Writing about the Significance of Historical Agents: The Effects of Reading and Writing Instruction

Historians often present their interpretation of the past in written accounts. In order to gain deeper knowledge of the discipline of history, students must learn how to read and write historical accounts. In this experimental pretest--posttest study, we investigated the impact of a domain-specific reading instruction followed by domain-specific writing-strategy instruction as well as a repeated domain-specific reading instruction on the quality of written texts and on procedural knowledge regarding reading, reasoning, and writing of 142 10th grade students. Results indicated that both instructions had a positive impact on the quality of written texts and on the amount of procedural knowledge (reading, reasoning, and writing). However, students who received a domain-specific writing instruction after the reading instruction wrote better texts compared to students who only received a domain-specific reading-to-write instruction. In addition, we found positive correlations between procedural knowledge and the quality of written texts in both conditions.