Abstracts - Earli

evealed different writing profiles which could be explored in relation to the age, gender andability of the children involved. Writing profiles have principally been associated with research inthe cognitive psychological tradition (Hayes and Flowers 1980, Van Waes and Schellens 2003)from this perspective the profiles have been used to illuminate process, researchers have notconcerned themselves with who might exhibit such profiles, able or weak writers, novelists,journalists or scientists, boys or girls. The context of this study allowed for a tentative enquiry intowho exhibits a given profile, in what context and to what end. This paper uses the vehicle ofclosely drawn case studies to compare children with different writing profiles. The case studieswill employ the linguistic analysis of what children wrote while being observed, a presentation ofthe profile that was revealed through observation, and the child’s voice commenting critically ontheir own texts and reflecting on their own decision making processes. Taken together this datawill attempt to draw on three different traditions within writing research: the cognitive, thelinguistic and the socio-cultural.– 769 –