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The Nature of Developmental Writing: Insights on Instructional Strategies for Student Success
This session will offer fresh, specific, research-based, and research-proven perspectives on the teaching of developmental writing. Its foundational content is a body of cognitive research that includes the presenter’s extensive twenty-year research program and captures the nature of developmental writing. The presenter will summarize the research, offering clear descriptions of what developmental writers know and do when they compose text and how they differ from at-level writers. This information points not only to what developmental writers need to achieve but also to how they can exceed all expectations for writing improvement and success, including the retention and application of skills studied, through appropriate learning activities. Within this framework, the session focuses specifically and in detail on materials, class activities, and assignments that have proven successful in raising the achievement rates of underprepared and reticent writing students. Discussion will take into account and address some of the factors that impede developmental writers’ success—lack of motivation, interest, or engagement; absenteeism; and the stigma often associated with development placement.
Objectives
Participants will
Who should attend?
Who is the speaker?
Dr. Linda Best is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Kean University in Union, NJ. She earned her Ed.D. from the University of Rochester (NY) in the area of cognition and instruction. She also directs the Kean University Writing Project, an approved site of the federally-funded National Writing Project, the largest and most successful professional development program for teachers in the United States.
Dr. Best’s teaching experiences include developmental writing, ESL, composition, and advanced writing through the graduate level. She has researched and written about the writing process extensively, publishing over 60 articles on the topic. Her work includes a dissertation in 1993 that expanded Flower and Hayes’ cognitive model of composing as well as two textbooks and a memoir. A new textbook project is currently in progress.
Dr. Best is most widely known for her critical studies on the nature of developmental writing, which support her work to develop materials that facilitate students’ progress, elevate their learning and esteem, offer authentic content, engage them in the deep suprocesses of writing (e.g., planning, monitoring, questioning, reviewing, and so on), integrate grammar into writing practice, lend themselves to active learning, and support the retention and application of writing skills for use in other academic situations.
Dr. Best has participated in nation-wide studies in developmental education focusing on topics like student absences, limited engagements, lack of motivation, low self-esteem, and the tendency to work toward minimum standards rather than excellence. She has served as an external evaluator at a number of institutions and has delivered well over 100 professional development sessions. Her work has transformed developmental writing into a thoughtful, critically-informed, and affirming process for both teachers and their students.
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