Promoting Expressive Writing among Students with Emotional and Behavioral: Disturbance via Dialogue Journals

Abstract

Written dialogue journals are intended to improve writing and encourage positive social skills by promoting individualized written discussions between a teacher and students' emotional and behavioral needs. This study investigated expressive writing using dialogue journals with five elementary students with emotional and behavioral disturbance (EBD), using a multiple baseline design across baseline, intervention, maintenance, and generalization phases. Students were randomly assigned to treatment order to meet randomization test assumptions. Baseline data were collected from student responses to traditional writing prompts. Individualized dialogue journals, in which students and teachers communicated daily to observed social behavioral issues, were implemented for the duration of the intervention. Dependent measures included student attention to task, length and quality of student written entries, and a student satisfaction survey. Visual analysis indicated an increase in time on task for all participants, and an increase in length of writing and writing quality for four of the five participants. Randomization tests applied to these data yielded significant results for all writing measures. In addition, survey results suggested that participants regarded the dialogue journals with mild satisfaction overall. Implications for future research are discussed.

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