A Brief History: Shifting Theoretical Landscape

Writing can be defined in a variety of ways. In this examination of learning to write, we view writing as a complex cognitive process and examine instruction that is designed to enable writers to communicate their ideas effectively and perform well in academic settings, on standardized assessments such as the Nation’s Report Card (Salahu-Din, Persky, & Miller, 2008), and in the modern workplace (e.g., Brandt, 2005). We do not discuss literary writing as done by writers such as Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, and others whose interviews appear in The Paris Review; nor do we examine the relation between writing and other modes of communicative expression (i.e., other aspects of the traditional language arts or combinations of text, visuals, and sound as discussed in the emerging field of New Literacies Studies). In this review, we examine what is known about writing development from empirical research with children and youth, and we summarize 30 years of writing intervention research that addresses one or more cognitive process deemed central in theoretical accounts of the writing process.