Abstract
Despite needing this critical skill for college and career readiness, American adolescents are struggling to develop effective writing. In today’s schools and workplaces, much of that writing uses digital tools. Integrating technology in secondary schools can help improve adolescent writing within initiatives focused on the pedagogy of writing. These initiatives would provide teachers with technical support so they may focus on instruction. Professional development would emphasize how to leverage digital tools to deliver evidence-based writing instruction. Students gain most when provided systematic, explicit instruction in scientifically based strategies for writing and the writing process, as well as how to make effective use of digital tools as part of the writing process.
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Technology in schools can improve adolescent writing when the focus is on the pedagogy of writing.
Key Points
Most U.S. adolescents are failing to develop the writing skills critical for college and career readiness.
Digital tools can play an important role in improving adolescents’ writing achievement when the focus of technology use is on writing instruction.
Providing easy-to-use technology and technical support to teachers facilitates their integrating digital tools to support curricular goals.
Professional development for teachers should focus on how to leverage digital tools to deliver evidence-based writing instruction.
Systematic and explicit instruction can help improve adolescent writing through scientifically based strategies for writing and the writing process, as well as how to make effective use of digital tools as part of the writing process.
Introduction
Writing plays a central role in students’ development of academic language, critical thinking, and reasoning in diverse content areas. Moreover, writing’s importance as a job requirement has been growing; labor increasingly involves transforming knowledge into a useable, shareable form (Bazerman et al., 2017; Lapp, Fisher, & Frey, 2014). Many American adults spend half or more of their workday writing digitally (Brandt, 2015). Thus, writing is identifiably one of the skills essential not only for college success (Applebee, 2011) but also employment and promotion (Lapp et al., 2014). Unfortunately, U.S. students are not strong writers, with only about one quarter showing solid academic performance in writing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012).
Today, nearly all serious writing in vocational, professional, and academic domains uses digital media (Brandt, 2015), and computers are becoming the main vehicle for student writing from approximately upper elementary grades on (Graham et al., 2016). Students need to be prepared for these evolving digital literacy practices, able to access what the digital medium offers, navigate its challenges, and take part in new writing contexts such as simultaneous collaborative writing by multiple authors on a single text (Graham et al., 2016; Warschauer, Zheng, Niiya, Cotten, & Farkas, 2014). Digital writing offers opportunities that differ from those of writing by hand, thus making it a distinct, albeit closely related, process. In many instances, however, students receive inadequate explicit instruction in digital writing (Applebee & Langer, 2011). Students need to learn how to use technology to enhance their own writing processes in ways that are effective for them in the contexts in which they are writing. They need to reflect on their practices to ensure that the modality chosen for each stage of writing helps, not hinders, quality writing (Van Ittersum, 2011).
Writing Skills
The development of effective writing skills is challenging because writing is a complex, multidimensional task. Writing recruits a range of cognitive capacities and linguistic processes, such as long-term and working memory, executive function, and semantic and syntactic knowledge (Hayes & Berninger, 2014). These processes come into play in each step of the writing process (Flower & Hayes, 1981), which involves planning, whereby writers generate and organize their ideas (De La Paz & Graham, 2002; McCutchen, 1996); drafting or translating ideas into paragraphs and sentences; revising, whereby writers evaluate their text and make changes to improve it; and editing, in which writers correct spelling, grammatical, and mechanical errors. Thus, learning to write effectively develops a specialized set of higher order linguistic and cognitive practices (Graham et al., 2016).
Teaching Writing
Digital Writing
The complexity of writing and learning to write is informed, in part, by the tools available to the author (Bazerman et al., 2017; Wertsch, 1991). Pencils and pens are fairly simple tools, with little background information needed to use them for composition. Digital technology is more complicated, requiring background knowledge on how to operate the technology for academic purposes and access the affordances of the tool. For example, greater experience in digital writing for school predicts students’ use of more effective keyboarding strategies (e.g., cutting and pasting and typing fluency), whereas personal, informal digital writing (such as texts or posts on social media) does not (Tate, Warschauer, & Kim, in press; Tate, Warschauer, & Abedi, 2016). The fact that the use of the tool itself requires cognitive resources means that fewer resources are available for content creation, translation, and the other processes of writing (Tate et al., in press).
Digital tools may impact adolescents’ writing development in a number of ways. Adolescents write longer and better quality compositions when they write digitally (Collins, Hwang, Zheng, & Warschauer, 2013; Graham & Perin, 2007). According to a meta-analysis of 26 studies, digital writing in schools entails more collaboration, more peer editing, and more revision, compared with writing with pen and paper (Goldberg, Russell, & Cook, 2003).
Digital technologies present specific cognitive challenges and opportunities that students must be able to negotiate. For example, students must recognize and learn to use the embedded mechanical supports in word processing software, such as how to cleanly cut and paste text from one paragraph to another, or understand the benefits and limits of using spellcheckers (Bazerman, 2011). Digital writing also enables students to create neat, legible, printed work that looks more professional (MacArthur, 1999). Our own observations of student writers suggest that computer use may entail less fatigue than handwriting for some students, easier movement of passages and editing, and the quick recording of thoughts before losing ephemeral ideas in transcription (Warschauer, 2006).
However, discussions of the effects of digital tools on the writing process have not been uniformly positive (MacArthur, 2006; Suhr, Hernandez, Grimes, & Warschauer, 2010). When computers and word processing first appeared in educational settings during the late 1970s, they were controversial (Pennington, 1993). Despite the early recognition that word processing potentially facilitates the writing process, critics suggested that students might prematurely publish their work and be preoccupied with the surface features of their composition (Pennington, 1993). Indeed, although spelling and grammar correction tools may encourage students to edit their writing, students may then neglect making meaning-based and structural changes, or revisions (Cochran-Smith, 1991; MacArthur, 2006). As another limitation, most computers display only one page, or part of a page, which may hamper revisions that involve rearranging or reordering text (Daiute, 1986). Despite these concerns, improving student outcomes depends on more than just providing students with digital devices, but also requires effective writing instruction (Jesson, McNaughton, Rosedale, Zhu, & Cockle, 2018; Zheng, Warschauer, Lin, & Chang, 2016).
What Is Effective Writing Instruction?
Given the complexity and multidimensional nature of writing, effective writing instruction is challenging. Scientific examination of instructional practices and careful study of exceptional literacy teachers increasingly identifies specific practices that promote adolescent writing (Graham, Gillespie, & McKeown, 2013; Graham & Harris, 2013; Graham & Perin, 2007). Recently, a practice guide for educators and a report for teacher educators synthesized this work to promote the use of evidence-based writing pedagogy in secondary schools (Graham et al., 2016; Troia, 2014). One practice with strong scientific evidence is the systematic and explicit instruction of specific writing strategies for different components of the writing process (i.e., planning, drafting, revising, and editing); this uses a Model–Practice–Reflect instructional cycle, whereby students observe the strategy in use, practice the strategy independently, and evaluate their writing and use of the strategy (Graham et al., 2016). Other evidence-based practices include increasing the overall volume of writing, while making assessment and timely feedback regular and integral parts of the writing curriculum (Graham et al., 2016; Graham et al., 2013) In addition, meta-analyses have found that integrating technology with writing instruction yields moderate gains in student writing achievement (Graham & Perin, 2007; Zheng et al., 2016).
Effective use of digital tools in writing instruction involves integrating evidence-based practices for writing instruction with best practices in using technology to support instruction (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Jesson et al., 2018). Technology use involves not only understanding the tools themselves, such as the hardware or software, but also the tools’ possibilities, both positive ways that the tools can support student writing and their potential constraints (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Jesson et al., 2018; MacArthur, 2009). By effectively leveraging these possibilities and constraining the negative ones, teachers can provide an authentic writing environment and increase students’ ability to navigate digital writing in college and career.
Digital tools may also help teachers provide more student-centered or personalized writing instruction that is accessible to all students by using universal design principles (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). For example, when students type so slowly that it impedes composition skills, teachers may provide basic keyboarding instruction to promote typing fluency, or allow students to use speech-to-text dictation tools (MacArthur, 2009). Similarly, teachers may provide explicit, hands-on instruction in substantive revising strategies using computers, so that students can learn how to take advantage of the editing capabilities of word processing software or Google Docs (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; MacArthur, 2009). Finally, teachers need to understand how to select software that would support specific learning goals (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). For example, cloud-based programs, such as Google Docs, are particularly powerful in promoting collaborative writing and peer feedback (Yim, Warschauer, & Zheng, 2016), whereas automated essay evaluation software, such as Revision Assistant or MY Access!, provide students with the frequent, prompt, and detailed individualized feedback critical for writing development (Grimes & Warschauer, 2010; Wilson, Olinghouse, McCoach, Santangelo, & Andrada, 2016).
How Is Writing Currently Taught?
Secondary school writing instruction differs across the writing tasks, the evidence-based pedagogical practices, and the preparation of language arts, social science, and science middle-to-high-school teachers (Graham, Capizzi, Harris, Hebert, & Morphy, 2014; Griffith & Duffett, 2018; Kiuhara, Graham, & Hawken, 2009). Unfortunately, secondary school teachers show limited or infrequent use of evidence-based practices in teaching writing (Graham et al., 2014; Kiuhara et al., 2009). Although students are writing more across the curriculum than in the past 30 years, most of their writing assignments are short, involve little analysis and interpretation, and are dominated by worksheets, fill-in-the-blank tasks, summaries, and formulaic essays (Applebee & Langer, 2011; Griffith & Duffett, 2018; Kiuhara et al., 2009). Furthermore, instructional time devoted to writing primarily takes place in English language arts classes (Graham et al., 2014; Kiuhara et al., 2009); language arts teachers are more likely to assign writing prompts that tap students’ prior knowledge and creativity rather than those that require evidence from text-based sources (Griffith & Duffett, 2018). Unfortunately, this does not prepare them for the type of writing done in other disciplines, which requires critical thinking and marshaling evidence to support ideas. But teachers in other content areas are rarely teaching discipline-specific writing. This may be a result of limited teacher preparation, as the majority of high school and middle school teachers indicated that they received minimal-to-no preparation to teach writing during college, and almost half continued to report the same low level of preparation following college (Graham et al., 2014; Kiuhara et al., 2009).
Use of technology in instruction
Although most secondary school teachers report that digital tools facilitate writing instruction and effective technology use is an important professional competency (Purcell, Buchanan, & Friedrich, 2013; U.S. Department of Education, 2010), overall, digital tools are infrequently used to support writing instruction (Gillespie, Graham, Kiuhara, & Hebert, 2014). In fact, most secondary teachers reported they require students to do some writing by hand, which they believed would encourage students to engage in active thinking and synthesis, as well as minimizing the creep of informal language in academic writing assignments (Purcell et al., 2013). When teachers do incorporate technology in their instruction, they often do not make effective use of the tools’ potential (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012; Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer, & O’Connor, 2003). Rather than addressing higher order thinking skills, the majority of teachers use technology to support lower order skills, such as drill-and-practice activities or word processing (Maddux & Johnson, 2006; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012). The reluctance to fully integrate technology in their instruction and exploit the opportunities provided by digital tools to enhance student writing development may stem from a variety of reasons: limits in access, knowledge, professional preparation, as well as their beliefs and expectations about how digital tools can support or impede student learning (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Kormos, 2018).
Professional development
Despite recognizing that appropriate use of digital tools can benefit their students (U.S. Department of Education, 2010), teachers report they lack sufficient professional development to do so effectively (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). Although their professional training robustly contributes to their subsequent attitudes and use of technology in their classrooms (Chen, 2010), teacher education programs too often fail to prepare teachers to use technology in student-centered ways to promote higher order thinking skills (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012). Instead, teacher education programs tend to encapsulate technology experiences in a single, isolated course at the beginning of the program—rather than woven through the entire curriculum in authentic, pedagogically supportive ways (which would also model future practice by the teacher candidates in their own classrooms). Consequently, preservice teachers encounter instructional technology before they have the pedagogical knowledge or classroom-based experience to understand how to create student-centered lesson plans that integrate technology (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012). Furthermore, these courses tend to focus on technical skills, such as fundamental computer operation or communication with students and families (Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012; Sandholtz & Reilly, 2004). Thus, teacher education programs tend to focus on technology knowledge (understanding how to operate the hardware and software, such as a particular word processing program). Better training would rather emphasize how to use technology to support instruction. This would include technological content knowledge, or understanding which specific software or hardware may best suit writing (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). Teachers may use technological content knowledge to inform which of two word processing options to adopt, enabling them to weigh the pros and cons of traditional software, such as Word, or cloud-based programs, such as Goggle docs. Teacher education programs should also promote technological pedagogical knowledge, so that teachers may better understand the potentials of the technology and how best to leverage them to support writing instruction (e.g., how to use a cloud-based word processing program for collaborative writing; Koehler & Mishra, 2009). However, technology knowledge tends to remain the focus of in-service professional development programs for practicing teachers (Sandholtz & Reilly, 2004). Thus, the professional development provided to teachers tends to focus on how to use technology, rather than how to leverage digital tools to deliver student-centered writing instruction.
Instructional access and the digital divide in schools
The term digital divide, used by the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) under the Clinton administration, referred to the gap between those who do and do not have access to computers and the Internet (Warschauer, 2003). The term has evolved to cover the broader context of the technology’s effective use, including skills, knowledge, and social support (Tate & Warschauer, 2017). That is, what is most important about digital technology and information is no longer simple access to a device or the Internet, but rather people’s ability to use them to engage in meaningful social and educational practices (Warschauer, 2003).
The National Education Plan states that “a digital use divide continues to exist between learners who are using technology in active, creative ways to support their learning and those who predominantly use technology for passive content consumption” (U.S. Department of Education, 2016, p. 5). Factors such as student income and race correlated strongly with the type of use students make of computers in schools (Warschauer, 2007). Generally, students who are African American, Hispanic, or low income are more likely to use computers for drill and practice, compared with White and higher income students who are more likely to use them for authentic and enrichment activities (Cotten, Davison, Shank, & Ward, 2014). These different usage patterns may have important implications for students’ writing achievement; for example, prior use of technology for academic writing significantly affects writing achievement scores (Tate et al., 2016). Indeed, school-related digital writing had a greater impact on the students’ achievement on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) assessment than did personal, casual computer use (Tate et al., 2016). Thus, increasing access to technology is not sufficient to improve student learning (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2015). Rather, the tools must be integrated in a way that supports and extends the writing instruction meaningfully (Warschauer, 2011).
Technology to support timely feedback
Technology may be particularly well suited to support secondary teachers’ writing instruction by facilitating more frequent opportunities for students to write and receive timely feedback. Despite the empirical grounding of this instructional recommendation, process writing coupled with individualized feedback is an infrequent experience for secondary school students in the United States (Applebee & Langer, 2011), in part due to the reality that a single teacher typically has 100 to 150 students (Lawrence, Galloway, Yim, & Lin, 2013). A key barrier to assigning more frequent writing in the classroom is the amount of time that teachers would need to review, edit, and comment on student writing. Typically, a teacher can only review essays after a class period and even then, students may not receive the feedback on their writing that day or even a week later (Foltz, Hidalgo, & Van Moere, 2014). This limits learning, as students learn best when receiving timely feedback (e.g., Graham & Perin, 2007). Technological innovations, when used effectively, can help mitigate this challenge and increase timely student feedback.
The first approach is Automated Writing Evaluation, which involves computer-generated scoring and feedback for writing. Automated Writing Evaluation systems use scoring engines based on artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and latent semantic analysis; they produce scores highly correlated with human scoring (Shermis & Burstein, 2013; Stevenson, 2016). The systems designed for classroom use provide detailed written feedback, so students may have multiple opportunities to draft and revise their work. This makes frequent extended writing assignments feasible. Indeed, automated writing evaluation positively affects the quality of text students produce, as well as supporting the writing process and enhancing their motivation and autonomy in writing (Roscoe, Wilson, Johnson, & Mayra, 2017; Stevenson, 2016; Stevenson & Phakiti, 2014).
However, these effects tend to be modest (Stevenson & Phakiti, 2014), and the value of automated writing evaluation depends on its integration into writing instruction. Without instructional support, students rarely use the feedback from automated writing evaluation to make revisions, either because they have not read the feedback or because they have not understood how to act on it (Grimes & Warschauer, 2010; Stevenson, 2016). When students do make revisions, these tend to focus on fixed writing patterns (Stevenson, 2016). Students’ need for greater support in how to use feedback highlights the importance of teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge, particularly in how to integrate automated writing evaluation systems in their classrooms. For example, teachers may increase students’ use of feedback in revising their work by using automated writing systems to augment human feedback rather than replace it (Stevenson, 2016).
Human feedback may come from both teachers and peers. Cloud-based writing platforms, such as Google Docs, allow multiple users to share, edit, and comment on documents from different computers both synchronously and asynchronously (Yim et al., 2016). In general, both teachers and students have found that writing is a more collaborative and social process when using Google Docs, compared with writing with word processors or on paper (Purcell et al., 2013; Zheng, Lawrence, Warschauer, & Lin, 2015). However, the quality of peer feedback may vary, depending on the instructional support they have received. Without instructional support, peer feedback tends to focus on the language level (e.g., mechanical errors and grammar) rather than at the content level, even when teachers have told students to review the content (Zheng et al., 2015). When teachers provide explicit instruction on revision strategies, students engage in peer discussion about higher level concepts, such as awareness of audience, argumentation, and structure (Yim et al., 2016). This highlights that simply providing students with technology and directing students to use it to accomplish meaning-oriented goals is not enough to foster substantive learning. Rather, teachers must provide explicit instruction to students in how to use these tools to accomplish their goals.
Policy Implications
Overall, digital technology can improve adolescent writing, but the simple presence of digital technology in the classroom is not sufficient to achieve these gains. Instead, policy should maximize the effective integration of technology in writing instruction at the secondary level.
Improving Easy Access
A critical first step in closing the digital divide is recognizing that improving access to digital technology and information involves far more than simply providing more equipment. Instead, improving meaningful access to technology use should address its workability, or the everyday logistical challenges (e.g., keeping devices running, scheduling shared use, and updating software and applications; Tate & Warschauer, 2017). Thus, successful integration of technology in writing instruction should provide sufficient technical support for teachers so that they may focus on pedagogy rather than workability. For example, low-cost netbooks using cloud-based writing platforms like Google Docs have simple interfaces and are easy to use; these can support meaningful technology integration in writing instruction, while enabling teachers and students to focus more on core curricular issues in writing instruction, rather than on complex IT implementation (Yim et al., 2016).
Professional Development in Using Technology to Support Instructional Goals
Districts are less successful in adopting educational technology when they emphasize shallow technological integration, or how teachers may use technology in general, rather than curricular integration, which focuses on how specific digital tools may help accomplish curricular goals (Sandholtz & Reilly, 2004; Yim et al., 2016). Districts have been successful in integrating technology when they have engaged in lengthy, serious efforts to improve curriculum, pedagogy, and instruction, based on collaboration among district leaders and teachers (Sandholtz & Reilly, 2004; Yim et al., 2016). Thus, professional development should move away from a narrow focus on introducing digital tools. Instead, it should support preservice and in-service teachers in attaining their instructional goals by building technological content knowledge (e.g., knowing how to use software, such as Visme, snappa, or Piktochart, as a tool to help students plan their essays; Koehler & Mishra, 2009).
Teachers Providing Explicit Instruction in Use of Digital Tools for Learning Goals
Considering adolescents as digital natives, many assume that they do not need explicit instruction in how to use digital technology to support learning goals (Martin & Lambert, 2015). However, despite the tremendous variation among adolescents’ prior experiences and exposure to digital writing recreationally, classroom-based writing experience is a more robust predictor of writing achievement than personal use (Tate et al., 2016). Furthermore, the systematic and explicit instruction in all stages of the writing process is one of the strongest evidence-based practices. To best leverage technology’s potential, students need explicit and systematic instruction in using digital tools to meet their writing goals.
Conclusion
Kranzberg’s (1986) first law, “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral (p. 545),” is as relevant today as when it was first proposed. Districts have had a mixed history of successes and failures in their attempts to integrate technology in the classroom (Grimes & Warschauer, 2010; Zheng, Arada, Niiya, & Warschauer, 2014). Endeavors that focus only on access, such as introducing one-to-one computing programs, tend to be less successful. Instead, our review has highlighted several conditions under which the introduction of technology can benefit writing instruction and achievement for secondary students. Although not exhaustive, our review identifies improving access to workable technology in classrooms, teacher professional development in how to incorporate technology as a means of furthering curricular goals, as well as the provision of explicit instruction in writing both by hand and digitally. Together, continued policy and research will likely help adolescents gain the writing skills needed for career and college success.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
