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Springer Educational Psychology Review: This Content Downloaded From 103.98.135.2 On Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:54:30 UTC
Springer Educational Psychology Review: This Content Downloaded From 103.98.135.2 On Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:54:30 UTC
Springer Educational Psychology Review: This Content Downloaded From 103.98.135.2 On Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:54:30 UTC
Writing
Author(s): Deborah McCutchen
Source: Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, The Development of Writing Skill
(September 1996), pp. 187-191
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23359411
Accessed: 07-09-2018 09:54 UTC
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Psychology Review
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Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1996
187
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188 McCutchen
emerged dur
tional Englis
the problem-
about writing
Several edit
Dominic, 198
Steinberg, an
nitive writin
the dominan
abandoning s
psychologist
ing (Newell a
the most ra
thought: No t
of Hanoi con
the writer's
and Flower (
over 15 years.
The reviews in this special issue document the power of Hayes and
Flower's theory, both as a description of empirical data and as a prompt
for new data generation. The authors of these articles extend the theoiy
proposed by Hayes and Flower (1980), most notably examining develop
mental issues that were absent from Hayes and Flower's original discussions
of writing expertise. Berninger, Fuller, and Whitaker survey a wide devel
opmental range, examining children's emerging writing skills as well as
adults' acquisition of an unfamiliar genre. They remind us that the move
ment from product to process is better viewed as a broadening of focus
rather than as a mutually exclusive shift. Reviewing their own research as
well as that of others, Berninger et al. use children's written products as a
window on the planning processes that generated them, documenting sys
tematic differences in the nature of written products across grades one
through nine and speculating on the rules of thumb that children may use
during on-line planning. Berninger et al. complement their discussion of
this "linear" development of writing skills with an analysis of "horizontal"
development, following adult writers via think alouds as they developed
expertise with a new genre encompassing new rhetorical purposes and
goals. The variety of strategies employed by the adults (including some that
resemble knowledge telling) demonstrates that writing skill is not a mono
lithic psychological construct independent of situation; it is rather a con
stellation of skills that depend heavily on context—social, rhetorical,
disciplinary, and professional (see also, Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Acker
man, 1988; Faigley and Hansen, 1985).
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Introduction: From Product to Process 189
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190 McCutchen
multiple discip
Flower have p
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Moffett, J. (1968b). A Student-Centered Language Arts Curriculum, K-13: A Handbook for
Teachers, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
Newell, A., and Simon, H. A. (1972). Human Problem Sovling, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs,
NJ.
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Introduction: From Product to Process 191
Nystrand, M. (ed.) (1982). What Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of Writte
Communication, Vol. 2. Writing: Process, Development, and Communication, Academic
Press, New York.
Nystrand, M., Greene, S., and Wiemelt, J. (1993). Where did composition studies come from?
An intellectual history. Written Commun. 10: 267-333.
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