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Undergraduate students are commonly advised to make plans of their essays before they begin writing, yet there is little empirical evidence on the nature, role or efficacy of essay planning. This paper examines findings from a recent study of coursework essay‐writing as an aspect of student learning in the social sciences. A total of 16 Psychology...
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... the students conceive of essay-writing as argument, an essay is defined as the ordered presentation of a distinctive position or point of view well- supported by evidence (see Table 1 The particular character of this conception may become clearer by contrast with the second of the two History conceptions discussed here, where essay-writing is seen as arrangement. In this latter conception, as Table 1 shows, an essay is defined as an ordered presentation embracing facts and ideas. ...
Context 2
... the students conceive of essay-writing as argument, an essay is defined as the ordered presentation of a distinctive position or point of view well- supported by evidence (see Table 1 The particular character of this conception may become clearer by contrast with the second of the two History conceptions discussed here, where essay-writing is seen as arrangement. In this latter conception, as Table 1 shows, an essay is defined as an ordered presentation embracing facts and ideas. A comment by Donna illustrates this: ...
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The basic objective of this article is to measure the changing behaviour of those students who regularly participate in competitions like Oratorical, Essay Writing and so on. Data collected from the students who are studying under-graduation and post-graduation from various higher educational institutions in Chennai. Survey method was used to colle...
Citations
... I ansatsen finns ett intresse av att beskriva andra ordningens perspektiv. Vid andra ordningens perspektiv strävar forskaren efter att beskriva hur personer kan erfara ett specifikt fenomen (Marton, 1981) och även hur de kan hantera det (Hounsell, 1984). Detta kan jämföras med första ordningens perspektiv, där intresset i stället handlar om att beskriva hur något är. ...
... Denna typ av analys går att göra både genom att analysera elevalster (se t.ex. Hellman, 2024, Thorsten, 2019Tväråna m.fl., 2024) och intervjuer (Hounsell, 1984;Åkerlind, 2018). Den bygger på antagandet att elevernas kunnande och deras sätt att förstå beskrivningar i berättelser kommer till uttryck både i deras texter och i hur de pratar om sina beskrivningar (jfr Marton, 2015). ...
Syftet med artikeln är att öka kunskapen om hur elever i årskurs 3 och 4 erfar och hanterar beskrivningar i berättelser och vad de behöver urskilja för att utveckla detta kunnande ytterligare. Teoretiska utgångspunkter är narratologi, fenomenografi och variationsteori. Berättelser från 62 elever, och intervjuer med 13 av dem, har analyserats fenomenografiskt. Analysen resulterade i fem kategorier: Beskrivningar som att A. bygga upp en spänning, B. påverka läsarens sinnesstämning, C. överföra inre bilder, D. lägga till detaljer och E. rada upp händelser. Där A är den mest utvecklade kategorin. Baserat på det fenomenografiska utfallsrummet har sex kritiska aspekter identifierats. De kritiska aspekterna berör bland annat läsarperspektivet, beskrivningars funktion och skrivtekniska redskap. De kritiska aspekterna kan användas som underlag i undervisningen. ”I have images in my head, I try to describe them as much as I can” – How students approach descriptions in stories and what teaching needs to make discernable The purpose of this article is to increase our knowledge of how 9- to 10-year-old pupils approach descriptions in story-writing and what they need to discern in order to develop this further. The study is theoretically based on narratology, phenomenography and Variation Theory. Stories from 62 students, and interviews with 13 of them. The analysis resulted in five categories: Descriptions as to A. build up tension, B. affect the mood of the reader, C. transfer inner images, D. add details and E. list events. A. is the most complex category. Based on the phenomenographic outcome space, six critical aspects have been identified. The critical aspects concern the readers’ perspective, the function of descriptions in stories and writing tools. The critical aspects can guide teachers when teaching how to use descriptions in stories.
... Na AS, muito comum mesmo no ensino superior, os estudantes se ocupam da memorização de expressões e/ou de fatos apresentados nas fontes de informação, reproduzindo informações sem intenção em relacionar o objeto do conhecimento com outros já aprendidos (RICHARDSON, 2015;VALADAS et al., 2011) Apresentadas as diferentes abordagens dos estudantes à aprendizagem, há de se considerar sobre a sua influência nos resultados da aprendizagem (i.e., no tipo de produto de aprendizagem). Com efeito, estudos como os de Entwistle e Ramsden (1983), Marton (1975) apud Tait et al. (1988), Hounsell (1984, Watkins (1983), Biggs (1990) e de Gibbs e Lucas (2016) sugerem que a AS conduz, respectivamente, a: uma pior retenção de longo termo; uma compreensão mais deficitária da informação; um menor juízo crítico; uma menor criatividade; respostas de complexidade estrutural mais reduzidas; uma menor motivação para continuar a aprender e piores classificações. Por meio da AS o estudante até consegue acumular um quantitativo de conteúdos; contudo, muito provavelmente, terá dificuldade para processar integralmente as informações e compreendê-las de modo assertivo. ...
... Por meio da AS o estudante até consegue acumular um quantitativo de conteúdos; contudo, muito provavelmente, terá dificuldade para processar integralmente as informações e compreendê-las de modo assertivo. Em contraste, a AP tende a derivar numa retenção e compreensão mais eficazes da informação (HOUNSELL, 1984;WATKINS, 1983), assim como em produtos de aprendizagem de complexidade estrutural mais elevada (TRIGWELL; PROSSER, 1991), em maior satisfação com a aprendizagem (RAMSDEN et al., 1986) e em classificações mais elevadas (SOLOMONIDES; SWANELL, 1995). Através da AP a aprendizagem tende a ser consolidada com mais consistência, visto que ela envolve contextualizar o tema estudado, estabelecer relações e realizar inferências que possibilitam chegar a generalizações. ...
O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar até que ponto uma intervenção desenvolvida por meio do “diálogo investigativo”, aspecto que embasa o programa Philosophy for Children (P4C), é capaz de impactar as Abordagens à Aprendizagem (e as estratégias nelas envolvidas) de estudantes universitários brasileiros. Nesse sentido, com base num desenho inspirado no “desenho experimental de casos múltiplos”, oito estudantes de um curso superior brasileiro foram submetidos a uma avaliação comparativa, antes e depois de uma intervenção daquele tipo, quanto às suas Estratégias de Abordagem à Aprendizagem. Os resultados sugerem que, apesar de a intervenção não se associar à redução de uma “Estratégia de Aprendizagem Superficial”, parece associada à redução de uma “Abordagem Superficial – Realização à Aprendizagem” e ao aumento tanto de uma “Estratégia” como de uma “Abordagem Profunda à Aprendizagem” na maioria dos participantes. Para além disso, observou-se variabilidade interindividual dos participantes na resposta à intervenção.
... These findings are consistent with other studies on essay writing that identify a surface approach with the intention to reproduce a series of points (Prosser & Webb, 1994, pp. 125-138) and a conception of the essay as 'arrangement' with passive restatement and regurgitation (Hounsell, 1984). ...
The aim of the study reported here was to identify mismatches in students' and tutors'
understandings of the meanings of common assessment criteria used for undergraduate
essays, in order to inform teaching interventions to help students improve their academic
writing. Interviews with psychology tutors at a post-1992 university and focus groups
with undergraduate students at the same institution were conducted. We found that many
of the mismatches in understanding could be attributed to students adopting a surface
approach to essay writing, whilst their tutors expected a deep approach. However, we
also found that with respect to some criteria, in spite of evidence of students adopting a
deep approach to learning, significant differences in understanding existed - revealing the
difficulties students experience in attempting to bridge the epistemological gap between
themselves and their tutors. We conclude that facilitating an improvement in students'
academic writing requires staff to develop sensitivity to common ways students can
(mis)understand assessment criteria.
... Within these groups, all students came from similar disciplines, while the teachers had different backgrounds. Disciplinary background has shown to have an impact on teachers' opinions on most important elements of students' writing (Lea & Street, 1998) and on students' conceptions of essay writing (Hounsell, 1984(Hounsell, , 1997. Therefore, additional focus groups with different disciplines could have resulted in more and other indicators. ...
Current writing support tools tend to focus on assessing final or intermediate products, rather than the writing process. However, sensing technologies, such as keystroke logging , can enable provision of automated feedback during, and on aspects of, the writing process. Despite this potential , little is known about the critical indicators that can be used to effectively provide this feedback. This article proposes a participatory approach to identify the indicators of students' writing processes that are meaningful for educational stakeholders and that can be considered in the design of future systems to provide automated, personal-ized feedback. This approach is illustrated through a qualitative research design that included five participatory sessions with five distinct groups of stakeholders: bachelor and postgraduate students, teachers, writing specialists, and professional development staff. Results illustrate the value of the proposed approach, showing that students were especially interested in lower-level behavioral indicators , while the other stakeholders focused on higher-order cognitive and pedagogical constructs. These findings lay the groundwork for future work in extracting these higher-level indicators from in-depth analysis of writing processes. In addition, differences in terminology and the levels at which the indicators were discussed, highlight the need for human-centered, participatory approaches to design and develop writing analytics tools.
... Estudios sobre teorías implícitas en escritura Estudios sobre teorías implícitas de escritura en distintas disciplinas Estudios sobre concepciones implícitas de escritura y construcción de conocimiento Estudios relevantes (Hounsell, 1984;Campbell, Smith y Brooker, 1998;Lavelle y Zuercher, 2001;Boscolo, Arfé y Quarisa, 2007;Levin y Wagner, 2006) (Lonka et al., 2014;Martínez-Fernández et al., 2016) White y Bruning (2005) (Hernández, 2012(Hernández, , 2017Hernández y Rodríguez, 2018) (Villalón y Mateos, 2009;Villalón, 2010;Castells et al., 2015y Villalón, Mateos y Cuevas, 2015 Hallazgos generales en investigación Concepción simple: enfocada a la acumulación de información, acordes con el modelo de "decir el conocimiento", escritos de tipo reproductivo. Perspectiva transmisiva del aprendizaje y asociada a textos de calidad baja. ...
... Concepción epistémica: la escritura se utiliza como herramienta conceptual y retórica, acorde con el modelo de "Transformar el conocimiento". y Quarisa, 2007;Campbell, Smith y Brooker, 1998;Hounsell, 1984;Lavelle, 1993;Lavelle y Zuercher, 2001;Lavelle y Bushrow, 2007;Levin y Wagner, 2006). ...
... Otro aspecto de interés es la relación existente entre concepciones de escritura transaccionales o de tipo epistémico y un nivel bajo de concepciones reproductivas con una mayor calidad de la producción escrita en estudiantes universitarios (Boscolo, Arfé y Quarisa, 2007;Campbell, Smith y Brooker, 1998;Hounsell, 1984;Lavelle y Zuercher, 2001;Martínez-Fernández et al., 2016;White y Bruning, 2005) de un campo disciplinar determinado, en caso de que en este se promuevan prácticas de escritura académica enfocadas a la construcción de aprendizajes, lo que podría contribuir a la obtención de un elevado promedio de califi caciones. Sin embargo, sería necesario generar mayor investigación que permita comprender mejor la relación entre concepciones de escritura, tipos de prácticas de escritura y desempeño académico en los campos disciplinares. ...
Este estudio exploratorio tuvo por objetivo identificar el tipo de concepciones de escritura académica de estudiantes de me-dicina en sus dimensiones epistémica y reproductiva, las cuales es sabido que en las personas pueden presentarse de manera simultánea en niveles distintos, y analizar la relación entre estas y las variables género, edad, semestre y rendimiento académico. Participaron 359 estudiantes de medicina, quienes respondieron al "Instrumento de concepciones sobre escritura académica". Los resultados reportan un nivel elevado de concepciones de tipo epistémico relacionado con todas las variables. Las mujeres obtuvieron un mayor acuerdo con las concepciones epistémicas que los varones y ambos grupos presentaron concepciones reproductivas de nivel medio. No se encontraron diferencias signifi cativas entre las variables edad, semestre y rendimiento académico respecto de las concepciones epistémicas. En cuan-to a la dimensión reproductiva no se observó una diferencia signifi cativa referente a la edad, pero sí la hubo en cuanto a los semestres, la cual presentó un nivel medio en los semestres de 1º a 3º y bajo en los de 4º a 10º. Además, los estudiantes de alto rendimiento académico mostraron un nivel medio en creencias reproductivas. Palabras clave: concepciones del estudiante, escritura académica, estudiantes universitarios. This exploratory study aimed to identify the type of academic writing conceptions of medical students in their epistemic and reproductive dimensions and to analyze the relationship between both dimensions and the variables gender, age, semester and academic performance. A total of 359 medical students completed the "Conceptions on academic writing survey". Results show a high level of epistemic conceptions related to all the variables. Women indicated greater agreement with epistemic conceptions than men and no signifi cant differences were observed regarding reproductive conceptions. Moreover, no signifi cant differences were found between the variables age and semester. Students with the highest academic average showed a higher average level of reproductive beliefs and no signifi cant differences were found regarding epistemic beliefs.
... Estudios sobre teorías implícitas en escritura Estudios sobre teorías implícitas de escritura en distintas disciplinas Estudios sobre concepciones implícitas de escritura y construcción de conocimiento Estudios relevantes (Hounsell, 1984;Campbell, Smith y Brooker, 1998;Lavelle y Zuercher, 2001;Boscolo, Arfé y Quarisa, 2007;Levin y Wagner, 2006) (Lonka et al., 2014;Martínez-Fernández et al., 2016) White y Bruning (2005) (Hernández, 2012(Hernández, , 2017Hernández y Rodríguez, 2018) (Villalón y Mateos, 2009;Villalón, 2010;Castells et al., 2015y Villalón, Mateos y Cuevas, 2015 Hallazgos generales en investigación Concepción simple: enfocada a la acumulación de información, acordes con el modelo de "decir el conocimiento", escritos de tipo reproductivo. Perspectiva transmisiva del aprendizaje y asociada a textos de calidad baja. ...
... Concepción epistémica: la escritura se utiliza como herramienta conceptual y retórica, acorde con el modelo de "Transformar el conocimiento". y Quarisa, 2007;Campbell, Smith y Brooker, 1998;Hounsell, 1984;Lavelle, 1993;Lavelle y Zuercher, 2001;Lavelle y Bushrow, 2007;Levin y Wagner, 2006). ...
... Otro aspecto de interés es la relación existente entre concepciones de escritura transaccionales o de tipo epistémico y un nivel bajo de concepciones reproductivas con una mayor calidad de la producción escrita en estudiantes universitarios (Boscolo, Arfé y Quarisa, 2007;Campbell, Smith y Brooker, 1998;Hounsell, 1984;Lavelle y Zuercher, 2001;Martínez-Fernández et al., 2016;White y Bruning, 2005) de un campo disciplinar determinado, en caso de que en este se promuevan prácticas de escritura académica enfocadas a la construcción de aprendizajes, lo que podría contribuir a la obtención de un elevado promedio de califi caciones. Sin embargo, sería necesario generar mayor investigación que permita comprender mejor la relación entre concepciones de escritura, tipos de prácticas de escritura y desempeño académico en los campos disciplinares. ...
Este estudio exploratorio tuvo por objetivo identificar el tipo de concepciones de escritura académica de estudiantes de medicina en sus dimensiones epistémica y reproductiva, las cuales es sabido que en las personas pueden presentarse de manera simultánea en niveles distintos, y analizar la relación entre estas y las variables género, edad, semestre y rendimiento académico. Participaron 359 estudiantes de medicina, quienes respondieron al “Instrumento de concepciones sobre escritura académica”. Los resultados reportan un nivel elevado de concepciones de tipo epistémico relacionado con todas las variables. Las mujeres obtuvieron un mayor acuerdo con las concepciones epistémicas que los varones y ambos grupos presentaron concepciones reproductivas de nivel medio. No se encontraron diferencias significativas entre las variables edad, semestre y rendimiento académico respecto de las concepciones epistémicas. En cuanto a la dimensión reproductiva no se observó una diferencia significativa referente a la edad, pero sí la hubo en cuanto a los semestres, la cual presentó un nivel medio en los semestres de 1º a 3º y bajo en los de 4º a 10º. Además, los estudiantes de alto rendimiento académico mostraron un nivel medio en creencias reproductivas.
... Both groups showed improvement, but the intervention group showed significantly greater improvement on the scale. Based on Hounsell (1984), interpretation is the uppermost skill to convey a viewpoint and present it supported by evidence. Interpretation is a skill that "must be learned by practice and cannot be acquired by memorizing someone else's interpretations" (Baur, 1960, p. 107). ...
Abstract
The significance of this study is heightened by the fact that critical thinking (CT) is vastly seen as a major objective of higher education and the basis for the development of learning outcomes. Thus, this quasi-experimental aims at promoting and assessing students’ critical thinking skills (CTSs) through argumentative essay-writing. It also investigates the correlation between CT and essay-writing skills. The main question addressed is: what is the effectiveness of promoting CTSs through argumentative essay-writing among English major students in terms of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and explanation? An instructional material was designed and implemented in classroom teaching to enhance CT. The study was conducted on 98 English major male participants enrolled in an essay-writing course at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU), Saudi Arabia. The participants were randomly assigned to either intervention (n =49) or control (n =49) groups. Quantitative-qualitative methods were employed. Pretest and posttest were applied to both groups. The Facione and Facione (1994) CT scoring rubric was utilized for assessing CTSs. Findings revealed that CT and essay-writing skills are significantly positively correlated. Assessment of students’ essays denoted that the intervention group significantly surpassed the control in the five CTSs: "interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and explanation" (Facione 1990, p. 8). It can be concluded that explicitly teaching CTSs through essay-writing can be effective in the development of these skills. The study recommended that further studies be implemented in different universities and also using other CT definitions and skills, and comparisons between the findings could be made.
... Con relación al análisis sobre las concepciones o teorías implícitas, estas iniciaron con investigaciones sobre el aprendizaje en estudiantes y después fueron examinadas en la escritura de profesores universitarios (Lavelle, 1993;Biggs, 1988;Hounsell, 1984). En cuanto a su conceptualización, las teorías implícitas se definen como una red de supuestos, conocimientos y valoraciones acerca del proceso escritural. ...
En este artículo se presentan algunos resultados de la investigación titulada “La escritura científica en los profesores universitarios colombianos”, que tuvo como propósito analizar los factores institucionales, académicos e individuales, como posibles variables que hacen más difícil la tarea del profesor universitario, al momento de escribir artículos científicos como producto de su investigación. Para alcanzar el objetivo planteado, este estudio emplea una metodología cualitativa. La población participante estuvo conformada por 15 profesores de universidades colombianas. Para la obtención de los datos se utilizaron tres instrumentos: el cuestionario, la entrevista y el formato LDE (lingüístico, discursivo y estructural). Los resultados indican que factores como el prestigio institucional, el salario, los recursos institucionales y el tiempo son variables que afectan la motivación de quien escribe. Igualmente, las teorías implícitas o concepciones de los profesores sobre la escritura científica influyen en el proceso de escrituray en los modos de organización discursiva de los artículos.
... Both groups showed improvement, but the intervention group showed significantly greater improvement on the scale. Based on Hounsell (1984), interpretation is the uppermost skill to convey a viewpoint and present it supported by evidence. Interpretation is a skill that "must be learned by practice and cannot be acquired by memorizing someone else's interpretations" (Baur, 1960, p. 107). ...
The significance of this study is heightened by the fact that critical thinking (CT) is vastly seen as a major objective of higher education and the basis for the development of learning outcomes. Thus, this quasi-experimental aims at promoting and assessing students' critical thinking skills (CTSs) through argumentative essay-writing. It also investigates the correlation between CT and essay-writing skills. The main question addressed is: what is the effectiveness of promoting CTSs through argumentative essay-writing among English major students in terms of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and explanation? An instructional material was designed and implemented in classroom teaching to enhance CT. The study was conducted on 98 English major male participants enrolled in an essay-writing course at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU), Saudi Arabia. The participants were randomly assigned to either intervention (n =49) or control (n =49) groups. Quantitative-qualitative methods were employed. Pretest and posttest were applied to both groups. The Facione and Facione (1994) CT scoring rubric was utilized for assessing CTSs. Findings revealed that CT and essay-writing skills are significantly positively correlated. Assessment of students' essays denoted that the intervention group significantly surpassed the control in the five CTSs: "interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and explanation" (Facione 1990, p. 8). It can be concluded that explicitly teaching CTSs through essay-writing can be effective in the development of these skills. The study recommended that further studies be implemented in different universities and also using other CT definitions and skills, and comparisons between the findings could be made.
... How students conceptualise essay writing and how they plan and write their essays have also been explored in great detail since the early 1980s (e.g. Biggs 1988;Hounsell 1984). From a pedagogical perspective, such an exploration is relevant because students' approaches to their assignments, that is, their approaches to learning, correlate with the quality of their learning outcome (e.g. ...
The aim of this study is to explore Swedish preservice teachers’ performance in coursework essays about their observations and analyses of teaching situations. A total of 38 essays were analysed using practical inferences in which the students’ written utterances were interpreted as a means to an end. The results show that, in addition to the students who conducted their analyses in accordance with the normative way of understanding the task, there were students who engaged in ‘alternative performance’. This was done by negotiating the content of the course and explaining the observed actions of teachers in terms of the course’s theoretical perspectives. The results also indicate that, in addition to an analytical interest in understanding and explaining learning, the very engineering of learning becomes a prominent concern in students’ essays. It is argued that students who do not distinguish between these approaches face problems related to reductive and circular reasoning. To address these problems, it is suggested that educators mobilise students’ critical thinking and self-reflection, which may involve exceeding the administrative boundaries that frame single courses and unveiling the very foundations of teacher education.
