Explicit Instruction Writing Strategies: The Evidence Is Clear

Teachers Deserve Clarity, Not Chaos: What Research Really Says about Effective Writing Instruction

After spending countless hours interviewing educators over the past seven years, I’ve noticed a consistent theme that often goes unspoken: broad theories or big-picture ideas about teaching writing don’t translate into results.

Today’s classrooms are incredibly complex and demanding environments, and teachers face high expectations, limited time, and substantial pressure. With so much at stake, a clear, structured approach to teaching writing is essential.

In countless conversations, teachers describe the modern classroom as increasingly demanding, from testing requirements, data collection, new initiatives layered on existing ones, to rising expectations from families. In this context, structure and clarity aren’t just helpful; they’re essential supports.

And importantly, the research aligns with this need.

The Writing Crisis We Keep Ignoring

Karen Harris and Debra McKeown’s 2022 article “Overcoming Barriers and Paradigm Wars: Powerful Evidence-Based Writing Instruction” opens with a startling truth: most of our students cannot write well enough to meet grade-level expectations. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 24% of students at grades 8 and 12 are proficient writers. That means three out of four students leave school without the writing skills they need to succeed in college, work, or life.

For decades, this number has remained virtually unchanged. Despite countless new initiatives, writing curricula, and rubrics, our students’ writing outcomes have remained stagnant.

That’s not because teachers don’t care about writing. It’s because they’ve been asked to teach one of the most complex cognitive skills with too little guidance, too little time, and too many competing priorities.

Writing isn’t a single skill; it encompasses a range of skills, including planning, organizing, drafting, revising, and regulating one’s own thinking, all of which demand explicit instruction. As Harris and McKeown remind us, effective writing instruction involves far more than assigning a prompt. Students must learn to:

• Evaluate a writing task and determine its purpose and audience.
• Manage their ideas, emotions, and attention during the writing process.
• Set goals, self-monitor, and persist when writing gets hard.
• Draw on vocabulary, background knowledge, and genre conventions simultaneously.

That’s a tall order for a 10-year-old. And an even taller one for a teacher trying to differentiate across 25 students, all while navigating district mandates, pacing guides, and state testing calendars.

Why Writing Is So Complex and Why Teachers Deserve Explicit Support

Writing is not a natural process. Children don’t learn to write by osmosis or through exposure to good books alone. They need to be explicitly taught how to plan, elaborate, organize ideas, and regulate their own thinking as they write.

But here’s the catch: most teachers were never taught essential teaching techniques for writing. Harris and McKeown cite an article by Myers et al. that shows that only 28% of teacher preparation programs in the U.S. include a stand-alone course on writing instruction. For special education programs, that number drops to 10%.

In other words, teachers are being asked to teach a subject for which they were never properly trained.

When we give teachers vague directives like “use a workshop model,” “let students explore their voice,” “balance process and product,” we’re setting them up for frustration. Those phrases sound lovely on paper, but they don’t translate into day-to-day classroom decisions.

Teachers need, and deserve, a roadmap. A model that shows them exactly how to help students think like writers, not just write more words. That’s where evidence-based practices like Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) come in.

The Writing Wars: Process vs. Explicit Instruction

If you’ve been in education long enough, you know about the “reading wars.” However, you might not realize that a similar battle has been brewing in writing instruction for decades, as Harris and McKeown call it, the “paradigm wars.”

On one side are the advocates of process writing or Writers’ Workshop, . On the other hand, there are proponents of explicit strategies instruction. While both approaches extoll a process, regular and frequent writing, student-student and student-teacher interaction, and student decision making, strategies instruction is more explicit. It also follows a more systematic approach than process or writers workshop, and is generally a longer experience from start to finish as students learn to apply the strategies their learning to their writing.

The process movement, inspired by Donald Graves, reminded us that writing is deeply personal and that students need to see themselves as authors. However, even Graves himself admitted that the movement had gone too far. In a 1995 interview, he said, “We tried to do everything in conference. It can’t be done.”

Research confirms his concern. The average effect size for process-based approaches is around 0.34, which is considered a modest gain. In contrast, strategy instruction, like SRSD, can produce effect sizes above 1.0 and sometimes much higher. That’s not a small difference. In educational research, anything above 0.8 is considered a large effect.

Those aren’t just numbers. They represent real, measurable improvement. Students who once dreaded writing are becoming confident, capable authors.

What SRSD Actually Is and Isn’t

SRSD isn’t a curriculum. It’s a framework for teaching writing that blends explicit instruction with metacognitive and motivational supports.

At its core, SRSD is about making the invisible processes of good writing visible. Teachers model exactly how to plan, write, and revise while thinking aloud, showing students the internal dialogue of a writer and incorporating explicit instruction writing strategies.

Students then practice those strategies collaboratively, giving and receiving peer feedback, with scaffolds that are gradually removed as they gain independence. They learn to set goals, use self-talk, monitor their progress, and reflect on their growth.

Critics who call SRSD “robotic” or “teacher-centered” misunderstand it entirely. SRSD isn’t rigid or formulaic. It’s not “fill in the blanks” writing. The research tells a different story: when teachers use SRSD, students not only write better, but they also become more motivated, self-efficacious, and demonstrate greater engagement. They believe in themselves as writers.

And teachers? They report feeling empowered, not constrained. They finally have a clear path to follow.

Teachers Want to Get It Right But the System Makes It Hard

Here’s where the article hits home for me: the biggest barriers to evidence-based writing instruction aren’t philosophical. They’re practical.

Harris and McKeown outline four main obstacles that prevent SRSD and other EBPs from scaling in schools:

1. Lack of effective teacher preparation and PD: Teachers aren’t given the training they need. Even when Professional Development exists, it’s often one-shot and disconnected from classroom practice. In contrast, effective SRSD professional development typically involves hours of modeling, practice, and feedback, not a half-day workshop.
2. Curriculum adoption processes: Most district curriculum committees still prioritize factors like cost, digital compatibility, and brand familiarity over evidence of effectiveness. That’s a problem. As the authors note, evidence of impact didn’t even make the top ten criteria in a national survey of adoption factors.
3. Time for writing instruction: On average, elementary teachers spend just 15–20 minutes per day on writing. In upper grades, it’s even less. Writing is often the first thing cut when schedules get tight, yet it’s the very skill that supports learning in every subject.
4. High-stakes testing: Teachers feel pressured to “teach to the test,” narrowing instruction to formulaic responses that mirror test rubrics. The result? Students learn to perform, not to think.

These barriers aren’t theoretical. They’re what teachers tell me all the time. “I’d love to teach writing better,” they say, “but I don’t have time. I don’t have training. I don’t have support.”

It’s not a lack of motivation. It’s a lack of structure and clarity.

Clarity Isn’t Control, It’s Empowerment

There’s a misconception that providing teachers with step-by-step guidance somehow undermines their professional autonomy. I see it differently.

Clarity is not control. Clarity is freedom.

When teachers have a proven framework like SRSD, they can focus their energy on what matters, such as adapting, connecting, and teaching.

Harris and McKeown describe SRSD as “learner-centered but teacher-guided.” That’s exactly what today’s classrooms need. Teachers don’t need more untested ideas; they need tools that work and permission to use them confidently.

In every classroom I visit where SRSD is implemented with fidelity, I see the same thing: calm confidence. Students are aware of what’s expected of them and are achieving impressive learning outcomes. Teachers know how to guide them. The chaos of “What do I do next?” is replaced by purposeful learning and participation.

The Evidence Is Clear and So Is the Message

In their 2022 article, Drs. Harris and McKeown presented a discussion on SRSD facts vs. fictional misunderstandings:

• Fiction: SRSD is only for students with disabilities. Fact: SRSD benefits all students. Over 120 studies across grades 1–12 show strong, generalizable gains in writing quality and motivation for diverse learners.
• Fiction: Researchers get better results than teachers. Fact: Teachers implementing SRSD achieve the same, sometimes better, outcomes as researchers. Average fidelity is 90% (in a systematic review of SRSD professional development, Harris et al. teacher fidelity averaged 90% of SRSD components implemented).
• Fiction: SRSD creates formulaic writing. Fact: SRSD helps students think flexibly and adapt strategies. It teaches structure without stifling creativity.
• Fiction: SRSD is culturally narrow or “colonial.” Fact: SRSD has been successfully implemented in under-resourced schools and multilingual classrooms worldwide. Its focus on self-regulation, empowerment, and voice makes it a powerful tool for equity.

When implemented effectively, SRSD changes not only how students write, but also how they perceive themselves as learners.

What Teachers Keep Telling Me

When I talk to teachers, from Boston to Brisbane, I hear the same message: “We want to get it right. We just need to know what ‘right’ looks like. That’s not resistance. That’s professionalism.

Teachers don’t fear innovation; they fear wasting time on things that don’t work. Every new initiative added to their plates without a clear rationale or training erodes trust and adds stress. SRSD offers a way out of that cycle. It provides explicit instruction and structure, but it’s not rigid. It builds metacognition, but it’s not abstract. It respects teacher judgment while anchoring instruction in research.

It’s the clarity teachers crave and the evidence students deserve.

A Call for Evidence and Empathy

As I read Harris and McKeown’s work and compared it to my teacher surveys, one idea keeps rising to the surface: improving writing outcomes seems to require evidence and empathy. The authors do not frame it this way, but their findings suggest a straightforward truth. Strong instruction depends on research, and sustainable change depends on understanding the realities teachers face.

For me, this means recognizing that evidence alone can feel prescriptive, especially when teachers are already navigating crowded schedules and shifting priorities. At the same time, empathy without evidence leaves us unsure about what actually helps students learn. Teachers deserve clarity, support, and approaches grounded in what works.

Interpreting the authors’ message through this lens, improving writing instruction involves:

• High-quality, practice-based professional learning, not brief one-off sessions
• Curriculum decisions that take research seriously, rather than treating “research-based” as a checkbox
• Protecting daily time for writing, because the skill grows only when students practice it
• Making instruction explicit and transparent which reduces cognitive load and helps every student access strong writing strategies

To me, clarity is more than good pedagogy; it’s a form of care. In a profession that has been asked to do more with less for years, offering explicit, evidence-based guidance respects teachers’ time and honors their expertise. It communicates a message that aligns with the spirit of the research, even if not stated directly:

We see the challenge. We value your work. And we want to support your success.

The Bottom Line

Writing is how students make sense of the world. It’s how they learn, think, and express who they are. But to teach writing well, teachers need more than passion; they need direction.

As Harris and McKeown remind us, “Writing must join center stage with reading, math, and STEM in our priorities.” That won’t happen until we stop treating writing as an afterthought and start equipping teachers with proven frameworks, such as SRSD.

After seven years of classroom feedback, here’s what I know for sure: when teachers have clear, evidence-based guidance, they feel confident. When they feel confident, students thrive. And when students thrive as writers, everything else, reading, thinking, learning, rises with it.

Teachers don’t need more chaos. They need clarity. And I believe that clarity is the most empowering gift we can give.

References: Harris, K. R., & McKeown, D. (2022). Overcoming barriers and paradigm wars: Powerful evidence-based writing instruction. Theory Into Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2022.2107334

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