Teaching writing to young African American male students using evidence-based practices

Studies that specifically test the effectiveness of instructional procedures for improving the writing of young African American males who experience difficulty learning to write are almost nonexistent. Although writing intervention studies include these children, researchers rarely disaggregate their data to determine whether the writing treatment enhanced the writing of this group of students. For this article, we reanalyzed the data from 5 true experiments conducted with mostly young African American students experiencing difficulty learning to write. Each of these studies taught 1 or more fundamental writing processes or skills using evidence-based writing practices validated in previous research. Our reanalysis of each of these studies focused only on students who were male, African American, and experiencing difficulties learning to write. We found that teaching fundamental writing processes and skills using evidence-based practices improved these children’s writing performance, including their performance on skills directly taught as well as on other writing or reading skills not directly taught in some instances.