Self-Regulated Strategy Development: A Validated Model to Support Students Who Struggle with Writing

Many students find writing extremely difficult and frustrating because they are not able to learn and apply the strategies used by skilled writers. Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is a comprehensive, flexible model that explicitly helps students learn to manage the writing process. An extensive body of research has documented that SRSD consistently increases content knowledge, writing quality, strategic behavior, self-regulation skills, self-efficacy, and motivation among students of varying ages and ability levels, but especially those with learning disabilities. Further, these improvements are maintained over time and generalized across settings, genres, people, and media. In this article, common challenges with writing are reviewed, the SRSD model is presented, and an illustration of how a persuasive writing strategy was taught to a small group of fifth- and sixth-grade students is offered. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)