Sustaining written expression quality through leveled procedural facilitators in secondary students with and without learning disabilities

Sara M Flanagan, Purdue University

Abstract

Students with and without learning disabilities (LD) struggle with the written expression process, from planning and organization (e.g., prewriting) to actually writing an essay. For students with LD, challenges in written expression are more intensive than their typical peers. Without effective written expression supports and instruction, such as procedural facilitators, students with and without LD may be negatively impacted across academic areas and postschool outcomes. While research exists on procedural facilitators, little addresses how to sustain written expression gains after supports have been removed. Using a quasi-experimental design, secondary students with (n = 8) and without (n = 66) LD in written expression used a series of three procedural facilitators – from the most (i.e., prompts for the planning and organization process) to mid-way (i.e., brainstorming and topic sentence prompts) to the least support (i.e., brainstorming prompts). To begin this study, students completed a written expression pretest. Next, for each level of procedural facilitator, from the most to the least support, students wrote an essay with each. Last, students completed two posttests without the use of procedural facilitators two weeks and then four weeks later. All written expression prompts were for expository, five-paragraph essays, and preselected between the researchers and the teachers. Gains in written expression were analyzed with repeated measures, within factors ANOVAs with post-hoc analysis using students' essays scores, derived from a rubric. Post-hoc analyses (i.e., Bonferroni) were used to understand if significant differences in written expression occurred between each level of graphic organizer. Results suggested that all students experienced significant gains in written expression when using the procedural facilitators. As the amount of support provided by the procedural facilitators was reduced, students continued to maintain their quality of written expression.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Bouck, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Special education|Secondary education

Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server
.

Share

COinS