Supporting teachers to develop interventions on argumentative writing strategies

Abstract

In this roundtable we propose the following issue: what is necessary to help to develop teacher-implemented interventions to improve primary and secondary students’ writing strategies. Nowadays, there is abundant evidence on the elements that make writing interventions effective (e.g. Koster, Tribushinina, De Jong & Van den Bergh, 2015) as well as specific proposals on the design principles that can be used to develop them (Rijlaarsdam, Janssen, Rietdijk and Van Weijen, 2017). The interventions that help to generate this knowledge, as highlighted by Finlayson & McCrudden (2020), are usually researcher-implemented and focused on understanding precisely which elements make them effective to improve student performance. Without denying the relevance of this knowledge, we also need to know better how writing instruction can be effectively translated into a classroom context by school teachers. There are indeed fewer studies in which the intervention is teacher-implemented and the focus is on understanding how to help teachers that may struggle to develop those evidence-based interventions. In this roundtable we will explore which elements of the teacher training and support can be most helpful to teachers. Thus, the organizers, belonging to two research teams from the Netherlands and Spain, will begin by briefly presenting the design of two studies. In both of them attention is paid on helping secondary school teachers to include instruction on argumentative writing in their subjects. Afterwards, most of the time will be dedicated to analyzing which are the greatest obstacles and best aids so that teachers would be willing and capable to continue the instruction in their daily practice.