Writing as a tool for meaningful learning: A quasi-experiment in science class

Abstract

This article presents new evidence to support the hypothesis that writing is an effective tool for meaningful learning of scientific concepts. With this purpose, a quasi-experiment was conducted with an experimental group, control group, pre-test and post-test in a public school in Santiago, Chile. The experimental group was given a teaching sequence designed to learn disciplinary knowledge from a process of textual composition that explicitly promotes the dialectic of writing; and the control group was given a sequence designed to learn the same disciplinary knowledge, but from traditional teaching strategies in the natural sciences. Through the enforcement of the pre-test and post-test, it was determined that students from the experimental group learned significantly more disciplinary knowledge than the control group. It is concluded that text production is an ability that should not only be developed in the subject of language, but in all other areas of the curriculum.