The self in self-regulated writing of fourth to ninth graders with dysgraphia

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ABSTRACT

Dysgraphia, a specific learning disability, impairs legible and automatic letter production by hand, which can interfere with written composing. The goal of the current study was not to investigate effective methods for teaching self-regulated writing to students with dysgraphia, but rather to investigate their self that is involved in their self-regulated writing. Students with dysgraphia in grades 4 to 9 (17 males; 3 females, M = 139.44 months, SD = 12.15) composed six personal narratives about themselves and their relationships with others. Five indicators of self/self-others, informed by Theory of Mind, were coded in the six personal narratives. They also completed normed measures of self-regulation of attention and of written composing. Correlations identified which coded indicators of self/self-others and which measures of attention regulation were significantly related to the same written composing measure to be used as predictors in multiple regressions. Results showed that coded quality of Text Organization (Self Schema in Personal Story) for “My Life Before the School Years” as first predictor AND either Focused or Switching Attention as second predictor jointly accounted for significant variance and each predictor explained unique variance in writing fluency (timed composing). Implications of findings for educational practice and future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention regulation
• dysgraphia; self
• theory of mind; written composing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The current study was supported, in part, by a grant [P50HD071764] from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the University of Washington Learning Disabilities Research Center. Matthew C. Zajic was supported by a National Center for Special Education Research Postdoctoral Training Fellowship from the Institute of Education Sciences [Grant R324B180034] during the preparation of this manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Michael Dunn

Michael Dunn, PhD, Associate Professor Special Education and Literacy at Washington State University, Vancouver, WA. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in K to 12 education. For 11 years he taught students with learning disabilities in elementary and middle schools in Toronto CA. His current research interests include skills/strategies for struggling readers and writers and multi-tiered levels of support. Awards include 2011–2012 outstanding research article of the year from International Literacy Association and the Judy Nichols Mitchell Research Fellow Award.

Matthew C. Zajic

Matthew C. Zajic, PhD, is a National Center for Special Education Research Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Curry School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. His research examines the academic development of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with a specific focus on writing development and instruction. During his doctoral training, he was a U.S. Department of Education Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need Fellow specializing in assessment of students from special populations. He recently co-edited a special journal issue focused on approaches to understanding the writing development of children with ASD.

Virginia Berninger

Virginia Berninger (PhD Psychology John Hopkins University) has been a classroom teacher, resource room teacher, reading specialist, and university faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical School, and University of Washington–Educational Psychology. Currently Professor Emerita, University of Washington, she was Principal Investigator there of NIH grants on cross sectional and longitudinal studies of typical language learners and interventions for at-risk readers and writers (1989–2008) and a multidisciplinary learning disability research center (1995–2006, 2011–2016) and taught and advised students 1986–2016.