Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Appendix D 

(continued)

Appendix D 

(continued)

Recommendation 2, and also found indeter-

minate effects on measures of reading com-

prehension and morphological awareness.

104

Interventions including components 

from multiple recommendations. Some 

study interventions included multiple instruc-

tional practices related to more than one 

recommendation (multi-component interven-

tions or bundled interventions). For example, 

the Pathway Project intervention includes 

teaching writing strategies using a Model-

Practice-Reflect approach (Recommendation 

1), while integrating writing and reading 

instruction (Recommendation 2) and using 

assessments to provide feedback to students 

(Recommendation 3). Any component of this 

intervention—and thus the relevant practices 

corresponding to any of these recommenda-

tions—could have caused the reported effects 

in the study. 

The panel and staff considered the degree of 

bundling as one factor when determining the 

level of evidence. For studies of interventions 

with multiple components, the panel and staff 

considered whether all of the implemented 

practices could have plausibly affected writ-

ing outcomes, and which of the practices 

were critical to the intervention. The following 

factors affected how these studies contrib-

uted to the level of evidence:

•  The study could support a strong level 

of evidence for a recommendation if the 

recommendation’s practices were consid-

ered by the panel as a critical part of the 

intervention (i.e., the intervention would 

have been fundamentally different without 

the recommendation’s practices). 

•  The study could support a moderate 

level of evidence for a recommendation 

if the recommendation’s practices could 

have plausibly affected outcomes but 

the recommendation’s practices were not 

considered by the panel as a critical part 

of the intervention.