Self-Regulated Strategy Development in the Classroom: Part of a Balanced Approach to Writing Instruction for Students with Disabilities.

Writing is a highly complex process; the writer not only must negotiate the rules and mechanics of writing, but also must maintain a focus on important aspects of writing such as organization, form and features, purposes and goals, audience needs and perspectives, and evaluation of the communication between author and reader (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1982; Scheid, 1991). In addition, writing requires extensive self-regulation and attention control (Graham & Harris, 1994, 1996, 2000). For skilled writers, writing is a flexible, goal-directed activity that is scaffolded by a rich knowledge of cognitive processes and strategies for planning, text production, and revision. Skilled writers engage in purposeful and active self-direction of these processes and strategies (Harris, Schmidt, & Graham, 1998). In fact, monitoring and directing one's own composing processes are crucial to the development of writing ability (Flower & Hayes, 1980). Leaming to write is difficult and demanding. National and state writing assessments indicate that we are not yet highly effective at developing this critical competency among our students, as the majority of children in American schools demonstrates significant difficulties with narrative, expository, and persuasive writing (Applebee, Langer, Mullis, Latham, & Gentile, 1994; Applebee, Langer, Jenkins, Mullis, & Foertsch, 1990). In addition, children in our schools frequently demonstrate a deteriorating attitude toward writing, even though most children begin school with a positive attitude toward composing (Applebee, Langer, & Mullis, 1986). Scardamalia and Bereiter ( 1986) have identified five areas of writing competence that are particularly difficult for the general school population: (a) generating content, (b) creating an organized structure for compositions, (c) formulating goals and higher level plans, (d) quickly and efficiently executing the mechanical aspects of writing, and (e) revising text and reformulating goals. Researchers have found that students with learning disabilities (LD) or other special needs frequently have greater difficulty with writing than their normally achieving peers (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001; Harris & Graham, 1992, 1999). Generally, students with learning problems produce writing that is less polished, expansive, coherent, and effective than students without learning disabilities (for greater details on the research base, see Graham & Harris, 2002). Research indicates that students with learning disabilities lack critical knowledge of the writing process; have difficulty generating ideas and selecting topics;