Using Self-Regulated Strategy Development to Help High School Students with EBD Summarize Informational Text in Social Studies

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often struggle to be effective writers. Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) is one approach to writing instruction that has demonstrated success for students with EBD. However, there is little research exploring its utility to teach writing to students with EBD in social studies. The current study expanded the literature base by investigating the effectiveness of SRSD to teach summary writing of informational texts to three high school students with EBD served in a residential facility. A researcher taught the SRSD lessons for writing using the mnemonic TWA+PLANS, which stands for Think before reading, think While reading, think After reading and Pick goals, List ways to meet goals, And make Notes, Sequence notes. Using a multiple probe, multiple baseline, across participants design, SRSD instruction resulted in a functional relation with student writing performance, as measured by summary elements, quality, and total written words. Improvement rate differences and Hedges’ g were also large for each variable. The intervention was implemented with high levels of fidelity, as rated by both the interventionist and an outside researcher. Limitations and future directions are discussed.