Can Teaching Writing Enhance Students’ Writing Self-Efficacy: A Meta-Analysis

Writing self-efficacy acts as a catalyst for writing, an engine for engagement, and a determinant of the actions and resources writers apply while composing. As a result, it is important to ensure that school-aged students view themselves as competent writers. This meta-analysis examined if teaching writing improves kindergarten to Grade 12 students’ efficacy for writing, what writing treatments enhance efficacy, and whether instructionally induced writing gains predict gains in writing efficacy. Published and unpublished experiments using an experimental or quasi-experimental design (with pretests) provided the data for this review, yielding 105 writing treatment/control comparisons assessing writing self-efficacy in 65 experiments. Teaching writing had statistically detectable and positive impacts on posttest writing self-efficacy (effect size [ES] = 0.30), maintenance writing self-efficacy (ES= 0.61), and writing posttest performance (ES= 0.88). Three specific writing treatments produced statistically detectable improvements in writing self-efficacy: goal setting (ES=0.65), strategy instruction (ES= 0.47), and feedback (ES= 0.19). Teaching writing skills, however, resulted in a statistically detectable decrement in writing self-efficacy (−0.17). Instructionally induced gains in writing performance predicted gains in writing self-efficacy. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed.