Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

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Contemporary Educational Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cedpsych

Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy

Development: Effects on the writing performance
of eighth grade Portuguese students q
Isabel Festas a,, Albertina L. Oliveira a, Jos A. Rebelo a, Maria H. Damio a, Karen Harris b, Steve Graham b
a
b

Faculty of Psychology and of Sciences of Education, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
SRSD
Writing
Professional development
Self-Regulated Strategy Development
Instruction

a b s t r a c t
We examined the effects of the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) for opinion essay writing
among 380 eighth grade students in six urban middle schools in a major city in Portugal. Fourteen teachers in six urban middle schools in Portugal participated in the present study; 7 of these teachers participated in practice-based professional development (PBPD) in SRSD before implementation, and follow-up
support once instruction began. Schools were matched in pairs based on SES and teacher characteristics;
a member of each pair was randomly assigned to either: (a) teacher led SRSD instruction for opinion
essay writing; or (b) teacher implementation of the schools existing curriculum and language program
prescriptions for opinion writing. Students in the experimental schools were taught strategies for planning and composing opinion essays once a week in 45 min sessions, over a three-month period. Multilevel modeling for repeated measures indicated SRSD instructed students made statistically greater
gains in composition elements than the comparison students immediately after instruction and two
months later. Teachers implemented SRSD with delity and teachers and students rated the intervention
favorably. This study provides initial evidence for replication of the effects of PBPD and SRSD outside of
the United States. Limitations, lessons learned, and directions for future research are discussed.
2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Writing is an important skill that cuts across the school curriculum and is useful for a variety of functions in daily life. Although
writing is important and challenging to learn, in Portugal as in the
United States (e.g., Gilbert & Graham, 2010; Harris, Graham,
Brindle, & Sandmel, 2009), its teaching has been neglected. In Portugal, recent reform of the language arts curriculum resulted in
new guidelines and standards for language arts instruction
(Ministrio da Educao e Cincia/Ministry of Education and
Science, 2009, 2012). These guidelines recognize the importance
of writing, including it as a priority area of instruction. They
require not only the development of writing skills related to
q
This research was supported by European FEDER funding through COMPETE:
(Operational Program for Competitiveness Factors) FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER022660 and by national funding through FCT (Fundao para a Cincia e
Tecnologia/Science and Technology Foundation) under the project PTDC/CPE-CED/
102010/2008.
Corresponding author. Address: Faculty of Psychology and of Sciences of
Education, Rua do Colgio Novo, Apartado 6153, 3001-802 Coimbra, Portugal. Fax:
+351 239 851465.
E-mail address: ifestas@fpce.uc.pt (I. Festas).

grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and sentence

construction, but also development of writing processes related
to the organization of the text, including planning and revision.
Writing across multiple genres (e.g., narrative, expository, informative, opinion essay, argumentative) is also emphasized. The
Standards for Elementary and Middle Grade Levels (2012), for
instance, require the instruction on specic attributes for different
genre texts, (e.g., premise, reasons, elaborations, and conclusion for
opinion essay). These Standards also require development of high
quality writing products and the evaluation of writing, but neither
specic instructional approaches nor time dedicated to writing
instruction are prescribed by the Portuguese curriculum. Teachers
are free to choose the teaching methods they use in their
classrooms.
Although the importance of writing has been recognized in the
Portuguese curriculum, teachers have not been trained to teach
writing strategies (Almeida, 2012; Almeida & Simo, 2007) and
students have difculty planning and revising their writing. As in
the United States, (National Center of Educational Statistics,
2012), national data in Portugal indicates Portuguese students
experience severe problems mastering writing (Gabinete de
Informao e Avaliao do Sistema Educativo/Ofce of

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004
0361-476X/ 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004

I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

Information and of Evaluation of Educational System, 2005; Report

of Gabinete de Avaliao Educacional/Ofce of Educational
Evaluation 2011, 2012). Difculties with writing persist at least
until university level, as research indicates many Portuguese university students do not plan their writing (Carvalho & Pimenta,
2005) and revise only supercial text features such as spelling
and punctuation (Festas, Damio, & Martins, 2010).
Thus, improving writing abilities and developing effective
instructional procedures to help overcome problems with learning
to write are national priorities in Portugal. The use of evidencebased practices in schools is critical to achieving this goal (Cook,
Smith, & Tankersley, 2012). Supported by rigorous studies and
research, evidence-based practices are a useful means for improving teaching and their application has been recommended by government policies in many countries (Cook et al., 2012). This is also
the case in Portugal, where evidence-based practices are emphasized in the standards-based reform movement and recommended
by current government policy (Ministrio da Educao e Cincia/
Ministry of Education and Science, 2012).
In the writing domain, one of the most effective evidence based
methods for writing instruction is Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) (Baker, Chard, Ketterlin-Geller, Apichatabutra, &
Doabler, 2009; Graham & Perin, 2007; Institute of Education
Sciences, 2012; National Center on Intensive Intervention, 2013).
SRSD is appropriate to the needs of Portuguese pupils and the
demands of the current Portuguese language arts curriculum and
Standards. In fact, as we address next, SRSD includes the teaching
of writing processes and self-regulation strategies, features which
have been neglected in Portuguese schools and that are essential
components of procient writing.
1.1. Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD)
Developed by Karen Harris and pioneered by Harris and Graham more than 30 years ago (Harris, 1982; Harris & Graham,
1992, 1996; Harris, Graham, Mason, & Friedlander, 2008), SRSD is
an approach that combines the teaching of writing processes
(including planning, drafting, composing, revising and evaluating);
instruction in writing strategies; and development of self-regulation strategies, including goal-setting, self-assessment (self-monitoring
and
self-recording),
self-instruction,
and
selfreinforcement. At the same time, SRSD helps students develop
the knowledge and skills needed to use these strategies and purposively develops self-efcacy for writing, attributions to strategy
knowledge and effort, and motivation for writing (Harris et al.,
2009). SRSD is a complex, multicomponent intervention based on
integrating multiple theories and lines of research which have
been detailed elsewhere (Harris & Graham, 2009; Harris et al.,
2009). Of particular importance to the present study, research indicates this approach is effective when teaching typically developing
writers in a wide range of grade levels, from elementary to high
school (Graham, Harris, & McKeown, 2013).
SRSD promotes writing development through the explicit, situated, scaffolded instruction of genre-based and general writing
strategies and self-regulation strategies. Specic writing strategies
for multiple genres, such as story, personal narrative, expository,
opinion, and persuasive essays have been developed (Harris
et al., 2008). Such strategies for writing and self-regulation are
developed in six recursive, interactive, individualized instructional
stages with gradual release of responsibility for writing to students: (1) develop and activate background knowledge; (2) discuss
and describe the strategies to be learned; (3) model the strategies;
(4) memorize the strategies; (5) support the strategies; and (6)
independent performance (Harris et al., 2008). Instruction proceeds based on students progress; students are given the time
they need to make these strategies their own. Procedures for

maintaining what has been learned and determining how to use

this knowledge across writing tasks are integrated throughout
the stages of instruction.
SRSD has proven to be a powerful instructional approach. Its
application and effectiveness have been investigated in over 100
studies (Graham et al., 2013), and a number of meta-analyses have
examined its impact on students writing. Some of these metaanalyses focused on strategy instruction in writing in general,
including SRSD studies as part of the analysis (Graham, 2006b;
Graham & Harris, 2003), whereas other reviews were broader in
scope and examined a broader range of writing treatments, including strategy instruction and SRSD (Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, &
Harris, 2012; Graham & Perin, 2007; Rogers & Graham, 2008).
These meta-analyses included studies conducted with students
with learning disabilities as well as with poor, average or good
writers in both special and regular school settings (Graham,
2006b; Graham & Harris, 2003; Rogers & Graham, 2008) or only
students from regular school classrooms (Graham et al., 2012;
Graham & Perin, 2007). Some of these reviews focused just on
the elementary-levels (Graham et al., 2012), others on elementary
and middle school pupils (Graham & Harris, 2003) and still others
on pupils from elementary to 12th grade (Graham, 2006b; Graham
et al., 2013; Graham & Perin, 2007; Rogers & Graham, 2008).
Across these meta-analyses, SRSD was found to be a highly
effective instructional practice, and it yielded better results than
other writing instructional methods, including other methods for
teaching writing strategies. Large effect sizes (ES) above .80
were found in true and quasi-experimental studies (Graham,
2006b; Graham & Harris, 2003; Graham et al., 2013, 2012;
Graham & Perin, 2007), and a high percentage of non-overlapping
data (PND) almost above 90% was obtained in single-subject
design studies (Graham, 2006b; Graham et al., 2013; Rogers &
Graham, 2008).

1.2. The present study

While previous research has demonstrated that SRSD is a powerful tool for improving students writing, the present study was
designed to address limitations in the data base on SRSD. First,
most of the true- and quasi-experiments that have tested the effectiveness of SRSD in writing have involved children in the elementary grades (cf. Graham et al., 2013), and students have typically
received SRSD instruction in small groups or one-on-one.
Furthermore, and also of particular importance to the present
study, instruction in nearly all of the published studies on SRSD
was delivered by trained graduate assistants (Harris et al., 2009).
Only three published studies have involved general education teacher implementation of SRSD in the middle school classroom (De
La Paz, 2005; De La Paz & Graham, 2002; Wong, Hoskyn, Jay,
Ellis, & Watson, 2008). These studies, however, involved only 24
classroom teachers, and little information was provided as to
how teachers were prepared to use SRSD in their classrooms.
Only one published study was found that focused on professional development for implementation of SRSD classwide in the
general education classroom (Harris et al., 2012). This randomized
controlled study involved 20 s and third grade teachers who participated in practice-based professional development (PBPD, cf. Ball &
Cohen, 1999; Grossman & McDonald, 2008) in SRSD for either story
or opinion essay writing (each genre served as the control condition for the other genre). PBPD focuses on teacher development
of knowledge, understanding, and skills regarding an effective educational practice before they use it, with support once classroom
use begins (cf. Ball & Cohen, 1999). PBPD rejects traditional
approaches to professional development that are short-term and
top down, do not allow teachers to actively engage in the practices

Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004

I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

they are learning, and do not provide much support during implementation, which traditionally is primarily done in isolation.
Congruent with sociocultural and social cognitive theories that
stress the importance of meaningful learning in situated contexts,
PBPD has six critical characteristics: (a) collective participation of
teachers within the same school with similar needs; (b) basing
professional development around the characteristics, strengths,
and needs of the students in these teachers current classrooms;
(c) attention to content knowledge needs of teachers, including
pedagogical content knowledge; (d) opportunities for active learning and practice of the new methods being learned, including
opportunities to see examples of these methods being used and
to analyze the work; (e) use of materials and other artifacts during
professional development that are identical to those to be used in
the classroom, and (f) feedback on performance while learning, and
before using these methods in the classroom, so that understandings and skills critical in implementation are developed. In the
Harris et al. (2012) study, teachers who received PBPD implemented SRSD instruction that resulted in signicant and meaningful changes in student writing outcomes for both story and opinion
essay writing. Teachers implemented SRSD with delity, and SRSD
was viewed as socially valid by teachers and students.
Finally, the few published studies of teacher implementation of
SRSD have all been conducted in the United States, as have
the majority of studies on SRSD. Thus, there is a need to test the
generalizability of SRSD results across populations outside of
the United States. Similarly, PBPD has not been tested outside of
the United States. If PBPD for SRSDs promise is to be actualized,
it is important to test its effectiveness in different contexts. Aggregated, consistent ndings across a variety of studies in a variety of
contexts are necessary to argue that an intervention is reliable and
generalizable (Robinson, Levin, Schraw, Patall, & Hunt, in press).
Recommendations for educational practice must be based upon
such aggregated nding and research syntheses, thus replication
and extension of previous research is critical to the eld.
Despite the difculties Portuguese students experience learning
to write, evidence-based practices in writing have rarely been
tested in this country. Our study extended previous SRSD research
by examining if SRSD instruction was effective when it was implemented by Portuguese teachers who received PBPD for SRSD, and
conducted classwide with Portuguese middle school students.
We examined the effects of SRSD instruction, implemented by
classroom teachers following PBPD, on the opinion essay writing
performance of eighth grade Portuguese students. Previously, we
had adapted SRSD lessons and materials to the Portuguese language and to Portugals educational context (Rebelo et al., 2013).
Eighth grade was selected as the target grade level because such
instruction should help these students prepare for the national
exam that is taken in the ninth grade. Writing opinion essays is
an important part of the school curriculum in eighth- and ninthgrade and is targeted in writing tests and the Portuguese national
exam. Criteria used in the national exam include evaluation of
opinion essays structural elements (premise, reasons and conclusions) (Gabinete de Avaliao Educacional/Educational Evaluation
Ofce, 2013), which are an important part of SRSD for opinion
essays. Furthermore, the language arts teachers in the participating
schools requested a focus on opinion essay writing.
Fourteen teachers in six urban middle schools in Portugal participated in the present study; 7 of these teachers participated in
PBPD for SRSD. The six schools were matched in pairs based on
socioeconomic status and homogeneity/heterogeneity of students
and on teacher characteristics including gender, experience, and
preparation. One member of each pair was randomly assigned to
one of two conditions: (a) classroom teacher implemented SRSD
instruction for opinion essay writing; or (b) teacher implementation of the schools existing curriculum and language program

prescriptions for opinion writing. SRSD teachers in this study

participated in PBPD before implementing SRSD, and received
support and feedback throughout classroom instruction.
We anticipated that SRSD would have a positive impact on Portuguese students opinion essays in terms of structural elements
and writing output, and that SRSD instruction in this study would
result in a signicant increase in the number of opinion essay elements in students writing as well as a signicant increase in the
overall length of student essays. Such results have been found in
other studies involving the opinion essay writing strategies taught
in this study (e.g., Mason, Kubina, & Taft, 2009). We expected that
these effects would be evident immediately after the intervention
and after a two-month interval (such maintenance effects have
been found in other studies; Graham et al., 2013). We further
expected that following PBPD, teachers would implement SRSD
with delity based on the study by Harris et al. (2012). Finally,
we predicted that students and their teachers would be positive
about the effects of the intervention, indicating social validity in
Portugal, based on our anticipation that students opinion essay
writing would improve.
2. Methods
2.1. Setting
The study took place in six urban schools in a major city in Portugal. Three of the schools were middle schools; the other three
combined middle and high school grades.
As usual in Portugal, all of the schools involved in the study followed the national curriculum, as previously described. In an
attempt to increase the likelihood that the experimental and comparison groups were equivalent, pairs of schools were matched for
socioeconomic status prior to the intervention (Fraenkel & Wallen,
2003). Data were collected from the School Educational Project,
which reports students socioeconomic status; SES is dened by
the level of schooling completed by students parents and parents
professions. School 1 (middle school with 838 students) was
matched with School 2 (middle school with 690 students). According to the School Educational Project data, the majority of students
in both schools were from a medium to high socioeconomic class.
School 3 (middle/high school with 991 students) was matched
with School 4 (middle school with 560). According to the School
Educational Project, both schools had a more heterogeneous population from low, medium and high socioeconomic groups. School 5
(middle/high school with 950 students) was matched with School
6 (middle/high school with 700 students). According to the School
Educational Project, these students had medium/high socioeconomic status.
The schools were also matched on teacher characteristics
including gender, experience, and preparation. All of the teachers
completed a questionnaire to elicit information about: gender,
age, licensing, writing training received during teacher preparation
and professional career, teaching procedures, and teaching experience. One of each pair of schools was randomly assigned to the
experimental condition and the other to the comparison group.
The necessary consents were obtained from the Portugal Ministry
of Education, the Director of each school, from the teachers
involved in study, the students parents, and the pupils enrolled
in the experiment before the study started.
2.2. Teachers
Fourteen teachers in the six schools took part, seven each from
the experimental and comparison schools. Teachers in the experimental and comparison conditions had very similar characteristics.

Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004

I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

All teachers were female and all taught Portuguese language arts.
Additionally, all of the teachers had an undergraduate degree
obtained from a university in Portugal and only one teacher (in
the comparison group) had a masters degree (no difference was
found concerning this variable: Fishers Exact Test = 1, p = .50).
All of the teachers held a teaching license and all had served as
teachers for a long period of time, ranging between 16 and 34 years
in the experimental group (M = 27; SD = 6.56) and between 23 and
39 years in the comparison group (M = 29.33; SD = 5.54). No statistically signicant difference was found here between the two
groups (t(12) = .686, p = 0.51]. Both groups included teachers
who taught more than one section of language arts and teachers
who taught only one section: in the experimental group there
was 1 teacher with 3 sections, 4 teachers with 2 sections, and 2
teachers with 1 section; in the comparison group there was 1 teacher with 3 sections, 3 teachers with 2 sections, and 3 teachers
with 1 section. Class size ranged from 10 to 23 students in the
experimental group and from 9 to 24 students in the comparison
group.
In Portugal, there are no national guidelines for teacher preparation programs regarding preparation for teaching writing.
Research, however, indicates that preparation to teach writing is
poor (Pereira, 2001). None of the teachers had received either specic preparation in teaching writing in their preparation programs
or professional development on writing instruction during their
careers. In the present study, teachers in the comparison group followed the Portuguese language arts curriculum, while teachers in
the experimental group followed the SRSD model for writing
instruction in opinion essays.

2.3. Students
A total of 380 students (214 in the experimental group and 166
in the comparison group) participated in this study. Initially, there
were 507 students in the 14 eighth grade classrooms, with 285 students in the experimental classrooms (132 girls, 153 boys) and 222
in the comparison classrooms (118 girls and 104 boys). Only 436
students, however, participated in the pre-test (some students
changed schools and others were not present during pretesting),
and of these, consent and assent to participate was obtained for
380 students. Members of the research team collected the following information regarding students from school records: age, gender, grade retentions, grades in language arts and other subjects,
and special education status; occupation and educational attainment of parents were also collected from these records.
The age of the experimental group ranged from 11.92 to
15.42 years (M = 13.33; SD = .44) and the age of the comparison
participants ranged between 12.67 and 16.42 years (M = 13.56;
SD = .65). An independent t-test revealed a statistically signicant
difference in age [t(265.7) = 3.85, p < .001]. Concerning gender,
103 (48.1%) of the experimental group were male and 111
(51.9%) were female, while in the comparison schools the gures
were 72 (43.4%) male and 94 (56.6%) female. The proportion of
males and females in the two groups did not differ statistically
(p = .36).
In the experimental group, 21 students (10%) had repeated one
grade or more, whereas 18 students (11.1%) in the comparison
group had repeated one or more grades. The number of students
repeating a grade in the two groups did not differ statistically
(p = .72). The mean for the number of grade repetitions in the rst
group was .09 (SD = .37), ranging from 0 to 3, and for the comparison schools the mean was .20 (SD = .60) with the same range.
There were four students (1.9%) with special needs in the experimental group and seven in the comparison group (4.3%). These
numbers for the two groups did not differ statistically (p = .20).

The students from the experimental and comparison groups

were also compared on their grades in language arts and overall
school achievement (obtained at the end of the previous school
year). For language arts, grades ranged from 2 to 5 for both groups
(in the Portuguese educational system up to the ninth level, grades
range from a low of one to a high of ve), with M = 3.66 (SD = .82)
for the experimental schools and M = 3.68 (SD = .82) for the comparison schools (p = 0.75). The general school achievement of the
experimental group was M = 3.82 (SD = .77), and for the comparison group it was M = 3.69 (SD = .79), with the scores in both groups
also ranging between 2 and 5. There was no statistical difference
between the grades of the two groups (all ps > 0.18). Finally,
regarding the level of schooling completed by students parents
(ranging from less than compulsory education up to the Ph.D.),
no statistical differences were found for fathers (p = .11) or mothers (p = .25) between experimental and comparison groups.
2.4. Practice-based professional development for SRSD
Before classroom instruction began, SRSD teachers participated
in 14 h of professional development (across two days) in SRSD
instructional practices. Professional development followed the
PBPD model used by Harris et al. (2012). Teachers received notebooks with the guidelines and materials needed to implement all
activities and lessons for opinion essays in their own classrooms.
SRSD instruction was modeled, practiced, and discussed during
professional development. Teachers and the research team also
discussed how to adapt SRSD program and differentiate instruction
to meet student needs in their classrooms (for more detail, see
Harris et al., 2012).
After PBPD, SRSD teachers met with research assistants weekly,
after school for about an hour, to address any questions or
concerns teachers had regarding SRSD instruction and how future
lessons might need to be adjusted to meet teacher and student
needs. The majority of teachers questions centered specic SRSD
instructional activities (e.g., how to model the use of the selfregulation procedures) and on ways to differentiate instruction
for students experiencing difculty mastering the material taught.
2.5. SRSD instruction
After the opinion writing pre-test was administered, teachers
delivered SRSD instruction. The experimental teachers taught SRSD
for opinion essays for one, 45 min class once a week, from October
until January. Portuguese language arts classes are assigned
225 min a week and school directors can organize the class time
as they wish. Class time is typically divided into 5 blocks of
45 min each. Teachers and researchers agreed that all writing
activities would be conducted only in this one class a week to
ensure that this was the only writing instruction students received
during this study. In the other 180 min allocated to language arts
curriculum, teachers focused on components such as oral and written comprehension, reading, and language knowledge in accordance with national guidelines.
The materials for teaching opinion essay writing via SRSD were
taken from Harris et al. (2008), including six lessons from Chapter
8 (lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 for older students) and one lesson from
Chapter 9 (Lesson 1). We also used other SRSD material from the
Harris et al. book, including mnemonic charts, graphic organizer,
essays rockets graph, and cue cards. We adapted this material so
that it was in Portuguese and appropriate for grade 8 classrooms
in Portugal (Rebelo et al., 2013); we created materials that followed and respected the objectives and structure of SRSD but that
would make sense to Portuguese teachers and students.
The mnemonics for the SRSD strategies, in particular, required
careful attention because a literal translation was not possible.

Please cite this article in press as: Festas, I., et al. Professional development in Self-Regulated Strategy Development: Effects on the writing performance of
eighth grade Portuguese students. Contemporary Educational Psychology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.05.004

I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

We tried to nd acronyms that had the same signicance as the

original mnemonics and matched a Portuguese word. The general
planning strategy involving three steps, represented by the mnemonic POW (Pick my idea, i.e., pick an initial idea of what to write
about; Organize my notes, i.e., write a plan using a graphic organizer; Write and say more, i.e., continue modify and upgrade the
plan during writing), was translated to the Portuguese acronym
PODE (Can in English). PODE signies: Pega (Pick, in English), Organiza (Organize, in English), Dizer e Escrever (Say and Write, in
English).
The genre-specic planning strategy for opinion essays to help
students to carry out the second step of POW (Organize my notes),
TREE (Topic sentence, Tell what you believe; Reasons, three or
more, and elaborate on or say more about each one; Ending, Wrap
it up right; and Examine, do I have all my parts?), was translated to
the Portuguese mnemonic TRAVE (Beam in English). TRAVE, the
Portuguese mnemonic, represents: Tema (Topic sentence, in English), Razes (Reasons, in English), Acabar (Ending, in English), VE
(Ver para Examinar) (See to Examine, in English).
In order to verify that SRSD was implemented with delity (i.e.,
SRSD was delivered as intend), we developed lesson checklists.
These checklists were used to monitor which steps of the lesson
were completed by the teachers and should be lled by research
assistants and by teachers. They contained a description of each
activity in a lesson and a place to check if the activity was completed or not completed.
Teachers carried out the six stages of the SRSD model, recursively as appropriate, with time spent on stage depending on the
needs and rate of progress of their students. In the rst stage,
Develop Background Knowledge, the writing and self-regulation
strategies (the general writing strategy POW/PODE, the genre specic writing strategy TREE/TRAVE, and self-regulation strategies
including goal setting, self-instructions, self-assessment, and selfreinforcement) were introduced and discussed. At this stage, students acquired the knowledge, understanding, and vocabulary
needed to apply the general and genre-specic writing strategies
as well as the self-regulation strategies.
During the Discuss It stage, teachers and students discussed the
importance and utility of using the writing and self-regulation
strategies. Next, teachers modeled how to use POW/PODE and
TREE/TRAVE to write an opinion essay, showing students how to
apply them (Model It stage). Simultaneously, they modeled the
use of the self-regulation strategies, showing and explaining out
loud such things as how to set goals, how and when self-instructions might be used, how to self-assess, and how to self-reinforce.
If the students had not yet memorized the mnemonics (PODE and
TRAVE) by this point, further practice was provided (Memorize It
stage).
During the Support It stage, teachers supported students
through collaborative writing experiences by helping them to
write opinion essays using POW/PODE and TREE/TRAVE, while
self-regulating the writing task. Gradual release of control led to
the last stage, Independence Performance, where students could
use the strategies to write opinion essays without the teachers
help.

2.6. Writing instruction in the comparison classrooms

To document how writing was taught in the comparison classrooms, we administered a 64 item Writing Activities Questionnaire
focused on writing instructional practices - those recommended in
the eighth grade Portuguese curriculum, and those common in
SRSD1. For each of the 64 items presented on the scale, teachers
1

This scale is available from the authors.

indicated how often it occurred in their classrooms across the school

year using a 5-point scale: 0 (never), 1 (up to 30 min a week), 2 (from
31 min to 60 min a week), 3 (from 61 min to 90 min a week), or 4 (more
than 90 min a week). Teachers also were asked if they had received
inservice or preservice instruction in teaching writing. If a teacher
answered Yes, they were asked to describe this instruction.
Finally, teachers responded to an open ended question regarding any other features of their writing instruction they could
report.
Responses to the Writing Activities Questionnaire indicated
that none of the teachers had received preservice or inservice
instruction in teaching writing. The teachers generally followed
the Portuguese language arts curriculum for grade 8 students,
teaching grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sentence
construction, organization of text, planning, and revision. Teachers
reported spending more time each week on teaching grammar
(one teacher reported spending more than 90 min a week, and
the other six more than 60 min) and punctuation (two teachers
reported spending more than 90 min a week, four from 61 min to
90 min, and one from 31 to 60 min) than on the development of
planning (ve reported spending up to 30 min a week and two
from 31 to 60 min) and revision (one teacher answered never,
two reported spending up to 30 min a week, and the other four
reported spending from 31 to 60 min a week).
Teachers reported teaching a variety of text genres, especially
those recommended for this grade level, i.e., narrative, opinion
essay, argumentative, and descriptive. The majority of teachers
reported spending between 61 and 90 min per week teaching text
genre, although all reported spending 3160 min teaching opinion
essay writing. Narrative writing received the most attention (four
teachers reported spending more than 90 min and three reported
6090 min).
Regarding elements of instruction included in SRSD, teachers
reported teaching only some features of the planning strategy
POW/PODE (most reported up to 30 min per week) telling students
they should organize their writing but not teaching any strategies
for doing so. Regarding TREE/TRAVE, only two teachers indicated
teaching all of its components. Two teachers reported teaching
only premise and conclusion, one teacher only premise and reasons, one teacher only premise, and the last teacher only reasons.
All of the teachers reported spending less than 30 min per week
on these aspects of opinion essay writing. The two teachers who
reported teaching all TREE/TRAVE components only explained
them to students. None of the teachers reported following the
stages of instruction in the SRSD model. Modeling was referred
as a general method to teach writing, but not specically reported
for teaching writing opinion essays. Comparison group teachers
did not report development of self-regulations strategies in their
educational practices, including goal setting, self-instructions,
self-assessment, and self-reinforcement. For example, they
reported never teaching students to set goals and break them into
sub-steps (goal setting), talk to themselves as they write in order
to guide, organize and structure their writing (self-instruction),
determine whether or not they included all the parts on an opinion
essay (self-assessment), or reinforces themselves (selfreinforcement).
The times teachers reported regarding components of writing
instruction, however, must be interpreted in light of their
responses to the questionnaire open ended question. All of the
teachers explained that they included in these times the total time
they spent on these elements across all of the language arts curriculum components (oral and written comprehension, reading, writing, language knowledge). Regarding text genre, for instance,
teachers explained they focused on genre not only in teaching
writing, but also when teaching oral comprehension and reading.
The majority of the teachers reported spending up to 30 min a

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I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

week teaching writing, while some teachers acknowledged that

they did not teach writing every week. Thus, the comparison group
teachers reported generally spending less time a week specically
teaching writing than the SRSD teachers.
2.7. Assessments
2.7.1. Fidelity of SRSD instruction
Lesson checklists were developed that included all activities
and elements for each lesson. A research assistant observed 25%
of instructional sessions, spread across instruction; this percentage
of lessons observed is higher than the 20% of sessions of schoolbased intervention recommended for observation in establishing
delity (Gresham, Gansle, Noell, Cohen, & Rosenblum, 1993;
Hulleman & Cordray, 2009). Teachers told the observer where they
would start and added any changes they had made in that lesson
for their students before the lesson began; observers checked off
lesson elements as they were completed. Treatment delity for
each lesson was computed by dividing the number of lesson elements taught by the total number of elements possible and multiplying the outcome by 100%. Teachers were given a copy of the
checklist for each lesson, and were asked to check off each step
as it was completed each time they taught. These teacher checklists were collected from the teachers at the end of instruction.
2.7.2. Writing assessments
Pre-test, posttest, and maintenance (two months after postintervention probes) writing probes were used to evaluate the
effects of SRSD instruction on students opinion essay writing. The
probes were administered by students classroom teachers, and
the SRSD instruction and comparison groups were assessed at the
same time. Students were given up to 45 min, the full class period,
to complete their paper. Students wrote their opinion essays in
response to writing prompts related to the use of technology (e.g.,
Would it be possible to live without a computer today?) teachers recommended as suitable and interesting for eighth grade students.
Prior to scoring, each opinion essay was typed into a Word document. Identifying information was removed and spelling, capitalization, and punctuation were corrected to avoid any inuence
from surface level features, such as legibility and spelling errors,
on examiners judgments about writing performance (Graham,
1999). Each opinion essay was scored for number of words and
for number of structural elements. Structural elements included
those taught to students in the experimental group: premise, reasons, explanations (why an author believed a particular premise or
why they refuted a counter premise), conclusion, and elaborations
(additional information on or examples of a premise, reason, or
conclusion). For premise and conclusion, 0 was allocated if the
element was absent and 1 if the element was present. For reasons and elaborations, 1 point was awarded for each unique reason
and elaboration included.
Structural elements were assessed for three reasons. First, the
planning strategy students were taught encouraged them to use
these structural markers to generate ideas and think about their
topic (e.g., students were encouraged to generate and consider
multiple reasons to support their premise). Thus, if SRSD instruction was effective, students writing should evidence an increase
in these basic structural elements. Second, as noted earlier,
national assessments in Portugal stress the assessments of these
elements in the evaluation of opinion essays (Gabinete de
Avaliao Educacional/Educational Evaluation Ofce, 2013). Third,
these structural elements represent the basic building blocks of a
good opinion essay and dene this genre (see Scardamalia,
Bereiter, & Goleman, 1982).
Our second writing measure, number of words, is a common
outcome measure in writing intervention research (see for

example Graham et al., 2013), as it is difcult to write a convincing

argument or a good paper without a reasonable number of ideas
and elaborations. While longer text is not always better text, it
often is (Page & Petersen, 1995), as correlations between number
of words and text quality are high (see Bangert-Drowns, 1993;
Morphy & Graham, 2012). It should be noted, though, that text
can be improved when students eliminate extraneous or repetitive
material. While we anticipated that SRSD students would produce
longer text essays in the current study, it was possible that instruction would result in more succinct text, as the planning process
and self-evaluation processes built into instruction may eliminate
unneeded material. Consequently, we viewed number of words
written as an important outcome variable.
All opinion essays were scored by a trained research assistant;
one-third of the papers were independently scored by a second
trained rater. Inter-rater reliability for the three evaluation points
(pre-test, posttest and maintenance), respectively, was .88, .87
and .77 (M = .84, Cohens kappa). Each essay was also scored for
number of words written using the word count tool in Word.
2.7.3. Social validity
Social validity was assessed immediately after instruction.
Teachers completed the Teachers Intervention Rating Prole and
students the Students Intervention Rating Prole we constructed.
Each rating prole presented a series of statements about the social
validity of the SRSD intervention that teachers and students
responded to using a 5-point Likert-type scale (strongly disagree = 1
to strongly agree = 5). The scale that the teachers completed
included 15 items (e.g., SRSD instruction helped students to write
better opinion essays; After SRSD instruction, students included more
opinion essays structural elements in their writings; After the intervention, students showed a greater interest in writing; With SRSD
instruction students became more self-regulated). The student scale
contained 10 items (e.g., SRSD activities were interesting; With SRSD
instruction I learned to write better; With SRSD instruction I learned to
organize my ideas when I am writing; I liked to participate in this
instruction programme). Internal consistency of the Teachers and
Students Rating Proles, measured by the Cronbach alpha, were
.86 and .88, respectively.
3. Results
We examined whether: SRSD instruction was implemented as
intended (i.e., treatment delity), students in SRSD instruction outperformed students in the comparison condition on structural elements and number of words written, and teachers and students
viewed the SRSD instruction positively. Means and standard deviations for structural elements and number of words are presented
in Table 1.
For both writing measures, multilevel modeling for repeated
measures was conducted to examine the impact of SRSD in comparison to the control condition across pre-test (0), posttest (1),
Table 1
Performance of student participants in opinion essay writing and number of words.
Student performance

Time

Groups
Experimental
(n = 214)
M (SD)

Control
(n = 166)
M (SD)

Opinion essay

Pre
Post
Follow-up

3.56 (3.85)
6.07 (3.70)
4.86 (3.20)

3.90 (3.45)
3.62 (2.96)
2.65 (2.34)

Word count

Pre
Post
Follow-up

229.06 (93.30)
176.47 (71.13)
167.00 (69.62)

178.07 (84.37)
148.89 (83.90)
155.41 (95.28)

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I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

and maintenance (2) (RStudio, 2013). Each of these analyses proceeded in the fashion as described below.
For level-1 variables (time of testing and the outcome variable),
we (1) determined the interclass correlation (ICC) looking at
changes over time of testing; (2) examined if scores for the outcome measure randomly varied among individuals; (3) investigated the form of the relationship between time of testing (i.e.,
pre-test, posttest, and maintenance) and the outcome measure
(i.e., Do scores generally increase, decrease, or show some other
type of relationship with time?); (4) veried whether the relationship between time and the outcome measure was constant among
students or whether it varied on a student-by-student basis; and
(5) examined if the model t improved by incorporating an autoregressive structure with serial correlations and heterogeneity in the
error structure.
We then conducted the analyses by adding the level-2 variables
in order to try to explain the random variation in mean test results
(intercepts) and in time of testing results slope. First, we examined
the impact of adding treatment (SRSD versus comparison) to the
model. Then we examined the effects of treatment, gender, and
age. As noted earlier, there was a small, but statistically signicant,
difference between students age in the two groups. In addition, we
included gender in the analyses, as girls are typically better writers
than boys at these ages (Graham, 2006a).
For both structural elements and number of words, we ran a
model where the level-2 variables included school along with
treatment, gender, and age. However, the model with only treatment, gender, and age provided a better t to the data than the
model where school was also included (structural elements:
AIC = 5897.60; BIC = 5973.02; LogLik = 2933.80; p < 0.0001; number
of words: AIC = 12726.25; BIC = 12806.7; LogLik = 6347.126;
p < 0.05). The model where school was added to treatment, gender,
and age did not converge, even though a model with school as the
only level-2 variable was statistically signicant. As a result, we
only report the results for the model that included treatment, gender, and age.
3.1. Treatment delity
The SRSD writing intervention was implemented with acceptable delity. Observations of 25% of the instructional sessions
indicated that teachers completed 77.86% (SD = 11.61%; range
65100%) of the writing activities. The lower score occurred in only
one class session where the teacher was dealing with behavioral
issues. In addition, SRSD teachers were asked to check each activity
of a lesson as they completed it, using the same checklists. These
checklists were collected at the end of instruction; teachers
reported completing 82.38% (SD = 19.96%; ranged between 44

and 100) of the lesson elements. Finally, at the end of instruction

all teachers conrmed that they did not teach writing in any other
language arts classes with their students and that they did not use
anything new for writing instruction other than SRSD.
3.2. Structural elements
Analysis of level-1 variables (time of testing and number of
structural elements) resulted in an ICC coefcient value of 14.3%,
indicating that this amount of variance in students scores was
explained by properties of the students. Examination of xed
effects (p < 0.001), slope variability (p < 0.464), autocorrelations
(/ = 0.139) and variances of response changes over time (showing
that a model that allowed for decreases in variance t the data
better than a model that only included the quadratic effect:
AIC = 6018.80; BIC = 6049.01; LogLik = 3003.40; p < 0.0001)
revealed that: (a) students randomly varied little in mean levels
of structural elements in comparison to how they vary through
time; (b) there was a quadratic relationship between time of testing and structural elements; (c) the strength of the quadratic relationship did not randomly vary among students and (d) there was
signicant variance heterogeneity in the data.
When the level-2 variable of treatment alone was added to try
to explain random variation in mean test results (intercepts) and in
time of testing results slope, we found that the expected test score
for students in the SRSD group was on average 1.74 structural elements higher than the expected score for students in the comparison group (p < 0.001). When the level-2 variables of sex, and age
were subsequently added to the analysis (along with treatment;
see Table 2), a statistically signicant interaction between treatment and time of testing was obtained at both posttest and maintenance (as expected), with SRSD students making statistically
greater gains from pre-test to posttest (p < 0.001) as well as pretest to maintenance (p < 0.001) than comparison students. While
the interaction between gender and treatment was not statistically
signicant, girls in the study included on average 0.51 more structural elements than boys (p = 0.025). In addition, with all three
level-2 variables included in the analyses, SRSD students included
1.4 more structural elements in their opinion essays than comparison students.
3.3. Number of words
Analysis of level-1 variables (time of testing and number of
words) resulted in an ICC coefcient value of 56.4%, indicating that
this amount of variance in students scores was explained by properties of the students. Examination of xed effects (p < 0.001),
slope variability (p < 0.0001), autocorrelations (/ = 0.7) and

Table 2
Multilevel regression modeling analyses of the relationship between treatment, age, and gender and time of testing for structural elements in opinion essays.
b
Model with Treatment, Age, and Gender

(Intercept)
Treatment
Age
Gender
Timea
Timeb
Treatment  Timea
Treatment  Timeb
Age  Time (01)
Age  Time (02)
Gender  Time (01)
Gender  Time (02)

3.657
1.400
0.383
0.508
22.650
10.941
36.725
23.890
9.759
1.835
9.236
10.999

SE

DF

0.197
0.231
0.209
0.266
5.398
5.311
6.333
6.231
5.712
5.620
6.183
6.083

752
376
376
376
752
752
752
752
752
752
752
752

18.560
6.055
1.836
2.253
4.196
2.060
5.799
3.834
1.715
0.327
1.494
1.808

0.000
0.000
0.067
0.025
0.000
0.040
0.000
0.000
0.087
0.744
0.136
0.071

Note: Treatment = SRSD versus control group; 0 = pre-test; 1 = posttest; 2 = maintenance.

a
Time = Linear effect of time;
b
Time = Quadratic effect of time.

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I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

Table 3
Multilevel regression modeling analyses of the relationship between treatment, age, and gender and time of testing for number of words in opinion essays.
b
Model with Treatment, Age, and Gender

(Intercept)
Treatment
Age
Gender
Timea
Timeb
Treatment  Timea
Treatment  Timeb
Age  Time (01)
Age  Time (02)
Gender  Time (01)
Gender  Time (02)

178.379
28.047
15.959
36.931
351.954
302.809
542.889
72.047
41.22
25.765
74.604
66.591

SE

DF

6.19
7.263
6.55
7.090
98.59
78.203
115.66
91.748
104.31
82.749
112.91
89.571

752
376
376
376
752
752
752
752
752
752
752
752

28.815
3.862
2.437
5.221
3.570
3.872
4.694
0.785
0.395
0.311
0.661
0.743

0.000
0.000
0.015
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.693
0.756
0.000
0.433
0.509
0.457

Note: Treatment = SRSD versus control group; 0 = pre-test; 1 = posttest; 2 = maintenance.

a
Time = Linear effect of time.
b
Time = Quadratic effect of time.

variances (AIC = 12859.25; BIC = 12899.54; LogLik = 6421.623;

p = 0.065) revealed that: (a) students varied more in their mean
levels of number of words in comparison to how they varied
through time; (b) there was a quadratic relationship between time
of testing and number of words; (c) the strength of the quadratic
relationship varied randomly among students; (d) the variance
heterogeneity in the data was not modeled.
When we added the level-2 variable of treatment to try to
explain random variation in mean test results (intercepts) and in
time of testing results slope, we found that the expected score
for students in the SRSD group dropped an average of 27.8 words
more than the expected number of words for students in the comparison group (p < 0.001). When the level-2 variables of sex and
age were subsequently added to the model (along with treatment;
see Table 3), a statistically signicant interaction between treatment and time of testing was obtained (p < 0.001), with students
in the SRSD condition showing a greater drop in number of words
written from pre-test to posttest than students in the comparison
condition. Such a statistically signicant difference, however, was
not evident from pre-test to maintenance (p = 0.756). It is important to note that the average length of essays decreased from
pre-test to posttest to maintenance for students in both groups
(see Table 1). While the interaction between gender and treatment
and age and treatment were not statistically signicant, girls in the
study wrote on average 36.9 more words than boys (p < 0.001), and
students who were one year older wrote 16 words less than their
younger counterparts (p = 0.015). Moreover, with all three level-2
variables included in the analyses, SRSD students wrote 28 words
less than comparison students.
3.4. Social validity
Responses to the Teachers Intervention Rating Prole and the
Students Intervention Rating Prole were positive. Teacher
responses (on a 5-point Likert-type scale from strongly disagree = 1
to strongly agree = 5) ranged from 4 to 5 (M = 4.58; SD = .41). Students perceptions of treatment acceptability were also positive
(M = 3.80; SD = .51) with item scores ranting from 2.07 to 4.93.

Harris et al., 2012). Students who received SRSD instruction in

opinion essay writing, as compared to students who received typical classroom instruction following Portuguese curriculum guidelines, showed meaningful improvements in the inclusion of basic
structural elements (premise, reasons, conclusion, and elaborations) in their papers. These ndings are consistent with earlier
research in the United States, where similar SRSD professional
development was provided (e.g., Harris et al., in press, 2012).
SRSD did not increase the length of students compositions.
While the length of SRSD instructed students essays decreased,
after SRSD instruction these students included most or all of an
opinion essays critical elements in their compositions. Their compositions became more organized and inappropriate text was eliminated, which may explain the lack of an effect on length. Previous
SRSD research includes mixed results on length; several studies
have found that after SRSD instruction students wrote better, but
not longer, compositions (Harris et al., 2009, 2012). Length, or writing more, was not a goal for students in this study (as it was not in
previous studies); this goal might be addressed in future research
once initial competency in a genre is established.
SRSD was implemented with delity and both teachers and students reported strong social validity. Teachers believed that SRSD
had a positive impact on the writing of their students; students
were positive about the instruction they received and found it very
interesting. Treatment delity and social validity results are very
important to the continuation and expansion of research on SRSD
and to enabling its future implementation in Portugal and other
countries.
Importantly, this study demonstrated that PBPD for SRSD was
effective when applied in a different cultural context, that of Portuguese schools. It is important to note, however, that we adapted
the SRSD lessons used in this study so that they would t within
the Portuguese educational context. The process of adapting programs to other cultures, and researching their effects, needs
greater attention if evidence-based practices are to be generalized
and used globally. This study provides initial evidence for the generalizability of PBPD for SRSD outside of the United States.
4.1. Examining the effectiveness of SRSD

4. Discussion
Given the complexity of writing, it seems reasonable to expect
special care needs to be taken when teaching it. Nevertheless,
the teaching of writing is neglected in Portugal (Pardal & Festas,
2011) and the United States (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). We provided intensive professional development in SRSD for opinion
essay writing to teachers of eight grade students following the
PBPD model (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Grossman & McDonald, 2008;

Teachers in the comparison group did use some methods in

their classrooms common to those used in SRSD instruction (see
Section 2.6). Thus, examining the differences in instruction
between the SRSD and the comparison teachers can help build
understanding as to why SRSD was effective in this study. We
begin by noting one additional critical factor teacher preparation
for teaching writing. As noted previously, none of the teachers in
this study reported receiving specic preservice or inservice

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I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

preparation in teaching writing. PBPD for SRSD supports teachers

in developing deep understanding of the general and genre specic
writing strategies to be taught, the changes in performance that
can be expected in their students, and evidence-based methods
for developing these strategies. In the United States, while most
teachers report some preparation in teaching writing, most preparation occurs after initial certication and many teachers report
that they are not adequately prepared to teach writing (Brindle,
2012; Graham & Harris, in press). Teaching writing is complex
and challenging; teaching it skillfully requires considerable knowledge about what to teach, when to teach it, and how to teach it.
PBPD for SRSD helps meet these needs.
In addition, there were many meaningful differences between
the SRSD instruction and business as usual in the comparison
classrooms in this study. Comparison teachers in the present study,
as compared to those who received PBPD for SRSD, spent more
time teaching grammar and punctuation than they did teaching
planning; did not devote as much time to teaching opinion essay
writing; told students to organize their writing but did not offer
or teach them any strategies for doing so; most commonly
reported teaching students only 12 of the common elements of
opinion essays; explained the few opinion essay elements they
shared with students but did not model or support their inclusion
in student writing; did not teach students any strategies for
self-regulating the writing process; and did not model the writing
process using self-regulation, general, and genre-specic writing
strategies. We believe that all of these factors play a role in the
results found in this study.
One factor important to address here is whether or not these
same results in terms of improvement of elements would occur
without all of the stages and supports available in SRSD. While
more research is needed here, several studies indicate that for most
writers, and certainly for writers who are not making adequate
progress in writing, all of the stages and components are benecial
(cf. Graham et al., 2013). These studies show that after the rst
three stages of SRSD instruction (see Section 1.1; the genre elements have been deeply examined and found in model essays,
the mnemonics and importance of each part of the genre strategy
have been discussed and students indicate their understanding of
them, and the teacher has cognitively modeled the writing process
using the self-regulation and writing strategies), little progress
occurs in many students inclusion of the genre elements in their
own writing. Thus, Harris and her colleagues have argued that
P.E.E.ing (Post, Explain, Even Model) in the classroom is not
enough for most students to deal with the complex factors
involved in writing. More meaningful progress is typically seen
in SRSD instruction only with the gradual release of control that
occurs across stages 56.
SRSD is a complex, multi-component instruction approach (see
Section 1.1) developed for use across complex academic learning,
not just for writing. Harris and her colleagues have traced the
development of SRSD elsewhere more completely than we can
here (cf. Harris, 1982; Harris & Graham, 1992, 1996, 2009; Harris
et al., 2009), but all of the components and characteristics of SRSD
instruction have been developed and continue to be ne-tuned
based on multiple theories that have produced extensive empirical
support for each characteristic and component.
Clearly, components analyses of both SRSD and PBPD for SRSD
are needed. Graham et al. (2013) identied ve studies that compared SRSD with explicit development of self-regulation (the usual
model) to SRSD with these components removed. They found that
the added value of teaching self-regulations procedures specically
in the SRSD model was 0.48 standard deviations. No other components analyses studies of SRD were found; additional research is
needed to determine what components of SRSD instruction are
responsible for differing gains in students writing performance,

attitudes toward writing, writing self-efcacy, and so on. As Harris

and her colleagues have argued, however, their experience indicates that each student brings a unique, complex set of personal
characteristics and abilities to learning to write, thus necessitating
the combination of the multiple components and characteristics of
SRSD instruction when teaching multiple students (cf. Harris &
Graham, 2009).

4.2. Lessons learned, limitations, future research and conclusions

In the current study, we successfully addressed many of the difculties of doing school-based intervention research, but others
must be addressed in future research. We also learned several
important lessons to share with other researchers. First, we were
successful in revising SRSD instruction for Portuguese teachers
and students. We adapted the SRSD lessons used in this study to
the Portuguese educational and linguistic context. Adapting SRSD
material, especially mnemonics, required carefully attention, as
we have seen. Critical to our success was collaborating with a Portuguese language arts teacher; he played a key role in the adaptation of the original mnemonics and materials for SRSD to
Portuguese. This kind of collaboration will be critical to investigating evidence-based practices developed in one country to the cultural and linguistic contexts of other countries. Similarly, our
research team included members who had done extensive research
on SRSD and PBPD for SRSD in the United States. This collaboration
helped ensure the integrity of the PBPD and SRSD approaches. In
order to test the generalizability of school-based interventions
such as SRSD outside of their original countries, it is very important
that such collaboration, or at least dialogue, be established.
Another important lesson we learned was to work to nd ways
to increase the rate of parental consent and student assent in
school-based research. Of the 436 students who took the pre-test,
we received consent and assent for 380 students. In future studies,
researchers might achieve even higher levels of participation by
reaching out to parents to inform them further of the evidence base
for the intervention we were studying. This has the added benet
of informing parents about the importance of school-based intervention research.
One of the most important lessons we learned concerns
resources needed to conduct school-based research. School-based
research is complex and demanding, requiring numerous
resources, and thus, funding. It is important to engage in discussion
with national government and organizational leaders to establish
the importance of such research and develop adequate funding
for these efforts. Such funding is not readily available in many
countries. Because our resources were limited, we faced challenges
that resulted in limitations in our study.
In the present study, we lacked the funds to holistically score
students essays at each time point. Qualitative, holistic scoring is
a common procedure for scoring writing quality in intervention
studies (Graham & Perin, 2007). Trained raters read each paper
to obtain a general impression of overall writing quality at that
grade level, attending to features such as ideation, organization,
sentence structure, aptness of word choice, and grammar. Training
raters, achieving reliability, and scoring large numbers of essays is
expensive. Future research on the generalizability of PBPD for SRSD
should include assessment of effects on writing quality as well as
structural elements. In addition, future research should investigate
the effects of PBPD for SRSD on national writing exams. Because
criteria used in scoring the Portuguese national exam include evaluation of opinion essays structural elements (premise, reasons,
elaborations, and conclusions), PBPD for SRSD in opinion essay
writing could impact results on national (or state) writing exams
targeting opinion essay writing.

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10

I. Festas et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology xxx (2014) xxxxxx

Another limitation of this study is the lack of observations of

instruction in comparison classes, which we did not have the
resources to conduct. Although we had the teachers answers to
the Writing Activities Questionnaire, future research needs to
include observations of typical instruction to rather than rely
solely on teachers self-reports. In the present study, it appears
some teachers in the business as usual comparison group spent
less time directly teaching writing during the language arts blocks
than did the teachers in the experimental group. While comparing
school-based interventions to business as usual in schools is
important, future studies might seek to control time spent specifically teaching writing. Research, however, indicates that spending
more time teaching many of the elements of writing comparison
condition teachers focused on (such as grammar and punctuation)
typically does not result in better compositions (Graham & Perin,
2007).
Further, we were not able to investigate an alternative, evidence-based writing intervention in comparison to either SRSD
or typical instruction. Future research should examine the differing
effects of different approaches to writing instruction. Another possibility in future research into the generalizability of PBPD for SRSD
outside of the United States is to compare the effects of SRSD
instruction in different writing genres (e.g., one condition receives
SRSD for narrative writing and the other receives SRSD for opinion
essay writing; both groups are tested in both genres), as done by
Harris et al. (2012) with students in the United States. This is possible as research indicates little to no improvement in either of
these genres given instruction in the other genre. This kind of
design has the added advantage of allowing all teachers and students involved in school-based research to participate in evidence-based practices.
Similarly, we were not able to investigate effects of PBPD for
SRSD among teachers on variables such as knowledge, efcacy
for teaching writing, attitudes toward writing instruction, and so
on. In future research, it is important to procure funding to assess
multiple outcomes among teachers in addition to delity of
instruction (Harris et al., 2012). Further, in this study, as in
Harris et al. (2012), some students did not make as much progress
as their teachers thought they could have given more differentiated instruction. Further research is needed to determine how best
to support teachers, during and after PBPD, in differentiating SRSD
instruction for students with varying writing abilities in their
classrooms. Establishing the importance of allocating more
instructional time for writing should also be addressed in future
research. Given the positive results obtained in the present study,
we are hopeful that in future Portuguese schools and their directors will allow allocation of more time to this kind of writing
instruction and research, allowing us to conduct studies further
examining our approach to professional development.
In conclusion, this is the rst study of PBPD for SRSD in opinion
essay writing carried out in Portugal, and the rst to demonstrate
that SRSD implemented by classroom teachers following PBPD can
be effective in teaching opinion essay writing to students outside
of the United States. Our experiences conducting this large scale
school-based intervention study resulted in important lessons to
share with future researchers. In addition, further research on scaling-up and cross-cultural generalizability is needed and warranted
to explore the effects of PBPD for SRSD in other countries, cultures,
populations, and genres of writing.
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