Writing Interventions for Students With Learning Disabilities: Characteristics of Recent Research

In this review, we synthesized the most recent decade of published research examining writing interventions for students with learning disabilities. Using electronic searches, we identified experimental, quasi-experimental, and single-subject design studies published in peer-reviewed journals from 2008-2017 that included K-12 students with documented learning disabilities. Eligible studies included at least one writing intervention and researchers assessed that intervention's impact using at least one writing quality measure. Across the 25 studies that met our review criteria, we summarized general study characteristics as well as information regarding study participants, research designs, writing interventions, and dependent measures of writing quality. We found a majority of studies were published in the first five years of the review span (2008-2012) across 12 different peer-reviewed journals. Study participants were primarily (n = 16 studies) in the secondary grades (i.e., 6 to 12). Most research designs (n = 19) were single-subject and nearly half of all studies (n = 12) involved writing strategy interventions. In most of the studies reviewed (n = 17), researchers created measures to assess writing quality outcomes. Implications for teaching writing to K-12 students with learning disabilities as well as directions for future research in this area are discussed.