Change Over Time in Children's Co-Constructed Writing

The development of expertise in writing is a complex but important achievement for young children as they become literate. Writing is a critical component of literacy development, yet there are few accounts of change over time in early writing development that attend to both changes in writing behaviors, the complexity of written messages, and the context in which these changes occur. This is important as describing change over time permits identification of when development accelerates or goes awry.;The purpose of this study was to describe change over time in the complexity of the written messages produced and observed writing behaviors of twenty-four children in a co-constructed setting. Mixed methods were used, with a microgenetic design for the analysis of written messages, to describe the path, rate, variability, breadth, and potential sources of change in what children produced, used, and did as they wrote with a teacher over the course of an early literacy intervention, Reading Recovery. To capture change, the reliability and validity of the Early Writing Observational Rubric, designed to capture change in the complexity of written messages and self-regulation of writing behaviors, was also established. Different profiles of progress were identified to explicate the different paths of progress taken by the participants in this study. Comprehensive descriptions of change over time in the complexity of the written messages produced and the observed writing behaviors of five children that characterized different profiles of progress were presented.;Results demonstrated that the nature of change was idiosyncratic and proceeded in a series of progressions and regressions. Self-regulation of certain writing behaviors (legibility, spacing, and editing) were important. Many children characterized an asynchronous profile of progress in that their written messages did not change in complexity but they became more independent in the writing of these messages. Accurate writing of simple messages, however, limited opportunities for problem-solving. In many cases, teachers often assumed the role of editor and limited children's opportunities to monitor the accurate production of their written messages. An implication of the findings from this study is that the assessment of product alone is not satisfactory as self-regulation of writing behaviors is not necessarily reflecting in the complexity of written messages. This study provides a methodology that can be used to provide accounts of the different dimensions of change in both the complexity of written products and the observed writing behaviors of children in a co-constructed context. The Early Writing Observation Rubric, a rubric with established reliability and validity, has utility for both the assessment and instruction of writing.