melalui proses negosiasi yang berarti. Diskusi ini menciptakan konteks otentik di
dimana siswa, bertindak seperti ilmuwan, lebih mudah menghasilkan teks dengan
menyamar ide, mengevaluasi,
dan membenarkan pekerjaan masing-masing.
Beberapa studi telah menemukan bahwa siswa dapat mencapai pemahaman konseptual
lebih dalam
ketika mereka terlibat dalam menulis argumentatif sebagai lawan ketika mereka terlibat
dalam ekspresif
menulis (misalnya, Gleason, 1999). Artinya, siswa harus membangun argumen persuasif
dengan
menggunakan dan memahami komponen pertanyaan, klaim, data, dan bukti. Lebih Banyak
penting, siswa juga perlu memahami hubungan antara pertanyaan, data, dan
mengklaim serta hubungan howthese dapat diatur untuk merumuskan bukti yang
meyakinkan
untuk tugas yang diberikan dan penonton (Kelly, Regev, & Prothero, 2008; Ryu & Sandoval,
2012;
Zembal-Saul, 2009) .Dengan pemikiran ini, Choi, tangan, dan Greenbowe (in press)
menegaskan bahwa
dalam mengevaluasi kualitas argumen harus fokus pada komponen-komponen sebagai
berikut:
kejelasan klaim, kecukupan bukti, dan hubungan antara pertanyaan
dan klaim dan tagihan dan bukti.
Meskipun telah menunjukkan bahwa menulis argumentatif adalah genre yang kuat melalui
untuk mempromosikan pemahaman konseptual siswa dalam ilmu pengetahuan, penelitian
saat ini juga telah
menyarankan agar siswa memiliki banyak kesulitan kerajinan berkualitas tinggi ditulis ilmiah
argumen dalam hal hubungan antara pertanyaan, klaim, dan bukti-bukti, kualitas
bukti, dan kualitas konseptual klaim (McNeill, Lizotte, Krajcik, & Marx,
2006; Sampson & Clark, 2008). diSessa (2004) berpendapat bahwa pemahaman konseptual
lengkap
dari konsep ilmu membutuhkan berurusan dengan beberapa mode representasi
konsep itu, seperti tabel, grafik, diagram, dan simbol. Jadi beberapa mode representasi
menjadi penting karena "menggunakan representasi yang berbeda dapat membuat sulit
konsep-konsep ilmiah yang lebih dimengerti "dengan meningkatkan kemungkinan maju ke
arah
pemahaman konseptual yang lebih koheren (Dahulu kala & Treagust, 2006. p. 308). Dalam
penelitian ini,
penggunaan beberapa mode representasi dipandang sebagai komponen penting dari
menulis untuk
membuat konsep yang lebih lengkap dan koheren.
748 CHEN ET AL.

Membangun pertimbangan tersebut, penelitian ini mengasumsikan bahwa secara ilmiah
melek,
siswa harus mampu membaca dan menulis teks, menghubungkan sistem bahasa yang
berbeda, dan
membangun komponen argumentasi ilmiah. Penelitian ini meneliti dampak
menulis surat argumentatif kepada audiens selain guru untuk mempromosikan konseptual
pemahaman. Themajority studi pada penulisan argumentatif telah dilakukan di
tingkat perguruan tinggi daripada di tingkat SD; selain itu, mengajar ilmu pengetahuan
sebagai argumen dalam
kelas SD jarang (Chen, 2011; Pasley et al, 2004.). Zembal-Saul (2009) berpendapat
bahwa ilmu dasar membutuhkan gerakan yang jauh dari fokus pada menyenangkan tangankegiatan,
untuk menciptakan lingkungan di mana siswa dapat menggunakan argumen sebagai alat
penting untuk membangun dan
makna kritik. Namun, beberapa studi telah meneliti manfaat pemahaman konseptual
menulis kepada khalayak nonteacher. Hubungan antara kolaboratif argumentatif
kegiatan dan keuntungan pengetahuan individu menulis juga perlu diperiksa. Hal ini juga
tetap
pasti yang komponen penulisan argumentatif penting dalam menentukan

kualitas tulisan yang membantu siswa untuk lebih memahami konsep yang
diberikan. Dengan demikian,
Penelitian ini difokuskan pada 8 minggu, menulis-untuk-belajar aktivitas yang dirancang
untuk mendukung kelas empat
pemahaman konseptual siswa dengan meminta mereka bersama-sama menulis
argumentatif
surat kepada siswa kelas 11 di awal / selama / penyelesaian unit pada kekuatan dan
gerak. Pertanyaan penelitian yang dipandu penelitian meliputi:
1. Apakah siswa menyelesaikan kolaboratif menulis-untuk-belajar aktivitas, pertukaran surat
dengan siswa yang lebih tua, tampil lebih baik pada tes pemahaman konseptual unit
pada gaya dan gerak daripada siswa yang tidak?
2. Apakah kolaboratif menulis-untuk-belajar aktivitas meningkatkan pemahaman konseptual
sub kelompok yang berbeda (jenis kelamin, status sosial ekonomi yang rendah [SES],
individual
Program pendidikan [IEP], dan siswa berbakat) lebih siswa dalam sub-kelompok yang
tidak berpartisipasi dalam kegiatan tersebut?
3. Pada apa inti konsep dalam tes pemahaman konseptual siswa-siswa menyelesaikan
kolaboratif menulis-untuk-belajar aktivitas berperforma lebih baik dibandingkan siswa yang
tidak?
4. Apa hubungan (jika ada) antara kualitas tulisan dan mahasiswa konseptual
pemahaman pada tes unit pada gaya dan gerak?
5. Yang komponen menulis merupakan prediktor signifikan dari pemahaman konseptual
siswa
pada tes unit pada gaya dan gerak?
KERANGKA KONSEPTUAL
Menulis sebagai Model Pembelajaran
Model awal tulisan-to-belajar diusulkan oleh Emig (1977), yang berpendapat bahwa
Proses menulis adalah penting untuk belajar, karena menghasilkan contoh kuat
umpan balik swadaya, menetapkan eksplisit pengelompokan konseptual sistemik, dan
mewakili
cara yang paling tersedia untuk merekam efisien formulasi abstrak. Konstan ini
back-dan-sebagainya proses dan produk, pekerjaan, dan penghargaan, adalah apa yang
membuat tulisan jadi pusat
untuk belajar.
Dalam mengadopsi ini menulis-untuk-belajar praktek, Galbraith (1999) mengemukakan
bahwa menulis bisa
dipandang sebagai alat epistemologis, yaitu, dapat dilihat sebagai proses yang mengarah ke
konstruksi pengetahuan. Galbraith melanjutkan untuk membuat sketsa dual-processModel
penulisan. Itu
Bagian pertama dari model ini adalah proses pengetahuan-transformasi seperti yang
dijelaskan oleh Bereiter dan
Scardamalia (1987). Proses ini melibatkan evaluasi dan modifikasi determinate
ide dalam memori kerja untuk membuat model mental teks yang memenuhi tujuan retoris.
Namun, Galbraith (1999) berpendapat bahwa proses ini tidak menciptakan ide-ide
baru. Sebaliknya,

memilih dan mengatur ide-ide yang ada "secara langsung diambil dari memori episodik"
(hal. 146).
Bagian kedua dari model ini adalah proses pengetahuan merupakan, yang mengasumsikan
bahwa
pengetahuan penulis juga diwakili oleh hubungan implisit yang sesuai dengan
koneksi tetap antara unit subpropositional dalam jaringan kepuasan kendala. Itu
ciri khas dari proses pengetahuan merupakan demikian dialektika antara
disposisi implisit penulis terhadap topik dan teks eksplisit. Dua bagian dari
Model Galbraith saling melengkapi dalam efek mereka dalam bahwa keduanya diperlukan
untuk efektif
sedang menulis. Proses pengetahuan merupakan adalah "bertanggung jawab untuk sintesis
konseptual
ide-ide yang koheren, tetapi membutuhkan pengetahuan proses transformasi untuk
memastikan konten yang
disajikan dalam bentuk retoris yang tepat "(Galbraith, Torrance, & Hallam 2006,
p. 1341).
Dalam memperluas Model Galbraith untuk kelas sains, Cavagnetto, tangan, dan NortonMeier (2009) mengemukakan bahwa klarifikasi dan pembentukan pemahaman konseptual
dapat
terjadi di antara rekan-rekan saat menulis dalam kelompok / pasangan kerja. Peers 'ide,
umpan balik, dan kritik
dapat menyebabkan siswa ke tingkat yang lebih dalam refleksi dan berfungsi sebagai
stimulus untuk osilasi lanjut
antara disposisi dan pengetahuan linguistik. Artinya, menulis kolaboratif terjadi dalam
konteks kelompok dan wacana berada di bawah pengawasan dari badan kolektif daripada
individu yang terpisah. Kolaborasi seperti menunjukkan bahwa siswa memiliki tanggung
jawab bersama
untuk produksi teks dan didorong untuk segera menegosiasikan ide-ide mereka
dengan rekan-rekan di seluruh proses (Onrubia & Engel, 2009). Ini dapat mempromosikan
arti
dari kepemilikan bersama dan karenanya mendorong siswa untuk berkontribusi
pengambilan keputusan pada
semua aspek menulis: konsep, struktur, dan representasi. Namun, penggunaan saat ini
menulis kolaboratif di kelas sains cenderung terbatas hanya tahap awal
unit, untuk keperluan brainstorming, atau tahap akhir untuk peer review. Fokusnya adalah
sering pada produk tulisan, bukan pada proses. Storch (2005) menemukan bahwa
ketika siswa diminta untuk peer review, mereka cenderung berfokus pada kesalahan di
kalimat dan
tingkat kata, menunjukkan bahwa proses penulisan masih tetap menjadi tindakan pribadi
dan penilaian
Fungsi (Chen & Tsai, 2009) di mana penulis tidak bisa langsung bernegosiasi dengan rekanrekan,
mengidentifikasi kelemahan ide-ide mereka, dan memperdebatkan ide-ide untuk klarifikasi
dan selanjutnya
modifikasi.
Untuk dapat secara efektif menggunakan tulisan-untuk-belajar strategi, maka Midgette,
Haria, dan
MacArthur (2008) berpendapat bahwa penonton merupakan faktor penting dalam kedua
pengetahuan retorika dan
dalam faktor-faktor yang mewakili dan membatasi pengetahuan ini, yang pada akhirnya
mempengaruhi penulis '
hasil belajar. Fitur dari penonton yang membuat tulisan terutama diinginkan
dalam mempromosikan pembelajaran sains akan dibahas sebagai berikut.
Peran Penonton Menulis-to-Learn Kegiatan
"Pemirsa adalah pusat retorika, untuk retorika berkaitan dengan bagaimana kata-kata
memindahkan
penonton, mempengaruhi tindakan mereka, membujuk penilaian mereka, mengubah pikiran
mereka "(Blakeslee,
2001, hal. xi). Tangan dan Prain (2006) dijabarkan lebih lanjut peran dan fungsi penonton
secara tertulis-untuk-belajar kegiatan. Mereka menyarankan bahwa dalam menyelesaikan
penulisan-untuk-belajar tugas,
siswa terlibat dalam tiga kegiatan penerjemahan bahasa dalam pengetahuan retorika.
Pertama, siswa harus menerjemahkan bahasa ilmu bahasa sehari-hari mereka untuk
memahami
konsep-konsep ilmiah. Kedua, mereka menerjemahkan maknanya dipahami bahasa
penonton.
Siswa kemudian harus menerjemahkan kembali ke dalam bahasa ilmu ketika menyelesaikan
penulisan
tugas. Terjemahan tersebut mengharuskan mahasiswa untuk secara signifikan merenungkan
dan memperjelas
pemahaman mereka tentang konsep. Jenis terjemahan mungkin sangat relevan
dalam kursus fisika karena ketergantungan pada terjemahan antara kosakata dan
terminologi bahasa dan ilmu sehari-hari bahasa yang paling siswa (misalnya, materi, berat
badan,
750 CHEN ET AL.

massa, gravitasi). Misalnya, dalam penggunaan sehari-hari, istilah "berat" yang biasa
digunakan untuk
berarti "massa", yang secara ilmiah merupakan konsep yang sama sekali berbeda. Ketika
siswa terlibat
dalam tulisan-untuk-belajar tugas, mereka harus menerjemahkan arti sehari-hari berat ke
makna ilmiah dengan menghubungkan dan mengklarifikasi istilah massa, gravitasi, gaya,
dan materi
(Yaitu, berat adalah kekuatan yang dihasilkan dari aksi gravitasi pada materi). Mereka
kemudian memiliki
menerjemahkan arti "berat" untuk bahasa penonton. Jika siswa menulis untuk
rekan-rekan yang lebih muda, misalnya, mereka perlu melakukan hal ini tanpa
menggunakan bahasa yang terlalu sulit.
Oleh karena itu, mereka mungkin menjelaskan arti dari "berat" sebagai gaya yang bekerja
pada sebuah benda
karena gravitasi. Mereka mungkin juga memberikan contoh, seperti perbedaan antara
seseorang
berat di bumi dan di bulan. Akhirnya, para siswa perlu menerjemahkan kembali ke dalam
ilmu pengetahuan
bahasa untuk memastikan arti mereka telah ditafsirkan secara ilmiah benar.
Kesadaran audiens yang berbeda, dan tindakan terjemahan yang diperlukan untuk menulis
kepada mereka
penonton, mungkin karena itu mempengaruhi belajar konseptual siswa (Midgette et al.,
2008).
Sebuah studi kuasi-eksperimental yang dilakukan oleh Gunel, tangan, dan McDermott (2009)
diperiksa
apakah forwhich penonton mereka terdiri penjelasan ilmiah dampak SMA
pemahaman konseptual siswa. Mereka menemukan bahwa siswa yang menulis untuk teman
sebaya atau
siswa yang lebih muda dilakukan secara signifikan lebih baik pada pertanyaan konseptual
daripada tulisan mereka
untuk guru atau orang tua. Tangan dan rekan-rekannya (Tangan, Hohenshell, & Prain, 2007;
Tangan
& Prain, 2006) menunjukkan bahwa ketika siswa diminta untuk menulis ke guru, mereka
umumnya
berbagi informasi dengan menggunakan kata-kata besar dan mengharapkan guru untuk
dapat memahami mereka.
Sebaliknya, menulis untuk audiens yang lebih muda atau rekan-rekan menuntut siswa untuk
memperluas, menyederhanakan, dan
menguraikan pemahaman muncul mereka untuk readerships nyata. Dengan demikian,
menulis kepada audiens
selain guru menjadi jauh lebih kognitif menuntut karena tugas menulis
jauh lebih mungkin untuk menjadi transformatif atau konstitutif di alam karena terjemahan
tuntutan ditempatkan pada siswa (Klein, 2006).
Namun, kesadaran penonton bukan satu-satunya faktor yang mempengaruhi kognisi siswa;
umpan balik penonton juga memainkan peran penting dalam mengembangkan kemampuan
penulis untuk mencerminkan,
memperjelas, dan merevisi tulisan (Lindblom-Ylanne & Pihlajamaki, 2003; Nelson &
Schunn,
2009). Menurut Berland dan Forte (2010), untuk melibatkan para siswa dalam menulis
bermakna
Kegiatan, mereka harus menerima umpan balik dari penonton otentik dan berinteraksi
dengan
penonton, bukan hanya meminta kesadaran siswa tentang penonton. Para penonton "perlu
bertanya
pertanyaan, mengevaluasi argumen dan menawarkan alternatif "(hal. 4), dan kemudian
siswa dapat membuat
penilaian mereka dan mengevaluasi umpan balik. Umpan balik penonton dengan demikian
kendaraan untuk mendorong
siswa untuk mengidentifikasi kelemahan dalam ide-ide mereka, memperkuat ide-ide dengan
mencari lebih banyak
bukti, dan memperjelas pemahaman konseptual mereka. Akibatnya, siswa dipaksa
untuk mengambil alih pembelajaran mereka, dan motivasi mereka untuk belajar dapat
ditingkatkan.
Menulis argumentatif
Faktor lain yang penting yang dapat mempengaruhi hasil belajar siswa melalui tulisan
adalah genre yang digunakan (Klein, 1999; Rivard, 1994). Ada perdebatan tentang
yang genre-termasuk fitur-siswa yang formal atau struktural harus belajar jika mereka
untuk mengembangkan pemahaman konseptual lebih dalam (Halliday & Martin,
1993). Sejumlah
proyek penelitian kontemporer, khususnya yang berkaitan dengan pembelajaran konseptual
dalam ilmu pengetahuan,
telah menunjukkan kekuatan tulisan argumentatif untuk berkontribusi lebih banyak untuk
belajar dari
penulisan tradisional seperti pencatatan (misalnya, Kerlin, McDonald, dan Kelly,
2010). Sebagai contoh,
Tangan, Wallace, dan Yang (2004) menemukan bahwa siswa yang menyelesaikan tulisan
argumentatif
dilakukan baik sebagai kelompok daripada mereka yang menyelesaikan tugas menulis yang
lebih tradisional.
Sepanjang baris yang sama, Ruiz-Primo, Li, Tsai, dan Schneider (2010) yang dikumpulkan
siswa

notebook ilmu dari delapan ruang kelas sekolah menengah berbasis penyelidikan di lima
negara bagian di
Amerika Serikat dan menyimpulkan bahwa terlibat dalam pembangunan berkualitas tinggi
yang ditulis
argumen mungkin berhubungan dengan tingkat yang lebih tinggi dari kinerja
pembelajaran. Studi ini menyarankan
bahwa pemahaman konseptual menulis argumentatif sangat meningkatkan siswa karena
itu wajib mereka untuk terlibat dalam membujuk orang lain dengan mengkoordinasikan
unsur-unsur argumen,
seperti data, pertanyaan, klaim, dan bukti.
Penggunaan tulisan argumentatif juga didukung oleh para ahli di bidang kognitif
ilmu (Bangert-tenggelam, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004; Kuhn, 2010). Klein (2006)
memberikan penjelasan teoritis yang relevan dari perbedaan antara menulis argumentatif
dan menulis tradisional dalam artikelnya kontras generasi pertama dan kedua kognitif
perspektif ilmu pengetahuan. Generasi pertama ilmu kognitif bahasa dilihat sebagai jendela
ke
berpikir di mana "kata-kata individu dianggap mewakili konsep, dan klausa dan
kalimat yang dianggap mewakili proposisi "(hal. 148). Dalam perspektif ini, bahasa,
seperti menulis, dianggap sebagai produk sampingan dari pemikiran, bukan sumber untuk
membangun
pengetahuan. Tugas menulis tradisional umumnya sejajar dengan pandangan
ini. Sebaliknya, secondgeneration
kognitif bahasa tampilan sains sebagai sebagian besar metafora dan naratif; sedang menulis
dianggap kabur dan kontekstual spesifik. Pandangan ini mengusulkan bahasa itu, dan
menulis khususnya, bila diterapkan pada disiplin ilmu seperti ilmu pengetahuan, dapat
digunakan tidak hanya untuk
mengkomunikasikan ide tetapi juga untuk membentuk mereka dengan memperkuat
hubungan antara terkait
aspek konsep. Dengan cara ini, tindakan menulis dapat menjadi pengetahuan membangun
alat untuk siswa yang berhubungan dengan konsep-konsep ilmu baru. Penggunaan tulisan
argumentatif
sejajar dengan pandangan ilmu kognitif generasi kedua dan praktik aktual
ilmuwan, karena siswa terlibat dalam narasi dan penalaran ilmiah proses melalui
unsur argumen. Grimberg dan Tangan (2009) menemukan bahwa tulisan argumentatif
dipromosikan belajar kognitif ilmiah di kedua siswa tinggi dan rendah prestasi.
Sandoval dan Millwood (2005) memperluas diskusi akademis tentang argumentatif
menulis dengan menyarankan bahwa koheren kerajinan berkualitas tinggi argumen yang
ditulis tidak harus
dibatasi untuk menulis tekstual saja. Lemke (1998) menunjukkan bahwa "untuk melakukan
ilmu pengetahuan, untuk berbicara
ilmu pengetahuan, membaca dan menulis ilmu pengetahuan, perlu untuk menyulap dan
menggabungkan dengan cara kanonik
wacana lisan, ekspresi matematika, representasi grafis visual, dan motorik
operasi di alam "(hal. 90). Banyak ilmu yang abstrak dan jelas, dan
"Jarang ada situasi di mana representasi tunggal, seperti data ditabulasikan, efektif
untuk semua tugas "(Dahulu kala & Treagust, 2006, hal. 309). Misalnya, dalam unit pada
gaya dan gerak,
kombinasi grafik kecepatan-waktu, grafik percepatan waktu, tabel, dan ikon vektor
digunakan untuk mewakili konsep hubungan antara waktu, kecepatan, dan percepatan
dengan cara yang koheren yang tidak dapat dicapai melalui menggunakan teks saja. Mayer
(2003) mengambil ini
Argumen lanjut dengan menegaskan bahwa pembangunan pemahaman yang kaya dicapai
ketika siswa memahami bagaimana modus yang berbeda semua berhubungan dengan
konsep serupa dan kemudian bisa
menerjemahkan pemahaman mereka antara modus yang berbeda.
Pentingnya memanfaatkan beberapa representasi untuk belajar ilmu juga telah
didukung dari perspektif psikologi kognitif. Ainsworth (1999) menunjukkan bahwa

sebagai mahasiswa bergerak di antara modus, mereka dipaksa untuk memproses informasi
secara kognitif dalam
bahasa satu modus dengan cara yang dapat digunakan dengan modus lain. Gunel, Tangan,
dan Gunduz (2006) digunakan istilah "terjemahan" dalam menggambarkan proses ini dan
menyatakan bahwa
siswa membangun pemahaman yang mendalam tentang makna antara modus melalui
penalaran.
Proses ini terjemahan paralel (1999) model kognitif Galbraith menulis. Itu adalah,
terjemahan antara modus yang berbeda adalah proses menghasilkan instantiations
alternatif
dari definisi siswa dari masalah dan konten ruang retoris, kemungkinan terkemuka
untuk mengevaluasi satu modus dengan menggunakan modus lain. Mengevaluasi satu
modus dengan menggunakan lain
752 CHEN ET AL.

mode "memungkinkan penulis untuk mengidentifikasi kesenjangan dalam pemahaman
mereka, dan karenanya menawarkan
Potensi-through mengisi kesenjangan ini-untuk mengembangkan pemahaman seseorang
"(hal. 151). Akan Tetapi,
(2009) studi McDermott menunjukkan bahwa menggunakan beberapa mode representasi
tidak
menjamin hasil ini ketika orang-moda alternatif hanya ditambahkan ke teks tanpa
penjelasan. Sebaliknya, pemahaman yang kaya hanya terjadi ketika siswa secara efektif
menghubungkan
beberapa mode dengan teks dengan cara yang koheren.
Meskipun tulisan argumentatif telah terbukti menjadi strategi ampuh untuk membina
pembelajaran sains, menulis seperti ini sulit bagi siswa (Kerlin et al., 2010). Sebelumnya
penelitian telah menunjukkan bahwa siswa mengalami kesulitan membangun bukti yang
tepat untuk mendukung
pengetahuan mereka klaim (Kelly, Chen, & Prothero, 2000) dan bahwa mereka cenderung
mengekspresikan
klaim dengan sedikit dukungan untuk mendukung mereka (Bell & Linn, 2000). Beberapa
peneliti juga telah
menemukan bahwa siswa pada umumnya tidak mengartikulasikan ide-ide mereka sangat
sering membuat koheren
Argumen (McNeill et al., 2006). Selain itu, Sandoval dan Millwood (2005) menemukan bahwa
siswa hanya dapat menambahkan berbagai mode representasi dalam argumen tertulis
dengan
sedikit penjelasan. Meskipun banyak penelitian tentang menulis argumentatif telah
menyarankan nya
dampak dan kesulitan belajar siswa dalam ilmu, sedikit yang diketahui tentang yang
aspek menulis argumentatif mungkin komponen-komponen penting dan potensi siswa
hasil belajar. Jika kita dapat memperoleh pemahaman yang lebih baik dari ini, instruksi yang
eksplisit dalam
komponen tulisan argumentatif dapat dirancang untuk mengatasi kesulitan siswa
dan akhirnya untuk memajukan hasil belajar (Midgette et al., 2008).
Struktur Argumen
Meskipun peneliti pendidikan menyetujui peran penting tulisan argumentatif
untuk konstruksi pengetahuan dalam ilmu pengetahuan, ada ada, untuk tingkat tertentu,
berbagai definisi
struktur argumen, didukung oleh para peneliti yang berbeda karena teori mereka
perspektif dan tujuan program penelitian (Sampson & Clark, 2008). Untuk memandu analisis
data
dan interpretasi, penelitian ini mengidentifikasi struktur argumentasi ilmiah sebagai terdiri
dari tiga komponen yang saling terkait: Pertanyaan, klaim, dan bukti (Tangan, 2008).
Kerangka ini khusus diciptakan untuk membantu analisis data dan interpretasi dalam
studi.
Pertanyaan. Dalam memahami fenomena alam, mengidentifikasi pertanyaan penelitian
adalah
Langkah pertama dari proses penyelidikan berbasis argumen. Pertanyaan diakui seperti jika
siswa menemukan sebuah ketidakpastian atau merasakan kesulitan yang perlu
dipecahkan. Setelah
Pertanyaan telah diidentifikasi, siswa mengejar solusi dengan survei informasi terkait,
merumuskan asumsi, berinteraksi dengan pertanyaan, dan mengamati hasilnya. Didalam
hal, pertanyaan adalah kalimat yang diajukan dalam bentuk tanya untuk langkah pertama
pengolahan
diskusi atau melakukan investigasi.
Klaim. Klaim adalah pernyataan tentatif bahwa yang tahu tidak hanya apa fenomena ini
tetapi juga bagaimana kaitannya dengan peristiwa lain, mengapa penting, dan bagaimana
pandangan tertentu ini
fenomena datang untuk menjadi (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000). Sebuah klaim bukan
hanya
Pernyataan pendapat seseorang, tetapi juga harus menjawab pertanyaan itu dan didukung
oleh dan fit
bukti.
Bukti dalam arti luas bukti. Meliputi apa saja yang digunakan untuk menentukan atau
menunjukkan kebenaran klaim (Sandoval & Millwood, 2005). Bukti akumulasi
melalui pengamatan fenomena yang terjadi di alam atau yang dibuat sebagai
eksperimen di laboratorium atau bahan bacaan. Pada dasarnya, bukti adalah penjelasan
yang terdiri dari data dan penalaran untuk menunjukkan bagaimana atau mengapa klaim
tersebut benar. Sebuah kualitas tinggi
bukti ilmiah diperlukan untuk cukup dan tepat mendukung klaim

membuatnya valid (Peker & Wallace, 2010; Sampson, Grooms, & Walker, 2011). Tambahan
lagi,
untuk membangun bukti berkualitas tinggi dan menyelesaikan ide untuk mendukung klaim,
multimodal
representasi dari gagasan menjadi penting untuk mengkoordinasikan dan menilai data suara
dan
bukti yang koheren. Sebagaimana didalilkan Lemke (1998), "mereka [para ilmuwan]
menggabungkan, interkoneksi,
dan mengintegrasikan teks verbal dengan ekspresi matematika, grafik kuantitatif, informasi
tables, abstract diagrams, maps, drawings, [and] photographs (p. 88) to represent a
concept
more completely.
PRESENT STUDY
Given the importance of collaborative writing, audience awareness, and feedback, in
the present study, a writing-to-learn activity was designed in which students were asked
to write letters to older peers who provided feedback and further communicated with
them via collaborative writing. The physics topics of force and motion were used as a
conceptual domain. Given the rationale that there are benefits to student engagement with
argumentative writing, this study sought to examine the impact of collaborative writing
argumentative letters to older peers on individual knowledge gain and to postulate which
writing components are significant predictors of student conceptual understanding on tests
in terms of the structure and quality of argument.
METODE
Desain Penelitian
The present study used a quasi-experimental and pre/posttest design with control and
treatment groups to examine whether completion of writing-to-learn activities improved
students' conceptual understanding on test questions. Students in a treatment group were
asked to collaboratively write three argumentative letters to older peers that contained
explanations of the concepts they had learned at the beginning/during/completion of the
teaching unit. The treatment group was composed of several small groups that contained
two to four students, depending on each teacher's instructional settings. We were keen to
understand the impact of the letter-writing exchange activities on student science learning,
and thus we asked teachers in control groups to maintain their current pedagogical practices
without using letter-writing activities. The intent was to ensure that the instruction time
for each group was the same except that the treatment classes completed collaborative
letter-writing activities. The study took place within the context of a unit on force and
motion that was taught for 8 weeks. Both treatment and control groups were administered
the same pre/posttest at the same time to examine the impact of the collaborative
letterwriting
exchange activities on students' conceptual understanding of the unit on force and
gerak.
Peserta
This study occurred in the fall of two successive years. The participants included fourthgrade
students from four elementary schools and 11th-grade students from one high school
in the same district of a northeastern state in the United States. Fourth-grade and 11thgrade
students were included in the study because they were learning the same unit at the same
time in this district. Because this study is an attempt to examine the effect of corresponding
with older peers on students' conceptual understanding of force and motion concepts, the
754 CHEN ET AL.

TABEL 1
Number of Students and Classes for Treatment Group and Control Group in
the Two-Year Project
Group First Year Second Year Total Number of Students
Treatment group Fourth grade: 145
(7 classes)
Fourth grade: 316
(18 classes)
Fourth grade: 461
Eleventh grade: 150
(9 classes)
Eleventh grade: 266
(14 classes)
Eleventh grade: 416
Control group Fourth grade: 309
(16 classes)
Fourth grade: 68
(4 classes)
Fourth grade: 377
Total number of 604 684 1288
anak murid
test, analysis, and comparison were only administrated to the fourth-grade students. Sebuah
overview of participants in the 2-year study can be found in Table 1.
The First-Year Study. The first-year study was designed as a preliminary investigation of
the impact of letter-writing exchange activities on fourth-grade student science learning (as
reported by Chen, Hand, &McDowell, 2010). This study included 145 students in writingtolearn treatment groups and 309 students in control groups at the fourth-grade level.
One hundred fifty 11th-grade students from one school were assigned to writing-to-learn
treatment groups. The 11th-grade students were asked to write three letters for exchange
with fourth-grade students. The fourth-grade student participants were 95% EuropeanAmerican with the remaining 5% from a variety of ethnic origins. The 11th-grade student
participants were 94% European-American with the remaining 6% from a variety of ethnic
origins.
The results of the first-year study showed that the fourth-grade students who completed
letter-writing tasks outperformed students who did not by using ANCOVA with pretest
measures as covariates and the posttest as a dependent variable in the model (F (1, 453) =
15.491, p < .001 partial 2 = .263). To obtain a better understanding of the impact of the
letter-writing exchange activities, we repeated the same procedure with the same teachers
at the same schools the next year to examine student conceptual understanding of the
same
topic, force and motion.
The Second-Year Study. Owing to the initial successful results from the first year, more
teachers who had originally been in the control group were willing to join the writing-tolearn
proyek. As a result, the writing-to-learn treatment groups in the second year rose to
include 316 students, and the control group included 68 students at the fourth-grade level.
Two hundred sixty-six 11th-grade students were assigned to writing-to-learn treatment
kelompok. The fourth-grade student participants were 94% European American with the
remaining 6% from a variety of ethnic origins. The 11th-grade student participants were
97% European American with the remaining 3% from a variety of ethnic origins. Akan Tetapi,
the relatively small sample size of the control group compared to the treatment group may
have reduced the validity and power of the research in the second year. Selain itu,
second-year project repeated the same procedure during the same learning unit and was
conducted at the same educational setting as the first-year project. The appropriate data
analysis for this study is therefore to collapse the two samples together to balance the

TABEL 2
Writing Tasks in the Beginning/During/Completion of the Teaching Unit
Number of Letter Writing Tasks
First Eleventh grade:
Design a question to ask, based on the concepts that will be
needed by the fourth graders to complete the final design
Tantangan.
Fourth grade:
Make claims to answer the question and (or) make a new
question for the 11th-grade students.
Support claim with evidence from experience or class
investigasi. Be sure to include a thorough explanation of
reasoning in an evidence-based scientific explanation.
Teachers can introduce different ways to show evidence:
diagrams, charts, tables, etc.
Second Eleventh grade:

Evaluate, critique the rationale, and suggest revisions to the
fourth graders' ideas.
They may pose another question for the fourth-grade students,
but the question must still be related to concepts involved in the
fourth-grade curriculum, possibly on a deeper level or with
additional examples.
Fourth grade:
Same as the task of the first letter.
Third Same as the task of the second letter.
participant numbers in the treatment and control groups so that there is more power and
higher validity, which will produce more definitive and stable results (Gunel, Hand, &
Prain, 2007). As a result, 461 fourth-grade students were in the treatment group and 377
students were in the control group.
The Writing-to-Learn Activity
The design centered on teaching a physics unit about force and motion for 8 weeks
to fourth- and 11th-grade students. At the beginning of the teaching unit, the 11th-grade
students were asked to write a letter to fourth graders in which they designed a question
focused on the concepts that the fourth graders would need to understand or the concepts
that the 11th graders were interested in or confused about. The fourth-grade students were
asked to respond in letters to the 11th graders' questions with evidence-based explanations.
The writing tasks of the second and third letters were similar to the first letter, as illustrated
pada Tabel 2.
Appendix A includes the general guidelines for the fourth- and 11th-grade students in
the treatment group. The participating teachers codeveloped and discussed a specific lesson
plan incorporating these desired core concepts to help ensure consistency of presentation
of the lesson in different groups. Students in the treatment group were taught the argument
structure by using the concepts of force and motion as examples. The teachers also
introduced
them to the concept of using multiple modes of representations to show evidence
within their written letters. Students in the control group did not receive these guidelines,
756 CHEN ET AL.

TABEL 3
The Description and Item Distribution of Each Core Concept
Nomor
Core Concept Concept Description of Items
A: Force balance a A force is any push or pull on an object. An unbalanced
force is needed to make a resting object move, to
bring a moving object to rest, or to change the
direction of a moving object.
9
B: Force and speed a A force can change the speed of an object. Greater
forces can change the speed of an object faster than
smaller forces.
4
C: Friction b Friction is a force that occurs when two surfaces rub
secara bersama-sama. Friction opposes motion.
2
D: Force and mass b If the same force is applied to a lighter vehicle and a
heavier vehicle, the speed of the lighter vehicle will
change more than the speed of the heavier vehicle.

2
E: Air resistance c Air resistance is a force that can slow the speed of a
moving vehicle.
2
F: Energy c Energy can be stored in a rubber band and released to
turn an axle or spin a propeller to make a vehicle
move.
2
Note. One of the 20 items in the test contained both Core Concept A and Core Concept B.
a The concepts are emphasized within the national curriculum at the elementary level.
b The concepts are not emphasized within the national curriculum, but those concepts are
useful to know for elementary students.
c The concepts are difficult for elementary students and not necessary for them to learn and
not necessary for them to learn at this time.
and teachers in the control group were asked to make sure that students did not receive
additional instruction dealing with the concepts covered in the unit of study to assure equal
time on task for all classes.
Sumber Data
The data source included two types of assessment data to evaluate the impact of the
writing-to-learn activity and how the fourth-grade students crafted a scientific argument:
pre/posttest data and the students' three written letters.
Pre/posttest. Prior to studying the topic, all fourth-grade students were required to
undertake
a pretest that consisted of 20 multiple-choice questions. The same test was also
administered to the students at the completion of the teaching unit. The test was developed
by Horizon Research Institution to gauge the effectiveness of upper level elementary
school students' learning performance on force and motion. The test consists of six core
concepts addressed within the national standards: (a) force balance, (b) force and speed,
(c) friction, (d) force and mass, (e) air resistance, and (f) energy (NRC, 1996). The detailed
descriptions of each core concept and the number of questions associated with the core
concepts are illustrated in Table 3. Responses were on a 0/1 scale. The multiple-choice

questions were assessed for reliability by computing standardized Cronbach alpha; itu
internal consistencies were 0.67 for the pretest and 0.74 for the posttest.
Three Written Letters. All fourth-grade students' written letters were evaluated by adapting
the argumentative writing rubric provided in Appendix B. The rubric was focused on
six components that were modified from the previous study to assess the quality of
students'
written arguments (Chen, 2011; McDermott, 2009). The six components were (a)
the clarity of the claim, (b) the relationship between the question and the claim, (c) the
relationship between the claim and the evidence, (d) the sufficiency of the evidence, (e)
the overall cohesiveness, and (f) the text assessment. The first four components focused
on the argumentative structure and were scored using a four-point scale from 0 to 3. The
component of the overall cohesiveness focused especially on the degree of the ability to
connect the multiple modes together and with the text. Seufert (2003) asserted that deep
conceptual understanding is only truly realized when students are able to create connections
both within and between different representations, as opposed to merely adding multiple
modes into their written products with a lack of explanation. This suggests that a higher
degree of cohesiveness in a written product, including connecting the multiple modes
together,
is likely to be beneficial in promoting a better understanding of science concepts.

The component of the overall cohesiveness was scored using a 10-point scale from 0 to 9.
The component of text assessment focused on the general writing (eg, grammar, spelling,
and organization of writing) and was scored using a 16-point scale from 015. Sebagai
akibat,
the argument scores could range from 0 to 36, with higher scores representing a higher
quality argument (see Appendix A). All of the written letters were scored by an external
rater to ensure independence of assessment and to increase the reliability of scoring.
To understand what core concepts students discussed in the three written letters, all
written letters were reviewed by the same rater and coded based on the six core concepts.
Twenty percent of the written letters were scored and coded by a second independent rater
to estimate the interrater reliability by Pearson's coefficient. The interrater reliability was
0.86 for the writing rubric and 0.95 for the core concepts.
ANALISIS STATISTIK
Analisis Kovarian
To address Research Questions 13, a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was
conducted to analyze potential differences between the two groups in terms of achievement
on the multiple-choice questions of the posttest. Scores on the pretest were included as
the covariate, scores on the posttest were used as the dependent variable, and the group
was included as the independent variable in the model. The statistical significance was
determined at an alpha level of .05 for all statistical tests. Nonsignificant results were not
dilaporkan.
Linear Correlation
To addressResearch Question 4, a linear correlation analysiswas conducted to investigate
the relationship between students' writing quality over six components, as noted earlier.
758 CHEN ET AL.

Analisis Regresi
To address Research Question 5, a forward linear regression analysis was conducted
to determine which writing components were significant predictors of student conceptual
understanding on achievement tests.
Effect Size
In this study, effect size was reported to recognize the magnitude of the treatment effect
on students' learning using Cohen's d , which is widely used in social science because it
enables us to measure the difference between the means relative to the variation within
the
groups (Hays, 1994, p. 411). The criteria for identifying the magnitude of an effect size is
as follows: (a) A trivial effect size is below 0.2 standard deviation units; (b) a small effect
size is between 0.2 and 0.5 standard deviation units; (c) a medium effect size is between 0.5
and 0.8 standard deviation units; and (d) a large effect size is 0.8 or more standard deviation
units (Sheskin, 2004).
Assumption Test
Prior to conducting statistical analysis, three general statistical assumptions were involved
in this study: normality, linearity, and homogeneity. A simple graphical method and
normal probability plots of model residuals along with the KolmogorovSmirnov test were
used to examine the normality assumption. Analyses showed that the normality assumption
was met for the test. Similarly, the linearity assumption was addressed by plotting
standardized
residual values against the predicted values. An examination of the normal Q Q plots
obtained through the SPSS Explore procedure showed that the patterns of lines resembled
the linearity of the test. Finally, the homogeneity assumption was examined using Levene's
test for equal variance. The result indicated that this study did not violate the homogeneity
assumption ( F (1, 836) = 0.346, p = .557).
HASIL
Research Question 1: The Impact of the Writing-to-Learn Activity
on Student Achievement Tests
The results showed that the effect of pretest total scores was statistically significant, F (1,
835) = 172.131, p < .001, partial 2 = .171, and the main effect of groups was statistically
significant, F (1, 835) = 13.70, p < .001, partial 2 = .016. That is, students in the
treatment
group outperformed students in the control group on multiple-choice questions, even though
students in the control group performed better on the pretest than those in the treatment
kelompok.
The mean scores and standard deviation for the control and treatment groups on the preand
posttest are shown in Table 4.
Research Question 2: Treatment Effect on Subgroups
We conducted further ANCOVAs to investigate which subgroup students benefit from the
writing-to-learn tasks, including classifications based on gender, lowSES, IEP students, and
gifted individualized education program (GIEP) students. Total scores on the posttest were
used as the dependent variable, the group (treatment or control) and subgroups (gender,
SES, IEP, or GIEP) as independent variables, and scores on the pretest as the covariate.

TABEL 4
Sample Sizes, Mean Scores, and Standard Deviation for Each Subgroup in
the Control Group and Treatment Group in Pretest and Posttest on MultipleChoice Questions
Pretest Posttest
Group NM SD n M SD
Total Control 377 7.98 2.87 377 10.79 3.11
Treatment 461 7.93 2.66 461 11.47 2.89
Gender: Female and male
Female Control 181 7.46 2.72 181 10.08 3.03
Treatment 233 7.61 2.54 233 11.30 2.87
Male Control 191 8.47 2.96 191 11.52 3.00
Treatment 225 8.20 2.75 225 11.64 2.91
Low socioeconomic status (SES): Free/reduced lunch
Control 48 7.15 3.13 48 9.75 3.49
Treatment 57 6.95 2.26 57 10.81 2.60
Individualized Education Program (IEP)
Control 74 7.01 2.82 74 9.20 3.44
Treatment 81 6.70 2.52 81 10.30 3.08
Gifted Individualized Education Program (GIEP)
Control 37 10.27 2.72 37 12.51 2.38
Treatment 45 9.73 2.45 45 13.62 2.18
Results showed that females in the treatment group performed better than females in
the control group, F (1, 411) = 18.415, partial 2 = .149, p < .001. The covariate pretest
score was statistically significant, F (1, 411) = 71.769, partial 2 = .043, p < .001. Akan
Tetapi,
there was no significant difference for male students in the treatment and control
kelompok.
Results showed that students with low SES in the treatment group performed better than
students with low SES in the control group, F (1, 102) = 4.371, partial 2 = .141, p = .039.
The covariate pretest score was statistically significant, F (1, 102) = 19.554, partial 2 =
.161, p < .001.

Results showed that IEP students in the treatment group performed better than IEP
students in the control group, F (1, 152) = 7.826, partial 2 = .05, p = .006. The covariate
pretest score was statistically significant, F (1, 152) = 61.871, partial 2 = .29, p < .001.
Results showed that GIEP students in the treatment group performed better than GIEP
students in the control group, F (1, 79) = 6.196, partial 2 = .073, p = .015. The covariate
pretest score was statistically significant, F (1, 79) = 5.317, partial 2 = .063, p = .024.
Sample sizes, mean scores, and standard errors for each subgroup in the control and
treatment groups are given in Table 4.
Research Question 3: Treatment Effect on Core Concepts
We further examined on which core concepts students in the treatment group performed
better by using ANCOVAs, with six subcore concept scores on the posttest as the dependent
variable, six subcore concept scores on the pretest as the covariate, and the groups as the
variabel independen.
760 CHEN ET AL.

The results showed that the effect of Core Concept A (force balance) on pretest scores
was statistically significant, F (1, 835) = 46.573, p < .001, partial 2 = .053, and the main
effect of the groups was marginally significant, F (1, 835) = 3.695, p = .05, partial 2 =
.004. The effect of Core Concept B (force and speed) on pretest scores was statistically
significant, F (1, 835) = 65.195, p < .001, partial 2 = .072, and the main effect of the
groups was statistically significant, F (1, 835) = 6.569, p = .011, partial 2 = .008. Itu
effect of Core Concept C (friction) on pretest scores was statistically significant, F (1, 835)
= 26.644, p < .001, partial 2 = .031, and the main effect of the groups was statistically
significant, F (1, 835) = 17.287, p = .02, partial 2 = .008. The effect of Core Concept D
(force and mass) on pretest scores was statistically significant, F (1, 835) = 14.239, p <
.001, partial 2 = .017, and the main effect of the groups was statistically significant, F (1,
835) = 9.42, p = .002, partial 2 = .002. The effect of Core Concept E (air resistance) on
pretest scores was statistically significant, F (1, 835) = 56.525, p < .001, partial 2 = .063,
and the main effect of the groups was statistically significant, F (1, 835) = 8.467, p = .004,
partial 2 = .01. The results did show that, except for Core Concept F (energy), students in
the treatment group performed better on Core Concepts A, B, C, D, and E than students in
kelompok kontrol.
Mean scores and standard deviation for the six core concepts are given in Table 5.
To understand why students performed better on Core Concepts A (force balance), B
(force and speed), C (friction), D (force and mass), and E (air resistance), but not on Core
Concept F (energy), a careful examination of the core concepts and of the frequency with
which each core concept was discussed in the writing-to-learn activity was conducted,
shown in Table 6. This analysis revealed that students focused more on discussing Core
TABEL 5
Mean Scores and Standard Errors for the Control Group and Treatment Group
in Pretest and Posttest on Multiple-Choice Questions (n = 377 for the Control
Group; n = 461 for the Treatment Group)
Pretest Posttest
Group M SD M SD
Core Concept A: Force balance (nine items)
Control 3.71 1.58 5.96 2.29
Treatment 3.70 1.62 6.24 2.01
Core Concept B: Force and speed (four items)
Control 1.96 0.86 2.25 0.78
Treatment 1.97 0.86 2.38 0.71
Core Concept C: Friction (two items)

Control 0.73 0.69 1.07 0.62
Treatment 0.68 0.65 1.24 0.64
Core Concept D: Force and mass (two items)
Control 0.60 0.70 0.91 0.77
Treatment 0.59 0.70 1.07 0.74
Core Concept E: Air resistance (two items)
Control 0.55 0.70 1.05 0.77
Treatment 0.53 0.69 1.19 0.79
Core Concept F: Energy (two items)
Control 0.44 0.60 1.32 0.65
Treatment 0.49 0.61 1.38 0.66

TABEL 6
The Frequency with Which Each Core Concept Was Discussed in the Three
Surat
Core First Second Third Total
Concept Letter Letter Letter Number Percentage
A: Force balance 29 22 14 65 6.9
B: Force and speed 17 16 29 62 6.6
C: Friction 65 78 88 231 24.7
D: Force and mass 46 37 40 123 13
E: Air resistance 20 21 28 69 7.4
F: Energy 1 12 10 23 2.5
Yang Lainnya
Inertia 53 39 27 119 12.7
Gravity 112 26 8 146 15.6
Centrifugal force, surface tension 25 50 23 98 10.5
Total 368 301 267 945
Note. Some letters consisted of discussions of more than one core concept.
Concept C (23.9%), Core Concept D (13%), and other related concepts (12.6% for inertia,
15.5% for gravity, 10.5% for centrifugal force and surface tension). However, only 2.8% of
the discussion during the writing-to-learn task was related to Core Concept F. This result,
to a certain degree, might explain why those fourth-grade students in the treatment groups
performed much better on Core Concepts C and D but showed no statistical significance
on Core Concept F.
Research Question 4: The Relationship Between the Quality of Writing
Tasks and Conceptual Understanding on Tests
Because students were collaboratively engaged in writing argumentative letters, the
relationship between the quality of writing tasks and conceptual understanding on tests
were analyzed based on groups. Table 7 presents the relationship between the average
group score across all three letters for six components and the average group gain score
on pre- and posttests. As shown in Table 7, there were statistically significant correlations
between the student group gain score and five components ofwriting quality,which included
the clarity of the claim, the relationship between question and claim, the sufficiency of
TABEL 7
Correlation Between the Quality of Writing for Six Components and the Average
of the Group Gain Score
Component Average of Group Gain Score
The clarity of the claim 0.409*
The relationship between question and claim 0.233*

The sufficiency of the evidence 0.269*
The relationship between claim and evidence 0.458*
The overall cohesiveness 0.537*
Text assessment 0.087
Note. *p < .001 (two tailed).
762 CHEN ET AL.

TABLE 8
Forward Regression Analysis with Average Group Gain Score as Dependent
Variabel
Independent Variable SE R 2 _ R 2 F
Model l
The overall cohesiveness 0.676 0.095 .289 50.70*
Model 2
The overall cohesiveness 0.515 0.116 .319 .03 29.01*
The relationship between claim and evidence 0.681 0.290
Note. *p < .001.
evidence, the relationship between claim and evidence, and the overall cohesiveness ( r =
.409, .233, .269, .458, and .537 for claim alignment, evidence sufficiency, evidence support,
and cohesiveness, respectively, p < .001). This result indicates that students' achievement
is
positively related to the quality of the five writing components. Stated differently, students
who scored higher on those five writing components were likely to score higher on the
posttest and vice versa.
Research Question 5: Potent Predictor(s) for Student Achievement
A forward linear regression analysis was conducted to determine which writing components
were the predictors for the students' gain score. A summary of the regression model is
presented in Table 8. The results showed that the overall cohesiveness and the relationship
between claims and evidence are the potent variables in predicting student performance
on tests, F (2, 184) = 29.01, p < .001, R 2 = .319. The overall cohesiveness is the first
significant predictor to be selected into the model, and the relationship between claims and
evidence is the second selected predictor. Therefore, the results indicate that helping
students
understand and improve these two writing components may enhance their conceptual
understanding of science. This model accounted for 31.9% of the variance interpretation.
Cohen d Effect Sizes
The Cohen d index was calculated as a meta-analysis (Hedge & Olkin, 1985) to illustrate
the magnitude of the effect produced by the treatment on total scores, each subgroup, and
the six core concepts. The effect size results of each subgroup are shown in Table 9; itu
effect size results of the total score and six core concepts are shown in Table 10.
TABLE 9
Cohen d Effect Size on Each Subgroup
Subgroup Pretest (I) Posttest (J) Effect Size Difference (I J) Scale
Female 0.06 0.41 0.35 Small
Male 0.09 0.04 0.13 Trivial
IEP 0.08 0.34 0.42 Small
Low SES 0.07 0.34 0.41 Small
GIEP 0.21 0.49 0.70 Medium
treatment group.

TABLE 10
Cohen d Effect Size on Total Scores and the Six Core Concepts
Effect Size
Concept Pretest (I ) Posttest (J ) Difference (I J) Scale
Total score 0.02 0.23 0.25 Small
Core Concept A: Force balance 0.01 0.13 0.14 Trivial
Core Concept B: Force and speed 0.01 0.19 0.18 Trivial
Core Concept C: Friction 0.07 0.27 0.34 Small
Core Concept D: Force and mass 0.01 0.21 0.22 Small
Core Concept E: Air resistance 0.03 0.18 0.21 Small
Core Concept F: Energy 0.08 0.09 0.01 Trivial
treatment group.
The effect size calculation for gender indicated that using letter-writing tasks resulted
in a small effect for females ( d = 0.35) and a trivial effect for males ( d = 0.13) when
compared to female and male students in the control group. The effect size calculation for
IEP students indicated that letter-writing tasks resulted in a small effect ( d = 0.42). Itu
effect size calculation for low SES students indicated that letter-writing tasks resulted in a
small effect ( d = 0.41). Finally, the effect size calculation for GIEP students indicated that
letter-writing tasks resulted in a medium

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The Effects of Writing-to-Learn

ABSTRACT: This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine

2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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The Structure of Argument

EFFECTS OF WRITING-TO-LEARN ACTIVITIES 753

explanations of the concepts they had learned at the beginning/during/completion of the

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useful to know for elementary students.

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To address Research Questions 13, a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was

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D: Force and mass 46 37 40 123 13

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posttest and vice versa.

EFFECTS OF WRITING-TO-LEARN ACTIVITIES 763

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arguments appears to be advantageous to overcoming these difficulties. As science

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To what degree do the results support the conclusion?

Science Education, Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 745771 (2013)

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Science Education, Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 745771 (2013)

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Science Education, Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 745771 (2013)

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beberapa peluang untuk mengintegrasikan pengetahuan mereka ke dalam sistem

PENGARUH MENULIS-TO-BELAJAR KEGIATAN 747

748 CHEN ET AL.

pasti yang komponen penulisan argumentatif penting dalam menentukan

PENGARUH MENULIS-TO-BELAJAR KEGIATAN 749

750 CHEN ET AL.

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didukung dari perspektif psikologi kognitif. Ainsworth (1999) menunjukkan bahwa

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EFFECTS OF WRITING-TO-LEARN ACTIVITIES 755

Second Eleventh grade:

756 CHEN ET AL.

change more than the speed of the heavier vehicle.

EFFECTS OF WRITING-TO-LEARN ACTIVITIES 757

is likely to be beneficial in promoting a better understanding of science concepts.

758 CHEN ET AL.