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Promoting Relational Reasoning in Elementary Students' Writing

Sun, April 10, 8:15 to 9:45am, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 144 B

Abstract

Objectives
Recent NAEP results revealed that a considerable percentage of elementary school students in the United States struggle to comprehend and critically evaluate text (National Assessment Governing Board, 2013). One way to alleviate this problem is by promoting students’ relational reasoning, which is strongly associated with reading achievement and critical-analytic thinking (Alexander, Dumas, Grossnickle, List, & Firetto, 2015). There is evidence that even young children are capable of relational reasoning (Tzuriel & Shamir, 2010), but students struggle to engage in this kind of cognition. Importantly, children’s relational reasoning can be supported with training (Christie & Gentner, 2014).
One style of writing, compare-contrast writing, is uniquely aligned with relational reasoning. In compare-contrast writing, students must generate comparisons between concepts (e.g., objects or ideas), requiring identification of similar features, and contrasts, requiring identification of incompatible features. Essentially, to write a compare-contrast essay, students must be able to engage in relational reasoning (i.e., analogy and antinomy; Alexander et al., 2015). Teaching students strategies to enhance compare-contrast writing is not novel (Wong, Butler, Ficzere, & Kuperis; 1997); however, to our knowledge, looking at students’ compare-contrast writing as a relational reasoning learning outcome has not been previously studied.

Framework
We examined the effects of a brief compare-contrast writing intervention on students’ relational reasoning in one fifth-grade classroom. Students previously participated in Quality Talk (QT), an approach to conducting small-group classroom discussions designed to promote students’ high-level comprehension of text and argumentation (Firetto, Murphy, Greene, Li, Wei, & Montalbano, 2015; Murphy, Wilkinson, & Soter, 2011). The writing intervention was developed to complement QT and was modeled after the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005) literature. In essence, the instruction taught students to generate arguments regarding how two things were similar and arguments regarding how two things were different.



Methods and Data
During the intervention, students: (1) completed a compare-contrast pretest essay, (2) received instruction and practiced the strategy over six weeks in both their writing and classroom discourse, and (3) completed a compare-contrast posttest essay. Essays were scored for the number of compare arguments (i.e., with a claim, reason, and evidence), number of contrast arguments, and overall quality.

Results
On average, students’ overall quality improved from pretest to posttest (see Table 1), and these gains were statistically significant (p < .01, d = 1.43). In addition, students wrote more arguments, with more use of evidence, at posttest, particularly for their comparisons; these differences were statistically and practically significant. These data show that students’ ability to engage in relational reasoning and generate compare and contrast arguments developed in line with the intervention. In the full paper, we will illustrate how changes in argument quality corresponded with students’ use of use of relational reasoning in their discourse.

Significance
Our findings have clear implications that support previous research suggesting the malleability of relational reasoning, specifically regarding how to teach students to engage in relational reasoning that translates to their generation of compare-contrast written essays, and reflects their high-level comprehension and critical-analytic thinking.

Authors