By Marta Pellegrini, University of Florence, Italy
A randomized controlled trial led by Olson and colleagues, examined the impact of The Pathway to Academic Success Project, a teacher professional development (PD) program designed to improve the writing skills of students in secondary school. The program consists of an intensive 46 hours of PD in which teachers learn how to use a cognitive approach to writing instruction and program materials to improve students’ text-based analytical writing. The intervention specially addresses Latinos and English learners in high-need schools.
Participants were 230 teachers across grades 7-12 in southern California schools and their 2,733 students. Teachers were randomly assigned to the treatment group (n=113) or to the control group (n=117), and the treatment teachers delivered the program for one year. Two types of measures were used to evaluate students’ writing outcomes: writing data from study-created prompts, used for both formative and summative purposes, and a standardized assessment of English Language Arts (ELA) achievement. On the first measure, made by the researchers and rated by recruited scorers, the results were significantly positive, with no difference in effects between English learners and the other students. Results were not significant on the broader standardized ELA test (ES = +0.06, n.s.). Authors discuss the study limitations, and possible impact on results.
Best Evidence in Brief Index 