Evidence from the Literature for Writing as a Mode of Science Learning

Abstract

Most scholars cite the early work of Britton (Britton, 1970; Martin, 1992) and Emig (1977) as the beginning of the writing to learn paradigm. These researchers first posited that writing causes one to concretize knowledge into verbal symbols, and thus, new subject matter could actually he learned while writing. This idea became very popular in universities throughout the 1980s, resulting in a “writing across the curriculum” movement, where writing was incorporated into all types of subject matter courses. Concurrently, Britton’s notion of expressive or informal writing became popular for promoting writing for understanding in formats such as journals, mini-essays, questions, and freewrites (Martin, 1992). Eventually, the writing across the curriculum movement migrated down into some secondary and elementary school science classrooms (Rivard, 1994). Much of the early research on writing to learn took the form of action research by college professors, who did small scale quantitative and qualitative studies to determine if writing improved disciplinary learning. The results were often inconclusive due to small sample sizes and other technical problems with the studies. However, almost universally, student learners expressed that they had found value in writing to learn.