Abstracts - Earli

F 1829 August 2007 17:00 - 18:20Room: 1.71 PóczaPaper SessionWritingChair:David Galbraith, Staffordshire University, United KingdomThe effect of quality of implementation of science inquiry approaches in elementary classroom -year 2 of a three-year studyBrian Hand, University of Iowa, USALori Norton-Meier, Iowa State University, USARecai Akkus, Iowa State University, USAMurat Gunel, Ataturk University, TurkeyLarry D. Yore, University of Victoria, CanadaThis project is reporting on the first 2 years of a three-year study of encouraging teachers to usethe Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach to teaching science inquiry within elementaryclassrooms. The SWH approach is based on providing a scaffold for students that helps them buildscientific arguments as a critical component of inquiry. The study focuses on following 32teachers for three years as they are involved in regular professional development activities andimplement the SWH strategies within their classrooms. The research design involves gatheringdata on the quality of implementation, collecting student data involving work on science units andexamining student data on standardized test scores. The results show that the level ofimplementation does have an impact on student performance on standardized test scores. The gapin student scores between low and high implementation of the SWH approach grew in year 2, withparticular impact occurring with socio-economic status students.An investigation of the relationship between writing processes and text quality in L1 writingDaphne van Weijen, Utrecht University, NetherlandsHuub van den Bergh, Utrecht University, NetherlandsGert Rijlaarsdam, University of Amsterdam, NetherlandsTed Sanders, Utrecht University, NetherlandsThis project focuses on the relationship between the writing process and text quality. A writercarries out several different cognitive activities during the writing process, such as reading theassignment, planning, formulating and revising. Research has shown that each of these activitieshas a different relationship with text quality and that none of these relationships are stable duringthe writing process. However most studies to date consisted of one writing task per subject. So it isassumed that the relationship between writing processes and text quality does not change overwriting assignments. That is strange, because research has shown that there can be largedifferences in text quality between texts written by the same writer. In order to determine awriter’s writing skill, we need to examine several texts he has written and these texts must bejudged by several judges. Therefore in this study 20 subjects wrote 4 texts each in their L1 (Dutch)under think-aloud conditions. This enabled us to examine the extent to which variations in textquality within writers can be explained by variations in the way they execute the writing process.Preliminary results indicate that process characteristics vary greatly between tasks. For example, awriter who generates a lot for one task does not necessarily do so for another. This holds for most– 353 –