As writing researchers, we are filled with excitement and hope whenever writing appears on the agenda. Last week, AERO released its newly developed School Writing Instruction Framework (SWIF). This is a resource developed to support “school leaders and teachers to deliver evidence-based writing instruction across all subject areas”.
While there are a number of positives in this model and its accompanying practice resources, we argue here that these are based largely on a subset of evidence. It dismisses significant bodies of work with demonstrated impact on student writing achievement. Paradoxically, these were at the core of AERO’s previous documentation.
The evidence that got lost
In its 2022 review of instructional approaches to writing AERO rightly claimed, “no single pedagogy adequately addresses all aspects of the knowledge, skills and strategies required for skilled writing”.
The major pitfall of SWIF is its overwhelming focus on one of these approaches, applied linguistics. There is a total disregard for the most recent and compelling writing instruction recommendations based on meta-analyses of nearly one thousand studies in writing instruction.
Fundamentally, the SWIF is not well-aligned with the wealth of research showing that teachers should follow an integrative approach to teach writing. What does that mean?
Writing is one of the most complex learning processes. An integrative approach to teaching writing incorporates the explicit teaching and practice of foundational writing skills, such as handwriting, spelling and keyboarding. It also includes the teaching and modelling of higher-order skills such as planning what to write and revising the quality of texts. These are all part of the same instructional protocol.
Handwriting, Spelling and Keyboarding
By focusing on the teaching of language, genre and sentence structure, the framework wrongly assumes students reach the senior years of primary education and startsecondary with basic transcription skills. Evidence-based recommendations coming from robust national and international research show teachers need to continue supporting students towards developing transcription skills, including keyboarding. Transcription skills predict the quality and length of students’ texts, especially in the primary years, across languages and educational contexts, including in Australia.
A recent review of 36 meta-analyses of writing instruction led by Professor Steve Graham, a leading US writing researcher, showed that teaching handwriting improved students’ writing performance (K-Year 9). It was just as good – or even better – than teaching sentence construction.
Disappointingly, in the development of the SWIF, AERO has disregarded its own previous recommendations to “ensure adequate foundational instruction in handwriting and spelling” and to “teach typing skills and provide students with opportunities to compose using digital writing tools”.
Strategic approaches to writing
Another drawback of the proposed framework is the lack of emphasis on teaching students how to plan and revise their texts.
Graham’s research (based on reviews of hundreds of studies) reveals that cognitive strategy instruction improves student writing performance from kindergarten to year 12 for students who had literacy difficulties – and those who did not.
Graham offers compelling evidence-based research showing that teaching students to become more strategic writers enhances their writing. More specifically, teaching students how to plan, conceptualise, generate, and revise their written work is critical.
Again, AERO’s released framework and resources for writing and writing instruction fails to place much needed attention on how to teach students to become strategic writers. It also fails to recognise the importance of teachers modelling planning and revising strategies to compose different texts.
Where is differentiation?
While AERO’s framework promotes effective writing assessment to capture the writing needs of students at a school level, it falls short in addressing the degree of individual variation in writing performance that teachers likely encounter in their classrooms.
Our decade-long research on writing in Australian schools has shown repeatedly that students in the same grade exhibit dramatic differences in their handwriting and keyboarding accuracy and speed (also called automaticity).
Our studies have also shown systematic differences between male and female students. Girls do better.
Lastly, our recent study on reported instruction for struggling writers showed that teachers tend to use (at least on a monthly basis) 11 of the 14 practices recommended for struggling writers. The data also shows that the more confident teachers are in their teaching of writing, the more varied strategies they use. This evidence calls for a nuanced understanding of writing instruction and of specific strategies for differentiation, much of which remains silent in the AERO framework.
What SWIF gets right
1. The model highlights the need to explicitly teach writing and recognises that writing research and instruction have historically received much less attention compared to the teaching of reading.
2. It stresses the need for continuous assessment (formative and summative) and feedback to support students in understanding their strengths and the issues they need to improve to write different texts, for different audiences.
3. It reinforces reading and writing connections and the need to teach writing across all subject areas.
4. The model proposes a whole-school implementation approach, recognises the role of school leaders in supporting teachers, and promotes contextualisation of practice.
Looking at evidence from a critical lens
In 2020, AERO released the Standards of Evidence to “help teachers, educators, leaders and policymakers make consistent and transparent judgements when assessing evidence about the effectiveness of a particular education policy, practice or program”.
AERO says that meta-analyses represent high quality evidence ( are “Level 4 Evidence: Very High Confidence”). This is because meta-analyses combine the results of multiple studies to derive a more robust and generalizable conclusion than any single study could provide on its own.Yet only two examples of such studies are cited in the entirety of SWIF.
Academic researchers and organisations responsible for research translation both have a joint responsibility to present evidence in a complete, nuanced and transparent way to inform educator professional decision making.
This piece aims to contribute to a critical appraisal of AERO’s recent efforts, furthering a critical stance towards claims of evidence-based practice.
Deborah Pino-Pasternak is professor of early childhood education and communities, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra. She is a member of the Writing for All initiative, contributing to creating spaces for families to support writing in the home environment. Anabela Malpique is a senior lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. She leads the Writing for All initiative to expand knowledge on individual- and contextual-level factors in writing development.
