Theoretical Underpinnings
The Self-Regulated Strategy Development model (Graham & Harris, 1993) is built on
the foundation of metacognitive theory. John H. Flavell (as cited in Garner, 1994) is a
renowned cognitive research psychologist who first coined the term “metacognition.”
Metacognition is thinking about one’s own thinking and can be broken down into
subcategories such as metaperception, metacomprehension, and metamemory (Garner,
1994). Researchers have used the term metacognition in different ways. This often
contributes to the confusion about the concept itself. Metacognitive knowledge is what we
know about ourselves, how we best learn, which tasks we perform better or worse than
others, and which strategies work when approaching a task. This knowledge can be flawed
because it is based upon our perception of ourselves. Metacognitive experiences can occur
before, during, or after a learning experience such as reading a textbook, for example.
These are moments of awareness or realizations about cognitive strengths, weaknesses, or
performance. Metacognition frequently occurs during failure of cognition (Garner, 1994).
Often, especially with reading attention, metacognition fails when the reader does not
recognize his/her own lack of attention to the text. Cognitive strategy use comes into play
when students consider the task and employ certain strategies to be successful with that
task. The student is metacognitively aware of a need and applies a cognitive strategy.
Motivation, however, plays a large role in metacognitive strategy use (Garner, 1994). The
learner must want to accomplish a goal. Information-processing theorists such as Brown
and Campione (1977) believe that strategic processing (executive control) is at the center
of cognitive activity. Part of normal development is a gradual increase in our control of our
cognitive processing. Executive control comes into play when we need to turn off
“automatic pilot” and deal with a cognitive failure (Garner, 1994, p. 8). When we employ a
strategy to address the failure, we are using metacognition. Skilled readers monitor their
progress, revise strategies as needed, and allocate more time for reading. These strategies
can be taught. Research shows benefits of training for self-control and that active learners
can employ strategies and mediate their own learning (Garner, 1994).
Peter Elbow (1973) contributed to the theoretical underpinnings of the best practices
in writing instruction. Now Professor Emeritius of English at the University of
Massachusetts, Peter Elbow was a pioneer of the movement in the 1970s toward a process
approach of writing instruction and has influenced thought on the writing process with his
books Writing Without Teachers (1973) and Writing With Power:Techniques for Mastering
the Writing Process (1981as cited in Mahon & Pogell, 2008, p. 6). Elbow had initially
dropped out of graduate school at Harvard University when he felt he couldn’t do the
writing that was being demanded of him. When he returned to graduate school at Brandeis,
he was terrified of the writing requirements.
During these years I kept a kind of journal in which I began to really think
about what was going on when I got stuck. And by the end I had tons of little notes I
had written to myself and they helped me figure out what freewriting was. And those
notes eventually turned into Writing Without Teachers. So by the end of graduate
school, I had theorized it (Elbow as cited in Mahon & Pogell, 2008, p. 9).
Peter Elbow’s (1973) deconstruction of his own writing processes was a type of
protocol analysis that illuminated his cognitive process and paved the way for further
investigations. Since Peter Elbow’s initial publications, research has confirmed that writing
is a complex cognitive process (Hayes & Flower, 1986).
The research of John Hayes and Linda Flower (1986) has also added immensely to our
understanding of the behaviors and cognition of expert writers. In a 1986 article published
in American Psychologist, John Hayes and Linda Flower reviewed their research of the
writing process through the use of protocol analysis or thinking-aloud methodology.
Through numerous research studies, Hayes and Flower have found that expert writers
consistently utilize a number of cognitive processes. Expert writers establish goals early in
the writing process, think about purpose and audience, and arrange these goals
hierarchically. Expert writers use three major processes: planning, sentence generation,
and revising. Perhaps most importantly, Hayes and Flower discovered that writers rely on
strategic knowledge.
Writers construct an initial task representation and a body of goals that in turn guide
and constrain their efforts to write….The network of goals is also a dynamic structure. It
is built and developed and sometimes radically restructured at even the top levels, as the
writer composes and responds to new ideas or to his or her own text. (Hayes & Flower,
1986, p. 1109) In other words, expert writers are reflective as they write and use self-
generated strategies to move forward in their writing. They recognize and rely upon a
recursive process and have a comfortable understanding of the weaknesses and strengths
embedded in their own cognition. Expert writers know what they need to do to be
successful because they have thought about their own thinking. They have metacognitive
knowledge. On the other hand, children and other inexperienced writers engage in what
Flower and Hayes (Hayes & Flower, 1986) call knowledge-telling. In it (knowledge-telling)
the writer’s goal is simply to say what he or she knows about the topic, generating any
information that is relevant to the topic rather than selecting and organizing that
knowledge into a package designed for the reader” (Flower and Hayes, 1986, p. 1108).
Thus, inexperienced writers do not recognize the need for goal-setting and the use of
planning strategies is deemphasized as students begin to write.
