Developing revision strategies. Revisiting the knowledge telling, transforming and crafting paradigm

This contribution aims to explore how revision during writing is used by writers across the school curriculum until adulthood. The description is made against the seminal theoretical framework outlining writing development in three macro-stages: the knowledge telling–knowledge transforming–knowledge crafting paradigm presented by Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987), and expanded by Kellogg (2008). The knowledge telling stage characterizes younger and inexperienced writers, typically generating text by adding one sentence to the next, focusing on expressing the authors’ view. During the knowledge transforming stage writers will incorporate activities focused on improving the text for the authors’ benefit, leading to, e.g., attention to more global reorganization of the text. The knowledge crafting stage is typical for professional and experienced writers who adapt their texts for the readers’ benefit. The developmental model further connects increased writing practice to decreased working memory constraints. The research questions are quantitative and qualitative: Does the amount of revision (in proportion of time on task, and in number of revised characters) differ across ages? How can the qualitative differences be described and explained when revision strategies of children, adolescents and adults are investigated? The cross-sectional comparisons are consisting of experimentally collected texts, using keystroke logging, which allows for the in-depth study of what has been deleted and when, and for analyzing revisions and planning patterns (through pauses) at the same time. In total, 170 narrative and expository texts by L1 writers age 9–18, and adults are analyzed. The results show no linear connection between increase in age and amount of deleted text. The analyses of revision strategies reveal that students until 15 years of age are linear in both text generation and revision. In the later part of adolescence more students rearrange the texts more, both through text deletion, by reformulating the text-so-far, and by adding information. The adults adapt a more global revision perspective, and often rework and revise a major part of their texts. This tendency increases with the adults’ experience of writing. The results are used for suggesting an outline of revision development within (and perhaps between) each developmental stage.made through empirical data