Abstracts - Earli

Towards Self-regulated Academic Writing: an exploratory study with graduate students in asituated learning environment.Montserrat Castello, LLull University, SpainCarles Monereo, Autonomous University of Barcelona, SpainAnna Inesta, LLull University, SpainAs a situated process, self-regulation in writing depends on the interaction between therepresentation of the communicative situation, the writer’s knowledge, goals and emotions and thealready written and read texts (Bathkin, 1986; Ivanic, 1998; Hyland, 2000; Castellô & Monereo,2005). With this in mind, an exploratory study was designed with graduate students to explorehow emotional, social and cognitive factors interact during the process of writing an academicresearch text. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected regarding the participants’representation of the communicative situation, their goals and expectations, the characteristics oftheir composition process, and the cognitive and emotional problems perceived during thecomposition process. Finally, we considered the overall quality of the written texts. Statisticalanalyses were made to determine the weight of the different variables in the process and discourseanalysis allowed us to analyze the quality of peer interactions. Preliminary results show thatprocess regulation and final text quality depend on the participants’ ability to manage affectivevariables, especially anxiety.What role do epistemic beliefs play in self-regulated writing?Jeroen Rozendaal, Leiden University, NetherlandsCornelis de Brabander, Leiden University, NetherlandsMonique Boekaerts, Leiden University, NetherlandsIn this study, we investigate the epistemic beliefs of students in secondary vocational education(SVE) and the relation of these beliefs with various determinants of self-regulated (SR) writing.Epistemic beliefs refer to personal ideas about the validity of knowledge and the process by whichopinions are validated as knowledge (Rozendaal, de Brabander, Minnaert, & Bouwman,submitted). We operationalized Boekaerts’ (1997) six component model of SR-learning for thewriting domain. This resulted in an assessment instrument (DISI) that includes generic and processmeasures of content knowledge, cognitive strategy use, cognitive self-regulation, meta-cognitiveknowledge and beliefs (including epistemic beliefs), motivational strategy use, and motivationalself-regulation in the writing domain. These concepts are assessed in 1500 first year SVE students.The results will indicate whether (subgroups of) first year SVE students are able to give arelatively coherent characterization of knowledge. This is measured by the CAEB-instrument(Connotative Aspects of Epistemic Beliefs; Kienhues, Stahl, & Bromme, 2005), which containsbipolar contrasts, like "simple vs. complex", "stable vs. unstable", "certain vs. uncertain". Therespondent is required to connect these explicit labels to his concept of "knowledge". Thisinstrument appeared adequate to measure epistemic beliefs in former studies. Furthermore, thisstudy will explore relations of epistemic beliefs with a wide array of cognitive and motivationaldeterminants of SR-writing. Research into epistemic beliefs is largely absent in the context of SVEand relations between epistemic beliefs and determinants of SR-writing, apart from studies onargumentation skills (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997), are scarce (see Comerford, 1999; Lee, 1995; Miller,2003). However, with Ruth (1988) we expect epistemic beliefs to (1) play an important role indetermining the differences in writing ability between students, (2) form a way to trace abstractthinking that fosters writing ability and (3) influence the quality of argumentation.– 619 –