Upper-Elementary Students' Metacognitive Knowledge About Writing and Its Relationship to Writing Outcomes Across Genres
Wilson, J., & Wen, H. (2022). Upper-elementary students' metacognitive knowledge about writing and its relationship to writing outcomes across genres. The Elementary School Journal, 123(1), 99-127. https://doi.org/10.1086/720562
This study investigated fourth- and fifth-grade students' metacognitive knowledge about writing using a metawriting task and examined how that knowledge related to writing quality and length across genres. Students were most aware of general characteristics of good writing and production procedures, while knowledge of substantive processes and genre was less developed, and only some dimensions uniquely predicted writing outcomes.
Key takeaways
- Upper-elementary students showed uneven metacognitive knowledge about writing, with stronger awareness of general quality features than of deeper process or genre knowledge.
- After controlling for demographics and literacy skills, only knowledge of general characteristics of writing and production procedures uniquely predicted outcomes.
- Metacognitive knowledge about writing was related to performance, but not consistently across all outcome measures and genres.
Why it matters
This article extends Dr. Wilson's scholarship beyond scoring and feedback systems into the metacognitive foundations of writing development in upper-elementary students.
Coauthors
Joshua Wilson, Huijing Wen
Topic tags
External links