The Relationship Between Teacher Efficacy, Writing Apprehension, and Writing to Learn Using Structural Equation Modeling

Abstract

• Background: In the United States, students continue to struggle in the core content areas of language arts, social studies, math, and science. To improve student content learning, writing to learn (WTL) across the content emerged as a potential mechanism. However, few studies examine the extent to which secondary content teachers are ready and willing to implement WTL to improve student learning in those content areas. This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine how much teaching efficacy, writing apprehension, years teaching, grade level, and content area contribute to teachers’ efficacy of using WTL and their perception of the relevance of WTL to their content areas.