teaching research writing to high school students

Scaffolding Methods for Research Paper Writing

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

Students will use scaffolding to research and organize information for writing a research paper. A research paper scaffold provides students with clear support for writing expository papers that include a question (problem), literature review, analysis, methodology for original research, results, conclusion, and references. Students examine informational text, use an inquiry-based approach, and practice genre-specific strategies for expository writing. Depending on the goals of the assignment, students may work collaboratively or as individuals. A student-written paper about color psychology provides an authentic model of a scaffold and the corresponding finished paper. The research paper scaffold is designed to be completed during seven or eight sessions over the course of four to six weeks.

Featured Resources

• Research Paper Scaffold : This handout guides students in researching and organizing the information they need for writing their research paper.
• Inquiry on the Internet: Evaluating Web Pages for a Class Collection : Students use Internet search engines and Web analysis checklists to evaluate online resources then write annotations that explain how and why the resources will be valuable to the class.

From Theory to Practice

• Research paper scaffolding provides a temporary linguistic tool to assist students as they organize their expository writing. Scaffolding assists students in moving to levels of language performance they might be unable to obtain without this support.
• An instructional scaffold essentially changes the role of the teacher from that of giver of knowledge to leader in inquiry. This relationship encourages creative intelligence on the part of both teacher and student, which in turn may broaden the notion of literacy so as to include more learning styles.
• An instructional scaffold is useful for expository writing because of its basis in problem solving, ownership, appropriateness, support, collaboration, and internalization. It allows students to start where they are comfortable, and provides a genre-based structure for organizing creative ideas.
• In order for students to take ownership of knowledge, they must learn to rework raw information, use details and facts, and write.
• Teaching writing should involve direct, explicit comprehension instruction, effective instructional principles embedded in content, motivation and self-directed learning, and text-based collaborative learning to improve middle school and high school literacy.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Computers with Internet access and printing capability

• Research Paper Scaffold
• Example Research Paper Scaffold
• Example Student Research Paper
• Internet Citation Checklist
• Research Paper Scoring Rubric
• Permission Form (optional)

Preparation

Student objectives.

Students will

• Formulate a clear thesis that conveys a perspective on the subject of their research
• Practice research skills, including evaluation of sources, paraphrasing and summarizing relevant information, and citation of sources used
• Logically group and sequence ideas in expository writing
• Organize and display information on charts, maps, and graphs

Session 1: Research Question

You should approve students’ final research questions before Session 2. You may also wish to send home the Permission Form with students, to make parents aware of their child’s research topic and the project due dates.

Session 2: Literature Review—Search

Prior to this session, you may want to introduce or review Internet search techniques using the lesson Inquiry on the Internet: Evaluating Web Pages for a Class Collection . You may also wish to consult with the school librarian regarding subscription databases designed specifically for student research, which may be available through the school or public library. Using these types of resources will help to ensure that students find relevant and appropriate information. Using Internet search engines such as Google can be overwhelming to beginning researchers.

Session 3: Literature Review—Notes

Students need to bring their articles to this session. For large classes, have students highlight relevant information (as described below) and submit the articles for assessment before beginning the session.

Checking Literature Review entries on the same day is best practice, as it gives both you and the student time to plan and address any problems before proceeding. Note that in the finished product this literature review section will be about six paragraphs, so students need to gather enough facts to fit this format.

Session 4: Analysis

Session 5: original research.

Students should design some form of original research appropriate to their topics, but they do not necessarily have to conduct the experiments or surveys they propose. Depending on the appropriateness of the original research proposals, the time involved, and the resources available, you may prefer to omit the actual research or use it as an extension activity.

Session 6: Results (optional)

Session 7: conclusion, session 8: references and writing final draft, student assessment / reflections.

• Observe students’ participation in the initial stages of the Research Paper Scaffold and promptly address any errors or misconceptions about the research process.
• Observe students and provide feedback as they complete each section of the Research Paper Scaffold.
• Provide a safe environment where students will want to take risks in exploring ideas. During collaborative work, offer feedback and guidance to those who need encouragement or require assistance in learning cooperation and tolerance.
• Involve students in using the Research Paper Scoring Rubric for final evaluation of the research paper. Go over this rubric during Session 8, before they write their final drafts.
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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Four Strategies for Effective Writing Instruction

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(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is the single most effective instructional strategy you have used to teach writing?

Teaching and learning good writing can be a challenge to educators and students alike.

The topic is no stranger to this column—you can see many previous related posts at Writing Instruction .

But I don’t think any of us can get too much good instructional advice in this area.

Today, Jenny Vo, Michele Morgan, and Joy Hamm share wisdom gained from their teaching experience.

Before I turn over the column to them, though, I’d like to share my favorite tool(s).

Graphic organizers, including writing frames (which are basically more expansive sentence starters) and writing structures (which function more as guides and less as “fill-in-the-blanks”) are critical elements of my writing instruction.

You can see an example of how I incorporate them in my seven-week story-writing unit and in the adaptations I made in it for concurrent teaching.

You might also be interested in The Best Scaffolded Writing Frames For Students .

Now, to today’s guests:

‘Shared Writing’

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 24 years in education and is currently an ESL ISST in Katy ISD in Katy, Texas. Jenny is the president-elect of TexTESOL IV and works to advocate for all ELs:

The single most effective instructional strategy that I have used to teach writing is shared writing. Shared writing is when the teacher and students write collaboratively. In shared writing, the teacher is the primary holder of the pen, even though the process is a collaborative one. The teacher serves as the scribe, while also questioning and prompting the students.

The students engage in discussions with the teacher and their peers on what should be included in the text. Shared writing can be done with the whole class or as a small-group activity.

There are two reasons why I love using shared writing. One, it is a great opportunity for the teacher to model the structures and functions of different types of writing while also weaving in lessons on spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

It is a perfect activity to do at the beginning of the unit for a new genre. Use shared writing to introduce the students to the purpose of the genre. Model the writing process from beginning to end, taking the students from idea generation to planning to drafting to revising to publishing. As you are writing, make sure you refrain from making errors, as you want your finished product to serve as a high-quality model for the students to refer back to as they write independently.

Another reason why I love using shared writing is that it connects the writing process with oral language. As the students co-construct the writing piece with the teacher, they are orally expressing their ideas and listening to the ideas of their classmates. It gives them the opportunity to practice rehearsing what they are going to say before it is written down on paper. Shared writing gives the teacher many opportunities to encourage their quieter or more reluctant students to engage in the discussion with the types of questions the teacher asks.

Writing well is a skill that is developed over time with much practice. Shared writing allows students to engage in the writing process while observing the construction of a high-quality sample. It is a very effective instructional strategy used to teach writing.

‘Four Square’

Michele Morgan has been writing IEPs and behavior plans to help students be more successful for 17 years. She is a national-board-certified teacher, Utah Teacher Fellow with Hope Street Group, and a special education elementary new-teacher specialist with the Granite school district. Follow her @MicheleTMorgan1:

For many students, writing is the most dreaded part of the school day. Writing involves many complex processes that students have to engage in before they produce a product—they must determine what they will write about, they must organize their thoughts into a logical sequence, and they must do the actual writing, whether on a computer or by hand. Still they are not done—they must edit their writing and revise mistakes. With all of that, it’s no wonder that students struggle with writing assignments.

In my years working with elementary special education students, I have found that writing is the most difficult subject to teach. Not only do my students struggle with the writing process, but they often have the added difficulties of not knowing how to spell words and not understanding how to use punctuation correctly. That is why the single most effective strategy I use when teaching writing is the Four Square graphic organizer.

The Four Square instructional strategy was developed in 1999 by Judith S. Gould and Evan Jay Gould. When I first started teaching, a colleague allowed me to borrow the Goulds’ book about using the Four Square method, and I have used it ever since. The Four Square is a graphic organizer that students can make themselves when given a blank sheet of paper. They fold it into four squares and draw a box in the middle of the page. The genius of this instructional strategy is that it can be used by any student, in any grade level, for any writing assignment. These are some of the ways I have used this strategy successfully with my students:

* Writing sentences: Students can write the topic for the sentence in the middle box, and in each square, they can draw pictures of details they want to add to their writing.

* Writing paragraphs: Students write the topic sentence in the middle box. They write a sentence containing a supporting detail in three of the squares and they write a concluding sentence in the last square.

* Writing short essays: Students write what information goes in the topic paragraph in the middle box, then list details to include in supporting paragraphs in the squares.

When I gave students writing assignments, the first thing I had them do was create a Four Square. We did this so often that it became automatic. After filling in the Four Square, they wrote rough drafts by copying their work off of the graphic organizer and into the correct format, either on lined paper or in a Word document. This worked for all of my special education students!

I was able to modify tasks using the Four Square so that all of my students could participate, regardless of their disabilities. Even if they did not know what to write about, they knew how to start the assignment (which is often the hardest part of getting it done!) and they grew to be more confident in their writing abilities.

In addition, when it was time to take the high-stakes state writing tests at the end of the year, this was a strategy my students could use to help them do well on the tests. I was able to give them a sheet of blank paper, and they knew what to do with it. I have used many different curriculum materials and programs to teach writing in the last 16 years, but the Four Square is the one strategy that I have used with every writing assignment, no matter the grade level, because it is so effective.

‘Swift Structures’

Joy Hamm has taught 11 years in a variety of English-language settings, ranging from kindergarten to adult learners. The last few years working with middle and high school Newcomers and completing her M.Ed in TESOL have fostered stronger advocacy in her district and beyond:

A majority of secondary content assessments include open-ended essay questions. Many students falter (not just ELs) because they are unaware of how to quickly organize their thoughts into a cohesive argument. In fact, the WIDA CAN DO Descriptors list level 5 writing proficiency as “organizing details logically and cohesively.” Thus, the most effective cross-curricular secondary writing strategy I use with my intermediate LTELs (long-term English-learners) is what I call “Swift Structures.” This term simply means reading a prompt across any content area and quickly jotting down an outline to organize a strong response.

To implement Swift Structures, begin by displaying a prompt and modeling how to swiftly create a bubble map or outline beginning with a thesis/opinion, then connecting the three main topics, which are each supported by at least three details. Emphasize this is NOT the time for complete sentences, just bulleted words or phrases.

Once the outline is completed, show your ELs how easy it is to plug in transitions, expand the bullets into detailed sentences, and add a brief introduction and conclusion. After modeling and guided practice, set a 5-10 minute timer and have students practice independently. Swift Structures is one of my weekly bell ringers, so students build confidence and skill over time. It is best to start with easy prompts where students have preformed opinions and knowledge in order to focus their attention on the thesis-topics-supporting-details outline, not struggling with the rigor of a content prompt.

Here is one easy prompt example: “Should students be allowed to use their cellphones in class?”

Swift Structure outline:

Thesis - Students should be allowed to use cellphones because (1) higher engagement (2) learning tools/apps (3) gain 21st-century skills

Topic 1. Cellphones create higher engagement in students...

Details A. interactive (Flipgrid, Kahoot)

B. less tempted by distractions

C. teaches responsibility

Topic 2. Furthermore,...access to learning tools...

A. Google Translate description

B. language practice (Duolingo)

C. content tutorials (Kahn Academy)

Topic 3. In addition,...practice 21st-century skills…

Details A. prep for workforce

B. access to information

C. time-management support

This bare-bones outline is like the frame of a house. Get the structure right, and it’s easier to fill in the interior decorating (style, grammar), roof (introduction) and driveway (conclusion). Without the frame, the roof and walls will fall apart, and the reader is left confused by circuitous rubble.

Once LTELs have mastered creating simple Swift Structures in less than 10 minutes, it is time to introduce complex questions similar to prompts found on content assessments or essays. Students need to gain assurance that they can quickly and logically explain and justify their opinions on multiple content essays without freezing under pressure.

Thanks to Jenny, Michele, and Joy for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

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Supported by

Our 2020-21 Writing Curriculum for Middle and High School

A flexible, seven-unit program based on the real-world writing found in newspapers, from editorials and reviews to personal narratives and informational essays.

Update, Aug. 3, 2023: Find our 2023-24 writing curriculum here.

Our 2019-20 Writing Curriculum is one of the most popular new features we’ve ever run on this site, so, of course, we’re back with a 2020-21 version — one we hope is useful whether you’re teaching in person , online , indoors , outdoors , in a pod , as a homeschool , or in some hybrid of a few of these.

The curriculum detailed below is both a road map for teachers and an invitation to students. For teachers, it includes our writing prompts, mentor texts, contests and lesson plans, and organizes them all into seven distinct units. Each focuses on a different genre of writing that you can find not just in The Times but also in all kinds of real-world sources both in print and online.

But for students, our main goal is to show young people they have something valuable to say, and to give those voices a global audience. That’s always been a pillar of our site, but this year it is even more critical. The events of 2020 will define this generation, and many are living through them isolated from their ordinary communities, rituals and supports. Though a writing curriculum can hardly make up for that, we hope that it can at least offer teenagers a creative outlet for making sense of their experiences, and an enthusiastic audience for the results. Through the opportunities for publication woven throughout each unit, we want to encourage students to go beyond simply being media consumers to become creators and contributors themselves.

So have a look, and see if you can find a way to include any of these opportunities in your curriculum this year, whether to help students document their lives, tell stories, express opinions, investigate ideas, or analyze culture. We can’t wait to hear what your students have to say!

Each unit includes:

Writing prompts to help students try out related skills in a “low stakes” way.

We publish two writing prompts every school day, and we also have thematic collections of more than 1,000 prompts published in the past. Your students might consider responding to these prompts on our site and using our public forums as a kind of “rehearsal space” for practicing voice and technique.

Daily opportunities to practice writing for an authentic audience.

If a student submits a comment on our site, it will be read by Times editors, who approve each one before it gets published. Submitting a comment also gives students an audience of fellow teenagers from around the world who might read and respond to their work. Each week, we call out our favorite comments and honor dozens of students by name in our Thursday “ Current Events Conversation ” feature.

Guided practice with mentor texts .

Each unit we publish features guided practice lessons, written directly to students, that help them observe, understand and practice the kinds of “craft moves” that make different genres of writing sing. From how to “show not tell” in narratives to how to express critical opinions , quote or paraphrase experts or craft scripts for podcasts , we have used the work of both Times journalists and the teenage winners of our contests to show students techniques they can emulate.

“Annotated by the Author” commentaries from Times writers — and teenagers.

As part of our Mentor Texts series , we’ve been asking Times journalists from desks across the newsroom to annotate their articles to let students in on their writing, research and editing processes, and we’ll be adding more for each unit this year. Whether it’s Science writer Nicholas St. Fleur on tiny tyrannosaurs , Opinion writer Aisha Harris on the cultural canon , or The Times’s comics-industry reporter, George Gene Gustines, on comic books that celebrate pride , the idea is to demystify journalism for teenagers. This year, we’ll be inviting student winners of our contests to annotate their work as well.

A contest that can act as a culminating project .

Over the years we’ve heard from many teachers that our contests serve as final projects in their classes, and this curriculum came about in large part because we want to help teachers “plan backwards” to support those projects.

All contest entries are considered by experts, whether Times journalists, outside educators from partner organizations, or professional practitioners in a related field. Winning means being published on our site, and, perhaps, in the print edition of The New York Times.

Webinars and our new professional learning community (P.L.C.).

For each of the seven units in this curriculum, we host a webinar featuring Learning Network editors as well as teachers who use The Times in their classrooms. Our webinars introduce participants to our many resources and provide practical how-to’s on how to use our prompts, mentor texts and contests in the classroom.

New for this school year, we also invite teachers to join our P.L.C. on teaching writing with The Times , where educators can share resources, strategies and inspiration about teaching with these units.

Below are the seven units we will offer in the 2020-21 school year.

September-October

Unit 1: Documenting Teenage Lives in Extraordinary Times

This special unit acknowledges both the tumultuous events of 2020 and their outsized impact on young people — and invites teenagers to respond creatively. How can they add their voices to our understanding of what this historic year will mean for their generation?

Culminating in our Coming of Age in 2020 contest, the unit helps teenagers document and respond to what it’s been like to live through what one Times article describes as “a year of tragedy, of catastrophe, of upheaval, a year that has inflicted one blow after another, a year that has filled the morgues, emptied the schools, shuttered the workplaces, swelled the unemployment lines and polarized the electorate.”

A series of writing prompts, mentor texts and a step-by-step guide will help them think deeply and analytically about who they are, how this year has impacted them, what they’d like to express as a result, and how they’d like to express it. How might they tell their unique stories in ways that feel meaningful and authentic, whether those stories are serious or funny, big or small, raw or polished?

Though the contest accepts work across genres — via words and images, video and audio — all students will also craft written artist’s statements for each piece they submit. In addition, no matter what genre of work students send in, the unit will use writing as a tool throughout to help students brainstorm, compose and edit. And, of course, this work, whether students send it to us or not, is valuable far beyond the classroom: Historians, archivists and museums recommend that we all document our experiences this year, if only for ourselves.

October-November

Unit 2: The Personal Narrative

While The Times is known for its award-winning journalism, the paper also has a robust tradition of publishing personal essays on topics like love , family , life on campus and navigating anxiety . And on our site, our daily writing prompts have long invited students to tell us their stories, too. Our 2019 collection of 550 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing is a good place to start, though we add more every week during the school year.

In this unit we draw on many of these resources, plus some of the 1,000-plus personal essays from the Magazine’s long-running Lives column , to help students find their own “short, memorable stories ” and tell them well. Our related mentor-text lessons can help them practice skills like writing with voice , using details to show rather than tell , structuring a narrative arc , dropping the reader into a scene and more. This year, we’ll also be including mentor text guided lessons that use the work of the 2019 student winners.

As a final project, we invite students to send finished stories to our Second Annual Personal Narrative Writing Contest .

DECEMBER-January

Unit 3: The Review

Book reports and literary essays have long been staples of language arts classrooms, but this unit encourages students to learn how to critique art in other genres as well. As we point out, a cultural review is, of course, a form of argumentative essay. Your class might be writing about Lizzo or “ Looking for Alaska ,” but they still have to make claims and support them with evidence. And, just as they must in a literature essay, they have to read (or watch, or listen to) a work closely; analyze it and understand its context; and explain what is meaningful and interesting about it.

In our Mentor Texts series , we feature the work of Times movie , restaurant , book and music critics to help students understand the elements of a successful review. In each one of these guided lessons, we also spotlight the work of teenage contest winners from previous years.

As a culminating project, we invite students to send us their own reviews of a book, movie, restaurant, album, theatrical production, video game, dance performance, TV show, art exhibition or any other kind of work The Times critiques.

January-February

Unit 4: Informational Writing

Informational writing is the style of writing that dominates The New York Times as well as any other traditional newspaper you might read, and in this unit we hope to show students that it can be every bit as engaging and compelling to read and to write as other genres. Via thousands of articles a month — from front-page reporting on politics to news about athletes in Sports, deep data dives in The Upshot, recipes in Cooking, advice columns in Style and long-form investigative pieces in the magazine — Times journalists find ways to experiment with the genre to intrigue and inform their audiences.

This unit invites students to take any STEM-related discovery, process or idea that interests them and write about it in a way that makes it understandable and engaging for a general audience — but all the skills we teach along the way can work for any kind of informational writing. Via our Mentor Texts series, we show them how to hook the reader from the start , use quotes and research , explain why a topic matters and more. This year we’ll be using the work of the 2020 student winners for additional mentor text lessons.

At the end of the unit, we invite teenagers to submit their own writing to our Second Annual STEM writing contest to show us what they’ve learned.

March-April

Unit 5: Argumentative Writing

The demand for evidence-based argumentative writing is now woven into school assignments across the curriculum and grade levels, and you couldn’t ask for better real-world examples than what you can find in The Times Opinion section .

This unit will, like our others, be supported with writing prompts, mentor-text lesson plans, webinars and more. We’ll also focus on the winning teenage writing we’ve received over the six years we’ve run our related contest.

At a time when media literacy is more important than ever, we also hope that our annual Student Editorial Contest can serve as a final project that encourages students to broaden their information diets with a range of reliable sources, and learn from a variety of perspectives on their chosen issue.

To help students working from home, we also have an Argumentative Unit for Students Doing Remote Learning .

Unit 6: Writing for Podcasts

Most of our writing units so far have all asked for essays of one kind or another, but this spring contest invites students to do what journalists at The Times do every day: make multimedia to tell a story, investigate an issue or communicate a concept.

Our annual podcast contest gives students the freedom to talk about anything they want in any form they like. In the past we’ve had winners who’ve done personal narratives, local travelogues, opinion pieces, interviews with community members, local investigative journalism and descriptions of scientific discoveries.

As with all our other units, we have supported this contest with great examples from The Times and around the web, as well as with mentor texts by teenagers that offer guided practice in understanding elements and techniques.

June-August

Unit 7: Independent Reading and Writing

At a time when teachers are looking for ways to offer students more “voice and choice,” this unit, based on our annual summer contest, offers both.

Every year since 2010 we have invited teenagers around the world to add The New York Times to their summer reading lists and, so far, 70,000 have. Every week for 10 weeks, we ask participants to choose something in The Times that has sparked their interest, then tell us why. At the end of the week, judges from the Times newsroom pick favorite responses, and we publish them on our site.

And we’ve used our Mentor Text feature to spotlight the work of past winners , explain why newsroom judges admired their thinking, and provide four steps to helping any student write better reader-responses.

Because this is our most open-ended contest — students can choose whatever they like, and react however they like — it has proved over the years to be a useful place for young writers to hone their voices, practice skills and take risks . Join us!

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When teaching students how to construct research papers, the scaffolding method is an effective option. This method allows students to research and then organize their information. The scaffold provides understandable support for expository papers. Students greatly benefit from having the majority of the research and proper structure in place before even starting the paper.

With well-prepared references, students are able to:

• Study informational text
• Practice strategies that are genre-specific for expository writing
• Use an inquiry-based approach
• Work individually
• Work collaboratively

The following tips and methodologies build off the initial preparation:

• Students formulate a logical thesis that expresses a perspective on their research subject.
• Students practice their research skills. This includes evaluating their sources, summarizing and paraphrasing significant information, and properly citing their sources.
• The students logically group and then sequence their ideas in expository writing.
•  They should arrange and then display their information on maps, graphs and charts.
• A well-written exposition is focused on the topic and lists events in chronological order.

Formulating a research question

An example research paper scaffold and student research paper should be distributed to students. The teacher should examine these with the students, reading them aloud.

Using the example research paper, discuss briefly how a research paper answers a question. This example should help students see how a question can lead to a literature review, which leads to analysis, research, results and finally, a conclusion.

Give students a blank copy of the research paper Scaffold and explain that the procedures used in writing research papers follow each section of the scaffold. Each of those sections builds on the one before it; describe how each section will be addressed in future sessions.

Consider using Internet research lessons to help students understand how to research using the web.

Have students collect and print at least five articles to help them answer their research question. Students should use a highlighter to mark which sections pertain specifically to their question. This helps students remain focused on their research questions.

The five articles could offer differing options regarding their research questions. Be sure to inform students that their final paper will be much more interesting if it examines several different perspectives instead of just one.

Have students bring their articles to class. For a large class, teachers should have students highlight the relevant information in their articles and then submit them for assessment prior to the beginning of class.

Once identification is determined as accurate, students should complete the Literature Review section of the scaffold and list the important facts from their articles on the lines numbered one through five.

Students need to compare the information they have found to find themes.

Explain that creating a numbered list of potential themes, taken from different aspects proposed in the literature collected, can be used for analysis.

The student’s answer to the research question is the conclusion of the research paper. This section of the research paper needs to be just a few paragraphs. Students should include the facts supporting their answer from the literature review.

Students may want to use the conclusion section of their paper to point out the similarities and/or discrepancies in their findings. They may also want to suggest that further studies be done on the topic.

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Teaching students to write good papers.

This module is designed to help you teach students to write good papers. You will find useful examples of activities that guide students through the writing process. This resource will be helpful for anyone working with students on research papers, book reviews, and other analytical essays. The Center for Teaching and Learning also has comprehensive writing resources featuring general writing tips, citation guidelines, model papers, and ways to get more help at Yale.

There are several steps TFs and faculty can take to prepare students to write good papers. If you are responsible for making writing assignments, remember that most students need to practice the basic elements of writing — purpose, argument, evidence, style — and that these skills are best practiced in shorter, focused assignments. Opt for shorter essays and papers throughout the semester in lieu of long, end-of-semester research papers. Build opportunities for revision and refinement into your assignments and lesson plans.

For each assignment, there are steps you can take to help students produce better writing . First, use strategies for making sure students understand the assignment. Use individual meetings, short, in-class writing exercises or small-group activities to make sure students can articulate what their paper will accomplish (describe, compare/contrast, explain, argue) and to what standard.

Second, guide students in selecting and analyzing primary and secondary source material. Use in-class activities to teach students: the difference between types of sources and their uses; strategies for evaluating a source and its value in a given argument; and examples of how to incorporate source material into an argument or other text with proper citation .

Finally, teach them to construct strong thesis statements and support their arguments with evidence. Use model documents to introduce students to strong, arguable statements. Give students practice developing statements from scratch and refining statements that lack importance or clarity . Ask students to analyze the relationship between thesis statements and supporting evidence in short essays. Teach them to use the active voice .

Students who have never gone through a thorough revision process are used to handing in and receiving poor grades on first drafts. These students will lack confidence in their ability to produce good writing. Do all you can to let your students experience good writing through revision. Require drafts of papers, or parts of papers, so students can learn to apply the standards of good writing to make their papers better. Have students read and comment on each other’s papers to give them practice reading for clarity, style, persuasiveness, etc.

By focusing on the process of writing, not just the product, you will help students write better papers and gain confidence along the way.

For those of you who work with teaching fellows, we also include an  agenda  for teaching these skills to others and a workshop  evaluation form .

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• Research Skills

50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills

Please note, I am no longer blogging and this post hasn’t updated since April 2020.

For a number of years, Seth Godin has been talking about the need to “ connect the dots” rather than “collect the dots” . That is, rather than memorising information, students must be able to learn how to solve new problems, see patterns, and combine multiple perspectives.

Solid research skills underpin this. Having the fluency to find and use information successfully is an essential skill for life and work.

Today’s students have more information at their fingertips than ever before and this means the role of the teacher as a guide is more important than ever.

You might be wondering how you can fit teaching research skills into a busy curriculum? There aren’t enough hours in the day! The good news is, there are so many mini-lessons you can do to build students’ skills over time.

This post outlines 50 ideas for activities that could be done in just a few minutes (or stretched out to a longer lesson if you have the time!).

Learn More About The Research Process

I have a popular post called Teach Students How To Research Online In 5 Steps. It outlines a five-step approach to break down the research process into manageable chunks.

This post shares ideas for mini-lessons that could be carried out in the classroom throughout the year to help build students’ skills in the five areas of: clarify, search, delve, evaluate , and cite . It also includes ideas for learning about staying organised throughout the research process.

Notes about the 50 research activities:

• These ideas can be adapted for different age groups from middle primary/elementary to senior high school.
• Many of these ideas can be repeated throughout the year.
• Depending on the age of your students, you can decide whether the activity will be more teacher or student led. Some activities suggest coming up with a list of words, questions, or phrases. Teachers of younger students could generate these themselves.
• Depending on how much time you have, many of the activities can be either quickly modelled by the teacher, or extended to an hour-long lesson.
• Some of the activities could fit into more than one category.
• Looking for simple articles for younger students for some of the activities? Try DOGO News or Time for Kids . Newsela is also a great resource but you do need to sign up for free account.
• Why not try a few activities in a staff meeting? Everyone can always brush up on their own research skills!

• Choose a topic (e.g. koalas, basketball, Mount Everest) . Write as many questions as you can think of relating to that topic.
• Make a mindmap of a topic you’re currently learning about. This could be either on paper or using an online tool like Bubbl.us .
• Read a short book or article. Make a list of 5 words from the text that you don’t totally understand. Look up the meaning of the words in a dictionary (online or paper).
• Look at a printed or digital copy of a short article with the title removed. Come up with as many different titles as possible that would fit the article.
• Come up with a list of 5 different questions you could type into Google (e.g. Which country in Asia has the largest population?) Circle the keywords in each question.
• Write down 10 words to describe a person, place, or topic. Come up with synonyms for these words using a tool like  Thesaurus.com .
• Write pairs of synonyms on post-it notes (this could be done by the teacher or students). Each student in the class has one post-it note and walks around the classroom to find the person with the synonym to their word.

• Explore how to search Google using your voice (i.e. click/tap on the microphone in the Google search box or on your phone/tablet keyboard) . List the pros and cons of using voice and text to search.
• Open two different search engines in your browser such as Google and Bing. Type in a query and compare the results. Do all search engines work exactly the same?
• Have students work in pairs to try out a different search engine (there are 11 listed here ). Report back to the class on the pros and cons.
• Think of something you’re curious about, (e.g. What endangered animals live in the Amazon Rainforest?). Open Google in two tabs. In one search, type in one or two keywords ( e.g. Amazon Rainforest) . In the other search type in multiple relevant keywords (e.g. endangered animals Amazon rainforest).  Compare the results. Discuss the importance of being specific.
• Similar to above, try two different searches where one phrase is in quotation marks and the other is not. For example, Origin of “raining cats and dogs” and Origin of raining cats and dogs . Discuss the difference that using quotation marks makes (It tells Google to search for the precise keywords in order.)
• Try writing a question in Google with a few minor spelling mistakes. What happens? What happens if you add or leave out punctuation ?
• Try the AGoogleADay.com daily search challenges from Google. The questions help older students learn about choosing keywords, deconstructing questions, and altering keywords.
• Explore how Google uses autocomplete to suggest searches quickly. Try it out by typing in various queries (e.g. How to draw… or What is the tallest…). Discuss how these suggestions come about, how to use them, and whether they’re usually helpful.
• Watch this video  from Code.org to learn more about how search works .
• Take a look at  20 Instant Google Searches your Students Need to Know  by Eric Curts to learn about “ instant searches ”. Try one to try out. Perhaps each student could be assigned one to try and share with the class.
• Experiment with typing some questions into Google that have a clear answer (e.g. “What is a parallelogram?” or “What is the highest mountain in the world?” or “What is the population of Australia?”). Look at the different ways the answers are displayed instantly within the search results — dictionary definitions, image cards, graphs etc.

• Watch the video How Does Google Know Everything About Me?  by Scientific American. Discuss the PageRank algorithm and how Google uses your data to customise search results.
• Brainstorm a list of popular domains   (e.g. .com, .com.au, or your country’s domain) . Discuss if any domains might be more reliable than others and why (e.g. .gov or .edu) .
• Discuss (or research) ways to open Google search results in a new tab to save your original search results  (i.e. right-click > open link in new tab or press control/command and click the link).
• Try out a few Google searches (perhaps start with things like “car service” “cat food” or “fresh flowers”). A re there advertisements within the results? Discuss where these appear and how to spot them.
• Look at ways to filter search results by using the tabs at the top of the page in Google (i.e. news, images, shopping, maps, videos etc.). Do the same filters appear for all Google searches? Try out a few different searches and see.
• Type a question into Google and look for the “People also ask” and “Searches related to…” sections. Discuss how these could be useful. When should you use them or ignore them so you don’t go off on an irrelevant tangent? Is the information in the drop-down section under “People also ask” always the best?
• Often, more current search results are more useful. Click on “tools” under the Google search box and then “any time” and your time frame of choice such as “Past month” or “Past year”.
• Have students annotate their own “anatomy of a search result” example like the one I made below. Explore the different ways search results display; some have more details like sitelinks and some do not.

• Find two articles on a news topic from different publications. Or find a news article and an opinion piece on the same topic. Make a Venn diagram comparing the similarities and differences.
• Choose a graph, map, or chart from The New York Times’ What’s Going On In This Graph series . Have a whole class or small group discussion about the data.
• Look at images stripped of their captions on What’s Going On In This Picture? by The New York Times. Discuss the images in pairs or small groups. What can you tell?
• Explore a website together as a class or in pairs — perhaps a news website. Identify all the advertisements .
• Have a look at a fake website either as a whole class or in pairs/small groups. See if students can spot that these sites are not real. Discuss the fact that you can’t believe everything that’s online. Get started with these four examples of fake websites from Eric Curts.
• Give students a copy of my website evaluation flowchart to analyse and then discuss as a class. Read more about the flowchart in this post.
• As a class, look at a prompt from Mike Caulfield’s Four Moves . Either together or in small groups, have students fact check the prompts on the site. This resource explains more about the fact checking process. Note: some of these prompts are not suitable for younger students.
• Practice skim reading — give students one minute to read a short article. Ask them to discuss what stood out to them. Headings? Bold words? Quotes? Then give students ten minutes to read the same article and discuss deep reading.

All students can benefit from learning about plagiarism, copyright, how to write information in their own words, and how to acknowledge the source. However, the formality of this process will depend on your students’ age and your curriculum guidelines.

• Watch the video Citation for Beginners for an introduction to citation. Discuss the key points to remember.
• Look up the definition of plagiarism using a variety of sources (dictionary, video, Wikipedia etc.). Create a definition as a class.
• Find an interesting video on YouTube (perhaps a “life hack” video) and write a brief summary in your own words.
• Have students pair up and tell each other about their weekend. Then have the listener try to verbalise or write their friend’s recount in their own words. Discuss how accurate this was.
• Read the class a copy of a well known fairy tale. Have them write a short summary in their own words. Compare the versions that different students come up with.
• Try out MyBib — a handy free online tool without ads that helps you create citations quickly and easily.
• Give primary/elementary students a copy of Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Citation that matches their grade level (the guide covers grades 1 to 6). Choose one form of citation and create some examples as a class (e.g. a website or a book).
• Make a list of things that are okay and not okay to do when researching, e.g. copy text from a website, use any image from Google images, paraphrase in your own words and cite your source, add a short quote and cite the source. 
• Have students read a short article and then come up with a summary that would be considered plagiarism and one that would not be considered plagiarism. These could be shared with the class and the students asked to decide which one shows an example of plagiarism .
• Older students could investigate the difference between paraphrasing and summarising . They could create a Venn diagram that compares the two.
• Write a list of statements on the board that might be true or false ( e.g. The 1956 Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia. The rhinoceros is the largest land animal in the world. The current marathon world record is 2 hours, 7 minutes). Have students research these statements and decide whether they’re true or false by sharing their citations.

Staying Organised

• Make a list of different ways you can take notes while researching — Google Docs, Google Keep, pen and paper etc. Discuss the pros and cons of each method.
• Learn the keyboard shortcuts to help manage tabs (e.g. open new tab, reopen closed tab, go to next tab etc.). Perhaps students could all try out the shortcuts and share their favourite one with the class.
• Find a collection of resources on a topic and add them to a Wakelet .
• Listen to a short podcast or watch a brief video on a certain topic and sketchnote ideas. Sylvia Duckworth has some great tips about live sketchnoting
• Learn how to use split screen to have one window open with your research, and another open with your notes (e.g. a Google spreadsheet, Google Doc, Microsoft Word or OneNote etc.) .

All teachers know it’s important to teach students to research well. Investing time in this process will also pay off throughout the year and the years to come. Students will be able to focus on analysing and synthesizing information, rather than the mechanics of the research process.

By trying out as many of these mini-lessons as possible throughout the year, you’ll be really helping your students to thrive in all areas of school, work, and life.

Also remember to model your own searches explicitly during class time. Talk out loud as you look things up and ask students for input. Learning together is the way to go!

You Might Also Enjoy Reading:

How To Evaluate Websites: A Guide For Teachers And Students

Five Tips for Teaching Students How to Research and Filter Information

Typing Tips: The How and Why of Teaching Students Keyboarding Skills

8 Ways Teachers And Schools Can Communicate With Parents

10 Replies to “50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills”

Loving these ideas, thank you

This list is amazing. Thank you so much!

So glad it’s helpful, Alex! 🙂

Hi I am a student who really needed some help on how to reasearch thanks for the help.

So glad it helped! 🙂

seriously seriously grateful for your post. 🙂

So glad it’s helpful! Makes my day 🙂

How do you get the 50 mini lessons. I got the free one but am interested in the full version.

Hi Tracey, The link to the PDF with the 50 mini lessons is in the post. Here it is . Check out this post if you need more advice on teaching students how to research online. Hope that helps! Kathleen

Best wishes to you as you face your health battler. Hoping you’ve come out stronger and healthier from it. Your website is so helpful.

Comments are closed.

How to teach research skills to high school students: 12 tips

by mindroar | Oct 10, 2021 | blog | 0 comments

Teachers often find it difficult to decide how to teach research skills to high school students. You probably feel students should know how to do research by high school. But often students’ skills are lacking in one or more areas.

Today we’re not going to give you research skills lesson plans for high school. But we will give you 12 tips for how to teach research skills to high school students. Bonus, the tips will make it quick, fun, and easy.

One of my favorite ways of teaching research skills to high school students is to use the Crash Course Navigating Digital Information series.

The videos are free and short (between ten and fifteen minutes each). They cover information such as evaluating the trustworthiness of sources, using Wikipedia, lateral reading, and understanding how the source medium can affect the message.

Another thing I like to integrate into my lessons are the Crash Course Study Skills videos . Again, they’re free and short. Plus they are an easy way to refresh study skills such as:

• note-taking
• writing papers
• editing papers
• getting organized
• and studying for tests and exams.

If you’re ready to get started, we’ll give you links to great resources that you can integrate into your lessons. Because often students just need a refresh on a particular skill and not a whole semester-long course.

1. Why learn digital research skills?

Tip number one of how to teach research skills to high school students. Address the dreaded ‘why?’ questions upfront. You know the questions: Why do we have to do this? When am I ever going to use this?

If your students understand why they need good research skills and know that you will show them specific strategies to improve their skills, they are far more likely to buy into learning about how to research effectively.

An easy way to answer this question is that students spend so much time online. Some people spend almost an entire day online each week.

It’s amazing to have such easy access to information, unlike the pre-internet days. But there is far more misinformation and disinformation online.

A webpage, Facebook post, Instagram post, YouTube video, infographic, meme, gif, TikTok video (etc etc) can be created by just about anyone with a phone. And it’s easy to create them in a way that looks professional and legitimate.

This can make it hard for people to know what is real, true, evidence-based information and what is not.

The first Crash Course Navigating Digital Information video gets into the nitty-gritty of why we should learn strategies for evaluating the information we find (online or otherwise!).

An easy way to answer the ‘why’ questions your high schoolers will ask, the video is an excellent resource.

2. Teaching your students to fact check

Tip number two for teaching research skills to high school students is to teach your students concrete strategies for how to check facts.

It’s surprising how many students will hand in work with blatant factual errors. Errors they could have avoided had they done a quick fact check.

An easy way to broach this research skill in high school is to watch the second video in the Crash Course Navigating Digital Information series. It explains what fact-checking is, why people should do it, and how to make it a habit.

You can explain to your students that they’ll write better papers if they learn to fact-check. But they’ll also make better decisions if they make fact-checking a habit.

The video looks at why people are more likely to believe mis- or disinformation online. And it shows students a series of questions they can use to identify mis- or disinformation.

The video also discusses why it’s important to find a few generally reliable sources of information and to use those as a way to fact-check other online sources.

3. Teaching your students how and why to read laterally

This ties in with tip number 2 – teach concrete research strategies – but it is more specific. Fact-checking tends to be checking what claim sources are making, who is making the claim, and corroborating the claim with other sources.

But lateral reading is another concrete research skills strategy that you can teach to students. This skill helps students spot inaccurate information quickly and avoid wasting valuable research time.

One of the best (and easiest!) research skills for high school students to learn is how to read laterally. And teachers can demonstrate it so, so easily. As John Green says in the third Crash Course Navigating Digital Information video , just open another tab!

The video also shows students good websites to use to check hoaxes and controversial information.

Importantly, John Green also explains that students need a “toolbox” of strategies to assess sources of information. There’s not one magic source of information that is 100% accurate.

4. Teaching your students how to evaluate trustworthiness

Deciding who to trust online can be difficult even for those of us with lots of experience navigating online. And it is made even more difficult by how easy it now is to create a professional-looking websites.

This video shows students what to look for when evaluating trustworthiness. It also explains how to take bias, opinion, and political orientations into account when using information sources.

The video explains how reputable information sources gather reliable information (versus disreputable sources). And shows how reputable information sources navigate the situation when they discover their information is incorrect or misleading.

Students can apply the research skills from this video to news sources, novel excerpts, scholarly articles, and primary sources. Teaching students to look for bias, political orientation, and opinions within all sources is one of the most valuable research skills for high school students.

5. Teaching your students to use Wikipedia

Now, I know that Wikipedia can be the bane of your teacherly existence when you are reading essays. I know it can make you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon when you read the same recycled article in thirty different essays. But, teaching students how to use Wikipedia as a jumping-off point is a useful skill.

Wikipedia is no less accurate than other online encyclopedia-type sources. And it often includes hyperlinks and references that students can check or use for further research. Plus it has handy-dandy warnings for inaccurate and contentious information.

Part of how to teach research skills to high school students is teaching them how to use general reference material such as encyclopedias for broad information. And then following up with how to use more detailed information such as primary and secondary sources.

The Crash Course video about Wikipedia is an easy way to show students how to use it more effectively.

6. Teaching your students to evaluate evidence

Another important research skill to teach high school students is how to evaluate evidence. This skill is important, both in their own and in others’ work.

An easy way to do this is the Crash Course video about evaluating evidence video. The short video shows students how to evaluate evidence using authorship, the evidence provided, and the relevance of the evidence.

It also gives examples of ways that evidence can be used to mislead. For example, it shows that simply providing evidence doesn’t mean that the evidence is quality evidence that supports the claim being made.

The video shows examples of evidence that is related to a topic, but irrelevant to the claim. Having an example of irrelevant evidence helps students understand the difference between related but irrelevant evidence and evidence that is relevant to the claim.

Finally, the video gives students questions that they can use to evaluate evidence.

7. Teaching your students to evaluate photos and videos

While the previous video about evidence looked at how to evaluate evidence in general, this video looks specifically at video and photographic evidence.

The video looks at how videos and photos can be manipulated to provide evidence for a claim. It suggests that seeking out the context for photos and videos is especially important as a video or photo is easy to misinterpret. This is especially the case if a misleading caption or surrounding information is provided.

The video also gives tools that students can use to discover hoaxes or fakes. Similarly, it encourages people to look for the origin of the photo or video to find the creator. And to then use that with contextual information to decide whether the photo or video is reliable evidence for a claim.

8. Teaching your students to evaluate data and infographics

Other sources of evidence that students (and adults!) often misinterpret or are misled by are data and infographics. Often people take the mere existence of statistics or other data as evidence for a claim instead of investigating further.

Again the Crash Course video suggests seeking out the source and context for data and infographics. It suggests that students often see data as neutral and irrefutable, but that data is inherently biased as it is created by humans.

The video gives a real-world example of how data can be manipulated as a source of evidence by showing how two different news sources represented global warming data.

9. Teaching your students how search engines work and why to use click restraint

Another video from the Crash Course Navigating Digital Information series is the video about how search engines work and click restraint . This video shows how search engines decide which information to list at the top of the search results. It also shows how search engines decide what information is relevant and of good quality.

The video gives search tips for using search engines to encourage the algorithms to return more reliable and accurate results.

This video is important when you are want to know how to teach research skills to high school students. This is because many students don’t understand why the first few results on a search are not necessarily the best information available.

10. Teach your students how to evaluate social media sources

One of the important research skills high school students need is to evaluate social media posts. Many people now get news and information from social media sites that have little to no oversight or editorial control. So, being able to evaluate posts for accuracy is key.

This video in the Crash Course Navigating Digital Information series also explains that social media sites are free to use because they make money from advertising. The advertising money comes from keeping people on the platform (and looking at the ads).

How do they keep people on the platform? By using algorithms that gather information about how long people spend on or react to different photos, posts and videos. Then, the algorithms will send viewers more content that is similar to the content that they view or interact with.

This prioritizes content that is controversial, shocking, engaging, attractive. It also reinforces the social norms of the audience members using the platform.

By teaching students how to combat the way that social media algorithms work, you can show them how to gather more reliable and relevant information in their everyday lives. Further, you help students work out if social media posts are relevant to (reliable for) their academic work.

11. Teaching your students how to cite sources

Another important research skill high school students need is how to accurately cite sources. A quick Google search turned up a few good free ideas:

• This lesson plan from the Brooklyn Library for grades 4-11. It aligns with the common core objectives and provides worksheets for students to learn to use MLA citation.
• This blog post about middle-school teacher Jody Passanini’s experiences trying to teach students in English and History how to cite sources both in-text and at the end with a reference list.
• This scavenger hunt lesson by 8th grade teacher on ReadWriteThink. It has a free printout asking students to prove assertions (which could be either student- or teacher-generated) with quotes from the text and a page number. It also has an example answer using the Catching Fire (Hunger Games) novel.
• The Chicago Manual of Style has this quick author-date citation guide .
• This page by Purdue Online Writing Lab has an MLA citation guide , as well as links to other citation guides such as APA.

If you are wanting other activities, a quick search of TPT showed these to be popular and well-received by other teachers:

• Laura Randazzo’s 9th edition MLA in-text and end-of-text citation activities
• Tracee Orman 8th edition MLA cheet sheet
• The Daring English Teacher’s MLA 8th edition citation powerpoint

12. Teaching your students to take notes

Another important skill to look at when considering how to teach research skills to high school students is whether they know how to take effective notes.

The Crash Course Study Skills note-taking video is great for this. It outlines three note-taking styles – the outline method, the Cornell method, and the mind map method. And it shows students how to use each of the methods.

This can help you start a conversation with your students about which styles of note-taking are most effective for different tasks.

For example, mind maps are great for seeing connections between ideas and brain dumps. The outline method is great for topics that are hierarchical. And the Cornell method is great for topics with lots of specific vocabulary.

Having these types of metacognitive discussions with your students helps them identify study and research strategies. It also helps them to learn which strategies are most effective in different situations.

Teaching research skills to high school students . . .

Doesn’t have to be

• time-consuming

The fantastic Crash Course Navigating Digital Information videos are a great way to get started if you are wondering how to teach research skills to high school students.

If you decide to use the videos in your class, you can buy individual worksheets if you have specific skills in mind. Or you can buy the full bundle if you think you’ll end up watching all of the videos.

Got any great tips for teaching research skills to high school students?

Head over to our Facebook or Instagram pages and let us know!

Teaching Research Papers with High School Students

Teaching research papers with high school students? Teaching students how to write a research paper is an important part of an ELA class. Here are guidelines to make this writing unit a success.

Lawyers, political organizers, advertisers, real estate agents: most jobs require ethical research and then a written report. As a citizen, I research concepts important to my community and family. As knowledge in our world grows, student will only have more reasons to be ethical digital citizens.

Providing students with a sustainable foundation is a humbling responsibility. Teachers know that teaching students how to write a research paper is important. While teaching students how to research, I share those sentiments with them. I want students to know I take research seriously, and my expectation is that they will as well. My research paper lesson plans take into account the seriousness of ethical research.

What is the best way to teach research papers to students?

The best way to teach research papers to students is by breaking down the process into manageable steps. Start with teaching them how to choose a topic, conduct research, and create an outline/list/graphic organizer. Then guide them in writing drafts, revising and editing their papers, and properly citing sources.

Even after teaching for a decade, I sometimes overwhelm myself with this duty. I handle teaching research papers with four ideas in my mind.

Provide clear expectations.

Idea one, be clear.

A feeling I always hated as a student was the unknown . Sure, part of the learning process is not knowing everything and making mistakes. I, as the teacher, don’t want to be the source of frustration though. I never want my classes to wander down a path that won’t advance them toward our end goal: a well-researched paper. Part of teaching research skills to high school students is providing clear expectations.

As writing in the ELA classroom becomes more digital, I simply give writers tools on our online learning platform. That way, I can remind them to check a certain section or page as we collaborate on their writing.

Give a writing overview.

Idea two, provide an overview.

Every teacher grades a little differently. Sometimes, terminology differs. Throw in the stress of research, and you might have a classroom of overwhelmed students. An overview before teaching research papers can relax everyone!

I start every writing unit with clear expectations, terminology, and goals. I cover a presentation with students, and then I upload it to Google Classroom. Students know to consult that presentation for clarity. Initially, covering the basics may seem wasteful, but it saves all of us time because students know my expectations.

Furthermore, parents and tutors appreciate my sharing that information. As students work independently (inside or outside of class), they can take it upon themselves to consult expectations. Their responsibility with this prepares them for their futures. Finally, having established that overview with students during virtual classes was invaluable.

Show an overview of research.

Idea three, clearly explain research.

Before you begin teaching students how to research, outline what strong research looks like. You might consider these questions:

• What (if any) secondary sources will I accept? What about Wikipedia?
• Should students use a balance of books and online material? Do they have access to books?
• Are dates for certain topics important? Will I not accept research from before a certain date?

I’m not answering these questions for you, but I’ve seen teachers provide such guidelines while teaching research skills to high school students. Whatever parameters you have for teaching the research paper, share those with students.

Define domain-specific vocabulary.

Idea four, don’t assume classes share the same domain-specific vocabulary.

High school classes are likely familiar with the writing process, yet the research process brings more vocabulary with which they might not be familiar.

Providing definitions for the most basic concepts enables me to walk through expectations and clarify concepts. Examples might include:

• Informational text
• Search engine
• Credible sources
• Claim, counterclaim
• Research question
• Journal articles

Plus, by providing definitions to terms, scaffolding occurs naturally. Academic writing has terms we teachers might use casually, but some students maybe have not heard of them.

How can we model ethical research?

After outlining expectations to young writers, we begin research. Some schools rely on Google Scholar, and others use Explora or EBSCO. Sign students into your databases, and run them through the program.

I stress to young writers that conducting oneself with honesty and integrity is crucial to writing. When teaching research papers with high school students, I connect these ethics to their very near futures. Aside from the basics of documenting and citing, I highlight these two points.

• Citing material. This includes direct quotes and paraphrasing. I review both of those concepts throughout our research and writing. The majority of a paper should be the writer’s thoughts, supported by research. Students need those concepts repeated, and they are important, so I spend time emphasizing them.

Often, I turn the basics of research into a writing mini lesson . Modeling ethical research is a very specific part of ELA classes. I understand that other classes require research and that parents might teach research skills as well.

Still, to have a functioning society, students must view relevant information with critical eyes. Teaching young citizens how to write a research paper includes clear guidelines for research and one-on-one conferencing.

How can we encourage strong writing?

Hopefully, students write with passion. Hopefully, they want to show or prove their statements. Teaching students how to write a research paper is easier when students enjoy their topics.

I cover grammar with students (all year), and I always make the connection for them to implement those lessons. Teaching them to write a research paper requires some focus on writing skills. Primarily, they will work on strong verbs and syntax.

Look at verbs.

Students possess strong verbs in their vocabularies. Sometimes in writing, humans create a fast rough draft, myself included. Every verb is a linking verb, and every sentence reads subject + linking verb + predicate adjective. (Nothing is wrong with a linking verb, but writers should break from the mold.) When I see that a paper can be improved with strong verbs, we conference about ways to improve the verbs without thesaurus abuse.

Ask students to pick their least favorite paragraph in a research paper and to highlight every verb . Chances are, they are not conveying their message because of weak verbs. Help them turn the predicate adjectives into verbs or think of an action that will convey their meaning. Additionally as you continue teaching students how to research, you’ll cross strong verbs in research. Point out those verbs to your classes.

Examine syntax.

Just as every sentence shouldn’t contain a linking verb, not every sentence should be a simple sentence. Sentence syntax takes practice, and often teamwork! Ask students to provide a sentence that needs improvement. Break the sentence down into phrases and clauses. (If it is a simple sentence, ask for another sentence to attach.) What is the best arrangement? What is the student’s goal? Would a conjunctive adverb lead readers to a conclusion? What if a subordinating conjunction started the sentence, or, should the dependent clause come second in the complex sentence? Play with the language of papers! By connecting grammar to writing, you have empowered learners to improve their writing.

Sentence structure is also part of teaching students how to write a research paper because the information must be factual. Sometimes students report information incorrectly, and sometimes, their sentence structure is to blame. Focus on a return to simple syntax for ethical research, and then work on sentence diversity if possible.

All parts of an ELA classroom fit together like puzzle pieces, and when teaching research papers, that neatly assembled puzzle sits on display. By giving classes clear expectations, you are ready to guide them through ethical research and through strengthening their writing. Teaching the research paper is a large task, so you should know what you want to accomplish.

Is scaffolding teaching research papers possible?

Overall, a research unit takes me 2-3 weeks with high school students. Every teacher has different methodologies, but if I allow writing research papers for about a month, writers become bored. Fifteen working days for research, revision, and publishing is my average time frame. Going longer, and different aspects fall apart, and we lose momentum.

Scaffolding is built into our days. Outline the writing process with your calendar, and add days that follow the writing process. Pieces to consider:

Scaffold writing errors.

Overall, writing errors are an inevitable part of the learning process. As teachers, it is crucial that we address these errors in a way that not only corrects them but also helps students understand why they occurred in the first place. When it comes to research papers, grammatical errors can significantly affect the credibility and clarity of the information presented.

One effective way to scaffold writing errors is by focusing on the actual problems that classes have in their papers. When we conference, I jot down common errors and then cover them as a class.

Include revising and editing days.

Young writers should take ownership of the writing process which includes revising and editing. This can be achieved by dedicating specific days in the research unit for revising and editing. By allotting time for these crucial steps, writers will learn to critically analyze their work and make necessary improvements.

During the revision phase, students can focus on the overall structure and organization of their research paper. They should evaluate if their arguments are clear and logical, if the evidence supports their claims effectively, and if there is a smooth flow of ideas throughout the paper. This stage allows them to refine their content and ensure that it aligns with their desired objectives.

After revising, students should move toward publishing and sharing with their peers.

Your turn, writing teachers: What questions do you have left?

All activities mentioned in this post (except the common errors bundle) are included in my writing bundle for freshmen and sophomores .

What questions remain? Do you have different advice to offer teachers?

What do you focus on with when teaching research papers? Read how Melissa from Reading and Writing Haven differentiates when teaching research writing .  

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Read Our Research On:

• How Teens Do Research in the Digital World
• Part IV: Teaching Research Skills in Today’s Digital Environment

Table of Contents

• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: The Mixed Impact of Digital Technologies on Student Research
• Part III: The Changing Definition of “Research”
• Part V: Teachers’ Concerns About Broader Impacts of Digital Technologies on Their Students
• Methodology

Given these findings about how students today define “research” and approach the research process, teachers are faced with identifying and teaching middle and high school students the skills they will need to be smart information seekers in the digital age. The data indicate that teachers in this study place tremendous value on research skills, with most reporting assigning a research paper to their students in the 2011-2012 academic year and spending class time teaching various research skills to their students.  These lessons are aimed at addressing deficits they see in today’s students.  Most notable among these is the inability to judge the quality of information, a skill the vast majority of teachers deem “essential” for their students’ future success.

Most teachers in the study assigned a research paper in the 2011-2012 academic year

Among the teachers in the study, the majority assigned at least one research paper to their middle and high school students in the 2011-2012 academic year.  As the graphic below suggests, among this sample of teachers, short essays and journaling are the most commonly assigned writing tasks, with more than half of the sample (58%) having their students write short essays, short responses, or opinion pieces at least once a week and 41% having students journal on a weekly basis.

Research papers—along with multimedia assignments and creative writing in the form of plays or short stories—are not assigned by many teachers on a frequent basis, but are assigned at some point during the academic year by most of the teachers in our sample.  Just over three-quarters of these teachers report having students complete a research paper (77%) or a multimedia project (77%) at some point during the current academic year.  Two-thirds (66%) have students complete a creative writing assignment during the year as well, such as writing poetry, a play, a short story, or piece of fiction.

Some teachers are more likely than others to assign a research paper; not surprising given the different skills and subjects being taught.  Fully 94% of the English teachers in this sample assigned at least one research paper in the past academic year, compared with 83% of history/social studies teachers, 68% of science teachers, and 36% of math teachers.  Almost nine in ten teachers who participated in the NWP Summer Institute (88%) reported assigning a research paper in the 2011-2012 academic year.

Most teachers rate their students “good” or “fair” on a variety of specific research skills

Despite the overall perception that the internet and digital technologies have a “mostly positive” impact on students’ research habits, in most cases the AP and NWP teachers surveyed rate the specific research skills of their students “good” or “fair.”  Very few teachers rate their students “excellent” on any of the research skills asked about in the survey.

Overall, teachers gave students the highest ratings on their ability to use appropriate and effective search terms and understanding how online search results are generated.  Yet even for these top items, only about one-quarter of teachers rated students “excellent” or “very good.”  And in focus groups, many teachers suggested that despite the current generation of middle and high school students being raised in the “digital age,” they are often surprised at how poor their students’ search abilities are.

It kills me to see students typing in whole questions: “What does it mean to leave a digital footprint on today’s society?” into Google. The funny thing is they actually get disappointed when it doesn’t spit back an answer. I have actually found this to be a great lesson on synonyms – helping them to come up with other key words that might be helpful in their search as well. We will also spend some time looking at how advanced searches work.  – National Writing Project teacher

Reflecting teachers’ concerns about the impact of the internet on students’ expectations of “instant information,” the skill they rate students lowest on is “patience and determination in looking for information that is hard to find.”  Fully 43% of the teachers participating in the survey said that overall they would rate their students “poor” in this regard, and another 35% rate their students “fair” when it comes to patiently pursuing information they need.

A majority of survey respondents also described their students as “fair” or “poor” when it comes to:

• Using multiple sources effectively to support an argument
• Assessing the quality and accuracy of information they find online, and
• Recognizing bias in online content

These relatively low ratings (of what are by and large honors and advanced students) may reflect teachers’ expectations of the skill level they would like to help their students reach, yet survey results indicate that teachers see room for students to improve in most, if not all, of these areas.

Two patterns emerge in looking at the ratings teachers give their students on their research skills.  In the case of all but one skill asked about, more teachers of the lowest income students rate their students “poor” than do teachers of higher income students.  The only exception to this pattern is “Patience and determination in looking for information that is hard to find” on which teachers across different socioeconomic levels rate their students equally.

A second consistent pattern that emerges is that teachers with more classroom experience (16 years or more) perceive their students’ skills more positively across the board.  Teachers who have been in the classroom for 15 or fewer years, in contrast, seem to have more negative views of their students’ research skills and more of them rate their students “poor” on every skill asked about.

When it comes to patience and determination finding information, the lowest marks come from English teachers, 50% of whom rate their students “poor” in this regard.  Looking just at National Writing Project teachers, 53% of this group give their students the lowest rating of “poor.”

What research skills should be taught?

Both the survey and focus group asked teachers which research skills, in particular, are critical for the current generation of middle and high school students to learn. In focus groups, the most commonly cited skills were how to evaluate the quality of information, how to recognize what information is and is not relevant to the question at hand, and how to synthesize information from multiple sources into a coherent piece of work.

They need to know how to find information and how to judge how appropriate and accurate the material is. They need to be able to assess the biases in their sources. They need to be able to find the material that will help them.  –AP US History teacher

[the most critical skill is]

The Internet is empowering, but it’s empowering everyone’s opinion and everyone wants to get their information out there, and we need to try to teach the students to be more discriminators – have greater discrimination about the quality of the information they’re accessing.  – Teacher at College Board School

I teach tenth grade and twelfth grade Social Studies. It’s becoming much more important that the students – it’s wonderful to have the access to information – but now more than ever, I feel that they need to be smart consumers of information. And I feel students are progressively losing their ability to sort out what’s good information, what’s reliable information, and basically filter…As schools go on and Internet access becomes more prevalent and computers standard in the classroom, teaching is changing from not just teaching you how to process and restate and think about information, but also we’re going to have to teach them the skill to know how to filter this information.  – Teacher at College Board School

Survey findings echo these sentiments.  The vast majority of teachers surveyed feel that “courses or content focusing on digital literacy  must  be incorporated into every school’s curriculum,” indicating just how critical they feel the ability to locate and assess information in the digital world is. About half of the teachers in the study (47%) say they “strongly agree” and another 44% “somewhat agree” with this proposition, meaning that 93% of teachers support this curriculum change.  NWP Summer Institute teachers are particularly likely to take this view, with 59% saying they “strongly agree” that this curriculum change is needed.  Also expressing strong views on this question are teachers of students living below the poverty line, 60% of whom “strongly agree” such courses are needed.

Moreover, asked to place a value on various skills today’s students may need in the future, “judging the quality of information” tops the list, along with “writing effectively.”  These two skills were described as “essential” by 91% of the teachers who participated in the survey.  Other skills relevant to the current digital culture also ranked high, with large majorities of teachers saying that “behaving responsibly online” (85%) and “understanding privacy issues surrounding online and digital content” (78%) are “essential” to their students’ later success in life.

While evaluating the quality of information tops the list of essential skills, 56% of survey participants also feel that “finding information quickly” is essential to success.  Another 40% describe this skill as “important, but not essential,” indicating that while teachers place tremendous value on teaching their students to assess the quality of information, they also appreciate the importance of speed in today’s fast-moving digital world.  Those who have been teaching longer (16 years or more) are slightly more likely than those teaching 15 years or fewer to describe this skill as “essential” (60% of more experienced teachers v. 52% of newer teachers) but otherwise no notable differences exist across subgroups of teachers.

Among the skills included in the survey, those viewed as less essential to students’ success are “presenting themselves effectively in online social networking sites” and “working with audio, video, or graphic content.”  Fewer than one in three teachers saw either of these skills as “essential” to their students’ later success, though substantial percentages do describe each of these skills as “important, but not essential.”

When should these skills be taught, and by whom?

While the AP and NWP teachers in the study generally agreed on what skills are needed and that these skills should be a part of standard curricula, there was less consistency in their opinions of when these skills should be taught and by whom.  Asked at what point in their educational careers students should learn these critical research skills, many focus group participants felt they should be taught in elementary school, and that students should  already possess these skills prior to entering middle school or high school.  Others felt that elementary students may not be ready to learn the nuances of bias, fair use, and salience, and that these more advances skills are better taught later in a student’s career.

The question of who should be mainly responsible for this part of the curriculum was also open to debate in focus groups, with some teachers openly acknowledging that they do not currently feel qualified to teach some of these skills.  Some reported that their school’s English department takes the lead in developing research skills, and that their own role is mainly reinforcing these skills.  Yet others suggested these skills need to be taught by all teachers across the curriculum, and that library staff can be a key part of that process.

The first thing students need to learn is to discern the quality of a source. After that, they need to be able to compile information from various sources and synthesize their own work, in their own words. Students must cite all sources for their work. This should start in the elementary grades, and does in my district.  – AP Chemistry teacher

Credibility, validity, purpose, and reliability are all important aspects to consider when viewing an electronic resource. Also, students need to be aware of how recent web based information is by knowing how to check publishing dates. I think some of these skills can be taught as early as 3rd or 4th grade from the standpoint of ‘how do you know when something is true?’  –AP Biology teacher

Teachers must take the time, and take on the responsibility of teaching students how to search more wisely on the internet. I do not think enough time is devoted to this task because everyone thinks it is someone else’s job to do it…Regardless of what is done, these skills have to be explicitly taught.  – National Writing Project teacher

I find that my students do not have sound research skills in place in the 8th grade…and I’m not so certain that it is the best use of their time to tackle an isolated weighty research project. My instincts tell me to develop ongoing research expectations, in smaller, manageable chunks, so that they receive more guidance on more of the work/research. I’d rather know that my students had a chance to get better at the process of reading and researching for one focused idea than raking them through a project just to rake them through a project. There is less of chance that a student would plagiarize and an even better chance that they would learn what the difference is between work that is plagiarized and that which is not.  – National Writing Project teacher

I demonstrate how to do good research in my class and then I assign projects and papers where they have to research. I do source checks before the projects are due to make sure students are on the right track. I really rely on skills they learned in their English classes.  –AP Biology teacher

I try my best to teach students how to choose credible sources, but I rely on the expertise of others for the ins and outs of this very difficult to navigate lesson. Thank goodness there are so many resources to help me with this, but I admit. I have to do more.  – National Writing Project teacher

Current approaches to teaching critical research skills

Asked about different approaches they use to develop effective research skills in their students, two different tracts emerge—first, spending class time teaching and developing these skills, and second, designing assignments that require students to use new or different approaches.

In terms of devoting class time to this area, fully eight in ten of the AP and NWP teachers who participated in the survey report spending class time discussing how to assess the reliability of online information, and seven in ten spend class time generally discussing how to conduct research online.  Fewer teachers, but still a majority, say they spend class time helping students improve search terms and queries, yet just one-third devote class time to helping students understand how search engines work and how search results are actually generated and ranked.

A second strategy these middle and high school teachers use is intentionally constructing or shaping research assignments in ways that either direct students to the best online resources, or require students to expand the repertoire of sources they use.  Nine in ten survey respondents report directing their students to specific online resources they feel are most appropriate for a particular assignment, and 83% develop research questions or assignments that require students to use a variety of sources, both online and offline.  Substantially fewer teachers, just 29%, assign work to students in which they forbid the use of online sources.

Suggestions in the focus groups that English teachers generally take the lead on teaching these skills were echoed by survey results.  English teachers in this sample are the most likely to report implementing each one of these lessons/approaches, followed closely by history/social studies teachers.  For example, 93% of English teachers in the sample report developing assignments that require students to use a variety of sources, followed by 91% of history/social studies teachers, 77% of science teachers, and 47% of math teachers.  Similarly, when it comes to spending class time discussing how to assess the reliability of information, English teachers take the lead (94%), followed by history/social studies teachers (90%), then science teachers (69%) and math teachers (46%).

The merits of these latter strategies—structuring or shaping assignments in ways that required students to use particular sources or more varied sources—was discussed at length in focus groups.  Many teachers reported requiring students to utilize offline resources in an effort to familiarize them with materials they might not otherwise use.  Others said they stress to their students the importance of paying attention to website domains, and encourage or require them to use .gov, .org or .edu sites.  And many teachers reported banning the use of particular online sources, most commonly those with user-generated content such as Wikipedia, or telling students exactly which online resources are most useful or even permissible for particular assignments.

At the same time, teachers felt that eliminating the use of all online resources or even particular online resources in assignments is unrealistic and can be counterproductive.  Because students are already reliant on these sources when they arrive in middle and high school, and have a comfort level with them, many teachers feel a better approach is to teach students how to use these tools effectively.  Indeed, in student focus groups, teens acknowledged that even when they are “not allowed” to use Wikipedia in their research, it is still often their “first stop” in completing an assignment.  Students feel that Wikipedia’s fairly short encyclopedic entries provide them with a quick “overview” of a topic from which to orient their research process, and some teachers agreed.  Thus, rather than attempt to control which websites students utilize in completing school assignments, or even their very use of online resources, the underlying philosophy for many is teaching their students to be better information consumers in the digital arena.

I’d take the choice out of it. I’d tell them which sources to access, because the bottom line is, I’m so pressed for the time that rather than risk them going out and finding the wrong information, I tell them what sources to access and then you give them five sources and you say, ‘These are the approved sources. Do not go outside this realm.’ And ultimately that’s probably self-defeating because they’re not always going to be given that narrow focus like that, but I don’t teach in a theoretical world.  – Teacher at College Board School

We almost do the opposite in our classroom. I’m a special education teacher and we tell them what sources we don’t like and so now they can tell us what sources we don’t like that they shouldn’t use.  – Teacher at College Board School

I assign work that requires them to use online resources such as JSTOR, EBSCO, Proquest, and other databases to which our school subscribes.  –AP English Language teacher

Credibility and usefulness of sources is a part of every conversation about research/inquiry projects that we undertake. This can take many forms. For some assignments I have mandated that kids solely get research from articles found in one of the databases the school subscribes to. For other projects we discuss this idea of credibility and I walk around and look at where they’re headed for research and if I need to step in and start a conversation about a particular source my student and I have that discussion.  – National Writing Project teacher

Many focus group participants also reported assigning a large research project to be completed over the course of the full academic year, which they can break into smaller steps to help students develop an understanding of the various pieces that go into successful research as well as the time that must be devoted to each.  In designing these research assignments, focus group participants suggested the following elements are particularly important:

• Showing students how to develop a focused research question and a plan of what they should be looking for, to help them “sort through the noise”
• Requiring students to utilize more than online resources
• Teaching students how to properly cite the sources they use, particularly online sources
• Developing a student’s ability to determine the timeliness, relevance, and quality of the online information they find
• Teaching students how to appropriately paraphrase and synthesize information

In all of my classes, we are visiting the library/lab on some kind of regular basis whether it’s for a persuasive essay, speech, research paper, etc. Students mark up the article, find the author’s argument/thesis, create their own, find opposing views, find supporting views, etc. These are all research skills—break it down (analyze) to write it down (synthesize).  –AP English Language teacher

Much of searching for information today is about evaluation of sources. Students often stick to what they know and they often do not expand on utilizing their search skills, so yes, I teach them about it. They tend to stick to Google. I challenge them to use various sources and explore databases. When teaching this I often explore various false sites with them. Sometimes I establish various credibility tests. I find fun material and they have to determine if it is credible or not and why. I pull material from various websites, to tabloids, to internet email hoaxes, to credible sources. They decide if it is credible material or not and how to determine if something is credible. We explore various criteria for exploring if something is credible. I also teach this with visual literacy and we explore doctored images, etc. I love pulling an image of a website that states that something happened to their favorite celebrity. They debate what is true and how to find the truth.  – National Writing Project teacher

At least half of my curriculum is devoted to doing research online. We spend a lot of time noticing differences between sources, but without judgment. Instead of asking about the credibility of sources, we spend a lot more time wondering if a particular source is of value to my writing. A personal reflection in a blog might provide the perfect turn of phrase to quote in your own argument. We also spend a lot of time teaching student how to cite their sources, and in this process we talk about reliability and the need to have more than one source, no matter where it comes from. I could go on for some time about this. It is the heart of my work with students, but it isn’t something that easily fits into a set of lessons. There are slowly evolving critical lenses that I see my students beginning to use when they are immersed in self directed, passion-based projects. The simple ways of determining credibility just don’t make sense. Who is to say that a podcast is less reliable than a Wikipedia page. A lot depends on your purpose, your critical use, and the other sources that surround any one source. It’s too complicated to teach outside of the ongoing practice of doing research.  – National Writing Project teacher

Usually when we are doing some kind of research in my class I will scaffold it enough where students have a pretty good idea where to go, but the issue also becomes what do they do when they get to where they need to be. I read an interesting study about how people read websites, much different based on age and much different than we read print. I usually bring this study up with the kids so we can have conversations about how to best use our time and find the best information.  – National Writing Project teacher

I usually preface a long-range research assignment with a challenge of my own. I’ll remind them of our discussion about “Is Google Making us Stupid?” where they essentially said that their generation is being dismissed too quickly by the pundits who say they can’t think deeply. When I remind them that a lot of people say that their generation wants instant gratification of information, that raises some hackles. If they’re aware of the obstacles of an in-depth assignment, they’re more prepared to challenge those assumptions. I guess I’d say that a big part of my teaching is attuning my students to how we think as we move through the research process. Make those negative assumptions part of the discussion and a lot of the students see that as a call to move past them. My students aren’t shallow, lazy and stupid, and they don’t want to be thought of as such.  – National Writing Project teacher

Challenges to teaching research skills in today’s digital environment

In general, the AP and NWP teachers in the study feel their students are very receptive to learning effective research skills, but point out that teaching these skills is not without challenges.  By far, the most commonly cited challenge is simply a lack of time to devote to developing effective lessons and teaching skills in class.  Teachers repeatedly noted the difficulty in covering these skills in addition to the other content they are required to cover.  They also note that they themselves must become savvy information consumers before they can impart these skills to their students.

Among other challenges teachers report facing are pay walls separating them and their students from the best information online and digital access issues among their students.  Teachers stressed that the best, most credible resources on the internet are often available only by subscription, thus many schools and students do not have access to what is truly the highest quality information in a particular field.  In addition, they point out that for many of their students, research time is restricted by a lack of internet access at home and/or limited library hours.

The biggest challenge in any AP class in my experience is time. The volume and depth of the material is so extensive that finding the time to teach effective research is very difficult.  – AP US History teacher

Time. There is never enough time to get through all of the standards and spend adequate time teaching research skills also. It takes a lot of time to do justice to teaching research skills.  – AP Biology teacher

Time and access to technology are always hurdles to teaching anything. A lot of times we assign a research assignment and turn the students loose into the world to research on their own. Too often, parents do not even know what is going on in regards to this. Maybe we should work harder on getting them involved in this process. Most students are receptive to methods that will speed their research but not with what will make it better. This is another obstacle to overcome.  – AP US History teacher

The other problem is the…limited number of resources that are available for free; most of the primary resources, most of the better resources have to be paid for by subscription.  – Teacher at College Board School

[other teacher]

If we had laptops in every room, we would be able to champion tat cause of ‘this is how you do research’ more, rather than just showing them our laptop….They have to do the research at home and they’re kind of on their own. We give them pointers, but…  – Teacher at College Board School

The survey also indicates that these teachers face a variety of challenges   in effectively incorporating online content and digital tools into their classrooms, some of which may hinder their ability to teach students how best to conduct research online. Virtually all teachers surveyed report working in a school that employs internet filters (97%), formal policies about cell phone use (97%), and acceptable use policies or AUPs (97%).  The degree to which teachers feel these different policies impact their teaching varies, with internet filters cited most often as having a “major impact” on survey participants’ teaching (32%).  One in five teachers (21%) say cell phone policies have a “major” impact on their teaching, and 16% say the same about their school’s AUP.

Looking more closely at subgroups of the teachers surveyed, it becomes clear that those  teaching in urban areas and those teaching the lowest income students are feeling the impact of these types of restrictions more so than those living in other community types and those teaching students from mainly upper and upper middle income households.  In particular, teachers of students living in poverty are at least  twice as likely  as those teaching the most affluent students to report these policies having a “major” impact on their teaching.

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4 Engaging Writing Tasks for High School Students

Short, authentic writing tasks can encourage high school students to compose richer long pieces.

It’s quite likely that many of your students dislike writing. After all, they’re often expected to compose lengthy pieces that typically require lots of brainstorming, researching, planning, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing—and that can be exhausting. My class of high school boys had the same attitude, and their short, underdeveloped, and passionless pieces were most telling. I had to overhaul my approach.

During my quest for an alternative practice, I quickly learned that by building students’ knowledge about the topic on which they are expected to compose, and by initially assigning them shorter and more authentic writing tasks, we can successfully motivate them to write longer, richer, and more compelling multiparagraph pieces. Yes, baby steps—from a creep to a stable walk—can work wonders.

Incorporate Knowledge-Building Activities

Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler said it best in  The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades : “Writing and content knowledge are intimately related. You can’t write well about something you don’t know well. The more students know about a topic before they begin to write, the better they will be able to write about it.”

Documentaries, podcasts, TED Talks, and other authentic and engaging audiovisuals can facilitate this knowledge building. Field trips, as well as interviews with relevant community-based experts, can also offer students significant fodder for their writing.

Moreover, when students have interesting discoveries to share, they’ll be excited about the writing tasks, and their compositions are likely to be longer, more detailed, more affecting, and more compelling. Because they have a rich knowledge bank, they’re less likely to get stuck and frustrated as they write. Knowledge stimulates ideas.

But information gathering is not all. It’s also important to show students how to use the newly learned content. We don’t want them to plagiarize information or inadvertently silence their own voices by over-quoting others. Their research should enhance what they write, not substitute for their initial thoughts or suppress their creativity.

What can you do then?

Go beyond lessons in citation format. Model, through write-aloud, how to make decisions about the content included in written work, how to paraphrase and summarize from the original source, and how to ensure that the added content actually strengthens what you already have.

Offer Authentically Rooted Writing Assignments

Finally, make sure that the writing assignments are authentic—with realistic, real-world communicative goals and true-to-life audiences (not just the classroom teacher). Here are some suggestions that you can implement in your teaching practice:

Travel blogs:  Take students on virtual field trips. Nearpod , Google Earth, and YouTube are excellent for this. Following this activity, have students write a blog post to describe the place they visited. If your students have visited resorts or attraction sites locally, they could write about that experience, recommend activities for prospective visitors, and simultaneously persuade them to visit when it is safe to do so.

Their insights might even persuade others to travel to this site. Students could use pictures to supplement their writing. They could also convert their written piece into a mini-video production for a real or imagined YouTube channel that promotes exotic getaways. Their composition would become the audio narration, and, with some background reggae, R & B, or any other culturally popular music, their piece would be beautifully transformed into a riveting marketing pitch.

Movie reviews:  Due to the pandemic, we know that many of our students may be watching far more movies than ever before. Therefore, let’s repurpose this social activity and use what they love or do for pleasure to help them refine a key academic skill. Have students write a review of their most recently watched or favorite film.

Prompt them to provide a summary of the movie, share their impressions of major characters and the plot’s unfolding, and examine the techniques used to create suspense and mounting tension. Later, when they’re writing their own narratives or putting on drama productions, they can adopt and adapt some of these techniques.

Song or music video reviews: Some students enjoy listening to music, so a song or music video review could also motivate them and facilitate interest-based differentiation. State where the review may be published—a local tabloid, a social media page, etc. Have students keep that in mind as they write so that their finished pieces are authentic and fitting for the context and audience intended.

Social media:  Based on your content area, you could have students make discipline-specific posts and write related captions. For instance, if you are looking at rocks in geography or soil types in science, have students photograph different types and post related descriptive or explanatory captions. They’ll be learning and teaching concurrently.

Provide Mentor Texts

These activities are exciting, but before you scuttle off to assign them, find or create models of the kinds of writing that you want your students to produce. Discuss the sample by prompting students to keenly attend to the content and the writer’s craft (style and techniques) throughout the piece.

Finally, make arrangements to have your students publish their pieces—through a safe online space or through an in-school magazine or newsletter—for authenticity at its finest.

Guidelines for Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well: Six Features of Effective Instruction

On this page:, finding 1: students learn skills and knowledge in multiple lesson types, finding 2: teachers integrate test preparation into instruction, finding 3: teachers make connections across instruction, curriculum, and life, finding 4: students learn strategies for doing the work, finding 5: students are expected to be generative thinkers, finding 6: classrooms foster cognitive collaboration.

Most classroom teachers work hard planning lessons, choosing materials, teaching classes, working with individual students, and assessing student progress. Yet some schools and teachers seem to be more successful than others. What makes the difference? Researchers at the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA) are answering this question through a set of studies that examine student achievement in reading, writing, and other important literacy skills in classrooms across the country. These studies include examinations of student work and test scores, classroom observations, and interviews of students, teachers, and administrators in a variety of sites that represent the nation’s diversity.

One of the studies has been examining English programs in two sets of middle and high schools with similar student populations. In one set of schools, students “beat the odds” and outperform their peers on high stakes, standardized tests of English skills and read and write at high levels of proficiency. In the other set of schools, students perform more typically. Most of the schools in the study serve students from high poverty, big city neighborhoods. By comparing these two sets of classrooms, we have been able to identify and validate six features of instruction that make a difference in student performance.

It is important to understand that the six features identified in this research are interrelated and supportive of one another. The higher performing schools exhibit all six characteristics. As you read the classroom examples, you will see that elements of all features can be found in each. Although addressing one feature may bring about improved student performance, it is the integration of all the features that will effect the most improvement.

What does that mean?

Teachers in the more effective programs use a variety of different teaching approaches based on student need. For example, if students need to learn a particular skill, item, or rule, the teacher might choose a separated activity to highlight it. Students would study the information as an independent lesson, exercise or drill without considering its larger meaning or use (e.g., they might be asked to copy definitions of literary terms into their notebooks and to memorize them).

To give students practice, teachers prepare or find simulated activities that ask students to apply concepts and rules within a targeted unit of reading, writing, or oral language. Students are expected to read or write short units of text with the primary purpose of practicing the skill or concept. Often students are asked to find examples of that skill in use in their literature and writing books, as well as in out-of-school activities. (For example, a teacher might ask students to identify examples of literary devices within a particular selection, or to write their own examples of these devices.)

To help students bring together their skills and knowledge within the context of a purposeful activity, teachers use integrated activities. These require students to use their skills or knowledge to complete a task or project that has meaning for them. (For example, in discussing a work or works of literature, students might be asked to consider how a writer’s use of literary devices affects a reader’s response to the piece.)

Teachers of the higher performing students use all three of these approaches. They don’t use them in any linear sequence or in equal amount, but they use them as they are needed to help students become aware of and learn to use particular skills and knowledge. It is the combination of all three approaches, based on what the students need, that appears to make the difference. Separated and simulated activities provide ways for teachers to “mark” a skill or item of information for future use. Integrated activities provide ways for students to put their understandings to use in the context of larger and more meaningful activities.

In more typically performing schools, teachers often rely on one strategy, missing opportunities to strengthen instruction and to integrate it across lessons and throughout the year.

Some activities that work

• Offering separated and simulated activities to individuals, groups, or the entire class as needed
• Providing overt, targeted instruction and review as models for peer and self-evaluation
• Teaching skills, mechanics, or vocabulary that can be used during integrated activities such as literature discussions
• Using all three kinds of instruction to scaffold ways to think and discuss (e.g., summarizing, justifying answers, and making connections)

What doesn’t work

• Reliance upon any one approach to the exclusion of the other two
• Focus on separated and/or simulated activities with no integration with the larger goals of the curriculum

Classroom example

At Reuben Dario Middle School in Florida, Gail Slatko uses all three approaches to empower her students to be better readers, writers, and editors. For example, she often teaches vocabulary skills within the context of literature and writing, but she also asks students to complete practice workbook exercises designed to increase their vocabularies. And they create “living dictionaries” by collecting new words as they come across them in books, magazines, and newspapers.

To provide practice with analogies, Gail goes beyond merely providing examples: she requires that students discuss their responses and explain the rationales for their answers. Later, students design vocabulary mobiles that she displays in the classroom. Gail uses the same approach when she targets literary concepts, conventions, and language. Students integrate literary and vocabulary learning when they create children’s books. These books incorporate vocabulary, alliteration, and story telling through words and pictures.

During one recent school year, five books were entered in the county fair competition, and one of them was awarded first prize. Gail’s lessons are models for her students to use in their own reading and writing as well as when they are editing and responding to the writing of their classmates.

In higher performing schools, the knowledge and skills for performing well on high stakes tests are made overt to both teachers and students. Teachers, principals and district-level coordinators often create working groups of professionals who collaboratively study the demands of the high stakes tests their students will take. They even take the tests themselves to identify the skills and knowledge required to do well. They discuss how these demands relate to district and state standards and expectations as well as to their curriculum, and then they discuss ways to integrate these skills into the curriculum. This reflection helps teachers understand the demands of the test, consider how these demands relate to their current practice, and plan ways to integrate the necessary skills and knowledge into the curriculum, across grades and school years. This process helps them move the focus of test preparation from practice on the surface features of the test itself to the knowledge that underlies successful learning and achievement in literacy and English.

In addition, students learn to become reflective about their own reading and writing performance. Teachers provide students with ways to read, understand, and write in order to gain the abilities that are necessary for being highly literate for life, not merely for passing a test. Both students and teachers internalize the criteria for good performance, and students understand the purposes for and the requirements of the tests.

In more typically performing schools, teachers rely on more traditional approaches to test preparation. If preparation is done at all, it is inserted as a separate activity rather than integrated into the ongoing curriculum. The focus tends to be on how to take the test rather than on the underlying knowledge and skills necessary for success. Teachers give students old editions of the test, make their own practice tests using activities that mirror the test-at-hand, and sometimes use commercial materials with similar formats and questions. Preparation is often done one or two weeks (or more) before the exam, or the preparation is sporadic and unconnected across long periods of time. Students often do not understand the purpose of the test, nor what they can do to improve their performance.

Using district and state standards and goals, teachers and administrators work together to:

• analyze the demands of a test
• identify connections to the standards and goals
• design and align curriculum to meet the demands of the test
• develop instructional strategies that enable students to build necessary skills
• ensure that skills are learned across the year and across grades
• make overt connections between and among instructional strategies, tests, and current learning
• develop and implement model lessons that integrate test preparation into the curriculum
• Short-term test preparation
• Test preparation that focuses on how to take the test
• Separate rather than integrate test preparation experiences

When the Florida Writes! test was instituted, the Dade County English Language Arts central office staff and some teachers met to study and understand the exam and the kinds of demands it would make on students. They saw where the skills and knowledge required by the test related to state and district standards and their existing curriculum, and they identified areas that needed to be systematically addressed. Together, they developed curriculum guides that would create year-long experiences in different types of writing, including the kinds of organization, elaboration, and polishing required for each. This coordination began some years before our study of the programs in Dade County, and the instructional changes that had led to greater coherence were very evident in the classrooms we studied.

Today classes across the county are replete with rich and demanding writing experiences. For example, Karis MacDonnell at Reuben Dario Middle School has her students think about writing prompts throughout the year. She wants them to understand how prompts are developed and how to best respond to them. In one lesson she has students study a prompt and identify its parts. The students identify the topic, the question, and the task (e.g., explanation, description).

Next she asks them to develop their own prompts for an essay about a book they have read. Before setting the students to work, Karis provides models she has created. As students complete their prompts in class, they bring them to her, and she reviews them to be sure that they contain the required parts and that they will help students to focus their ideas. Students then write essays based on these prompts. Thus she helps students gain not only skills necessary for the Florida Writes! test, but also skills that will support all of their writing.

In the higher performing schools, teachers work consciously to weave a web of connections within lessons, across lessons, and to students’ lives in and out of school. They make connections throughout each day, week, and year. And they point out these connections so that students can see how the skills and knowledge they are gaining can be used productively in a range of situations. In these schools, teachers also work together to redevelop and redesign curriculum. They share ideas and reflect upon their work.

In the more typical schools, even when lessons are integrated within a unit, students experience little interweaving across lessons; few overt connections are made among the content, knowledge, and skills being taught. Class lessons are often treated as separate wholes — with a particular focus introduced, practiced, discussed, and then put aside. Some teachers encourage students to make connections, but when classroom discussions are carefully controlled, the teacher predetermines the associations the students will make. Rather than encouraging students to find their own connections — or showing them how to do so — teachers guide them to guess the connections the teacher has already made. In addition, teachers tend to work as individuals rather than as cooperative colleagues; an overall plan linking the various parts of the curriculum is often absent.

In the higher performing schools and districts, decisions concerning professional development are also based upon their relationship to the whole program and their connections to student needs and curricular goals established by teachers and administrators. Teachers often have a voice in planning and implementing professional development activities, and, because these activities relate to the program and teachers can see how they relate, new ideas and concepts presented through them are often integrated into curriculum and instruction.

In more typical schools and districts, when professional development materials and workshops are selected, teachers are rarely consulted, and there may be no attempt to integrate the activities into ongoing aspects of the existing program. Often, when educators gain information and ideas from such experiences, they do not use them fully; they select some parts and ignore other, necessary elements, thus diminishing their effectiveness.

• Making overt connections between and across the curriculum, students’ lives, literature, and literacy
• Planning lessons that connect with each other, with test demands, and with students’ growing knowledge and skills
• Developing goals and strategies that meet students’ needs and are intrinsically connected to the larger curriculum
• Weaving even unexpected intrusions into integrated experiences for students
• Selecting professional development activities that are related to the school’s standards and curriculum framework
• Isolated lessons
• Lessons that leave connections implicit
• Lack of follow-through on curricular goals by teachers and/or administrators
• Selection of materials not connected to curricular goals
• Professional development activities unrelated to goals or curriculum
• Separated and isolated rather than integrated use of materials

When Shawn DeNight at Miami Edison High School learned about an unanticipated grade-wide field trip to a senior citizen center, he turned it into an advantage rather than an interruption to instruction. He used the trip to connect to and further one of his instructional goals. He had intended to have his students write a character analysis based on class literature readings.

Instead, he used the trip as a basis for a research project in which each student met and interviewed a senior citizen and then used this information to develop a persuasive essay. He titled the visit “An Intergenerational Forum: Senior Citizens and Teens Discuss What It Means to Be a Liberal or Conservative.” In preparation for the interview, students developed questions that would get at the person’s thoughts and beliefs (e.g., Do you think men and women should have the same privileges?).

Each student interviewed one person, collected responses to the questions, and then planned and wrote the essay, drawing on the interview for evidence that a person was liberal, conservative, or moderate. This activity then became practice for future character analysis while reading Romeo and Juliet .

It is important for students to learn not only subject matter content, but also how to think about, approach, and do their work in each subject. In higher performing schools, teachers divide new or difficult tasks into segments and provide their students with guides for accomplishing them. However, the help they offer is not merely procedural: They guide students through the process and overtly teach the steps necessary to do well. They provide strategies not only for how to do the task but also how to think about it. These strategies are discussed and modeled, and teachers develop reminder sheets for student to use. In this way, students learn the process for completing an assignment successfully.

Most of the teachers in the higher performing schools share and discuss rubrics for evaluating performance with their students. They also incorporate rubrics into their ongoing instruction as a way to help students develop an understanding of the components that contribute to a higher score. Discussion of the rubric expectations enables students to develop more complete, more elaborate, and more highly organized responses to an assignment. Sometimes students design a rubric with their teacher so that they clearly understand what is expected of them.

In higher performing schools, students learn and internalize ways to work through a task, and to understand and meet its demands. Through these experiences, they not only become familiar with strategies they can use to approach other tasks, including high stakes tests, but they also develop ways to think and work within a specific field. Teachers scaffold students’ thinking by developing complex activities and by asking questions that make the students look more deeply and more critically at the content of lessons.

In more typical schools, instruction focuses on content or skills rather than on the process of learning. Students do not develop the procedural and/or metacognitive strategies necessary to complete tasks independently. Teachers concentrate on covering the required information, focusing on the answer rather than on how to get to the answer. Students are not helped to internalize the methods and strategies for accomplishing tasks.

• Providing rubrics that students review, use, and even develop
• Designing models and guides that lead students to understand how to approach each task
• Supplying prompts that support thinking
• Focus on skills and content
• Instructions that lack procedural strategies to support and extend thinking

Kate McFadden-Midby at Foshay Learning Center in California provides her students with strategies for completing any task that she thinks is going to be new or challenging for them. For example, early in the year she provides strategies for group participation. She assigns specific roles that help students include important concepts and encourage participation of all members. The roles rotate, and students become comfortable filling all of them.

Many subsequent assignments require the application of these collaborative strategies. For example, when her students are learning character analyses, Kate asks them to begin by developing critical thinking questions. She tells them that the questions must be ones that anyone could discuss, even someone who has not read the book (e.g., one student asked, “Why are some people so cruel when it comes to revenge?”).

Before students meet with their groups, she provides these directions:

• share your critical thinking question with your group;
• tell your group partners why you chose that particular question and what situation in the book made you think about it.

Next, she asks the students to choose two characters from the book (or books) they have read, in order to compare the characters’ viewpoints on that question. The students engage in deep and substantive discussion about their classmates’ questions, and in so doing gain clarity on the goals and process of the task. As students work to develop their questions, they are applying their group strategies as well as developing ways to analyze characters.

These group discussions are followed by a pre-writing activity in preparation for writing a description of the characters they choose. Kate instructs them on how to develop a T-Chart. One character’s name is placed at the top of one column of the T, and the other character’s name at the top of the other. She asks them to list characteristics: what their characters were like, experiences they had, opinions, etc. By using this chart, Kate provides the students with a way to identify characteristics and then ways to compare them across characters.

Students again meet with their groups and present their characters. Kate scaffolds the students’ thinking by asking questions about the characters: What kind of person was the mother? What are some adjectives that might describe her? How do you think those things could influence how she feels?

Over time, they will use the T-Chart as an organizational strategy in several writing assignments, and Kate will introduce them to a variety of other supportive strategies. Although her assignments are complex, her students can be successful because Kate provides helpful strategies along the way. They gain insight not merely into specific content (e.g., the characters of the lessons above), but also into how to do the assigned work and how they can apply these tools in other learning situations.

All of the teachers in the higher performing schools take a generative approach to student learning. They go beyond students’ acquisition of skills or knowledge to engage students in creative and critical uses of their knowledge and skills. Teachers provide a variety of activities from which students will generate deeper understandings.

For example, when studying literature, after the more obvious themes in a text are discussed, teachers and students together explore the text from many points of view, both from within the literary work and from life. Students may be asked to research the time period, to consider how issues in the piece relate to current issues, or to compare the treatment of issues in this literary work with the treatment of the same issues in other pieces they have read. Teachers are attuned to questions raised by the students and use the students’ concerns as opportunities to further elaborate and generate meaning. Once students arrive at a level of expertise, teachers continue to provide an array of activities that provoke them to use what they have learned to think and learn more.

In contrast, in the more typical schools, the learning activity and the thinking about it seem to stop when the desired response is given or when the assigned task is completed. When students appear confused or uncertain, teachers will often give them the “right” answer and move on to the next activity rather than capitalize on the opportunity to provoke further study and probing of the issue. The learning consists more of a superficial recall of names, definitions, and facts than a deeper and more highly conceptualized learning.

• Exploring texts from many points of view (e.g., social, historical, ethical, political, personal)
• Extending literary understanding beyond initial interpretations
• Researching and discussing issues generated by literary texts and by student concerns
• Extending research questions beyond their original focus
• Developing ideas in writing that go beyond the superficial
• Writing from different points of view
• Designing follow-up lessons that cause students to move beyond their initial thinking
• Stopping once students have demonstrated understanding
• Asking questions with predetermined answers that require little or no discussion or thought
• Covering content rather than addressing the complexities of understanding

Gloria Rosso* at Hudson Middle School teaches research skills using the Internet, hard-copy material, and interviews as sources of information, but she wants her students to go beyond their initial research questions and to discover new areas of inquiry. To do this, she engages her students in a generative activity that extends the learning of content as well as of the research process.

She begins with what she calls a mini-unit on the students’ surnames — what they mean and their histories. She teaches students to create good questions and has them interview their parents about family history. As the students talk at home, they identify additional questions about their families, culture, and history that they wish to pursue. Gloria teaches the students how to access information on the Web and in the school library to search for answers to their questions, and she encourages them to continue to redefine and build upon their initial questions as they find more information.

As students work, Gloria invites them to explore the use of symbols as a background to devising their own coats of arms. This activity encourages students to move beyond factual interpretation of information to a more symbolic or conceptual level.

While Gloria helps with research skills, the students discuss what they are learning with one another and share the ways in which the research about their names provide a living trail of history. These discussions move students to rethink their own research efforts and to consider other ways of extending their knowledge.

At the end of this unit, students write essays about their experiences, including what they have learned about themselves and their families. But the learning does not stop here. With these goals met, Gloria expects the students to move beyond what they have learned as they research and study African American culture and experiences in language arts class, and as they complete related research activities in science, social studies, and health classes.

* This name is a pseudonym.

In higher performing schools, students work in communicative groups, and teachers help students participate in thoughtful dialogue. Students engage in the kind of teamwork that is now so highly prized in business and industry. They bring their personal, cultural, and academic knowledge to these interactions, in which they play the multiple roles of learners, teachers, and inquirers and have opportunities to consider issues from multiple perspectives. Minds bump against minds as students interact as both problem-generators and problem-solvers. Teachers expect students not merely to work together, but also to sharpen their understandings with, against, and from one another.

In the higher performing schools, even whole class activities, particularly discussions, foster similar cognitive collaborations. Students learn to work together, listening to and interacting with one another about the ideas at hand. Teachers understand the importance of treating students as members of dynamic communities that rely on social and cognitive interactions to support learning.

Teachers in more typical schools and classes focus on individual thinking rather than on collaborative work. Even when students work together, they think in parallel rather than engaging in thoughtful, interactive conversation. Cognitive interactions about ideas are minimal and their focus is on completing tasks on their own. Students may cooperate in completing tasks, but they don’t work their conceptualizations through with each other. Often individual students in a group will each complete parts of a worksheet and then exchange answers rather than working and thinking together as a collaborative group.

Teachers in more typical schools often express concerns about managing collaborative groups. They worry that students will become unruly, distracted, or off task when working together. As a result of these concerns, teachers tend to treat each learner as an individual. They assume that group interaction will either diminish the thinking of the students or disrupt the discipline of the class. Rather than teaching the students to take their group work seriously and trusting them to do so, they develop activities that ensure that students will work independently and quietly.

Students working in small and large groups to:

• share their ideas and responses to literary texts, questions, etc.
• question and challenge each others’ ideas and responses
• create new responses

Teachers providing support during discussions and group work by:

• moving from group to group
• modeling questions and comments that will cause deeper discussion and analysis
• encouraging questions and challenges that cause students to think more deeply

Students working:

• alone without time to discuss, question, or share ideas
• together but not engaged in discussions or assignments that require them to grapple with ideas together

Teachers assigning:

• tasks that encourage independent work rather than group interaction
• questions that have predetermined answers

Cathy Starr*, at Hudson Middle School, uses both whole class and small class activities to foster cognitive collaboration. These activities weave into one another and together support students’ developing thinking. For example, in response to reading assignments, she asks each student to bring three thought-provoking questions to class as a stimulus for discussion.

Students meet in small groups to discuss these questions and come up with one or two “big” questions for the entire class. Cathy moves from group to group, modeling questions and comments, and provoking deeper discussion and analysis by the students. The small groups bring their selected question(s) to the entire class, and the class uses these classroom examples as the focus for the larger discussion. After the whole class discussion, Cathy lists items on which the students agree as well as issues that still need to be resolved in further discussions. Students use these lists as the starting point for further small group discussions.

Whether participating in small groups or in whole class discussions, the students are required to interact in thoughtful ways. They listen to and weigh the responses of other students against their own understandings. They ask for clarification and express their differences. This social activity is critical to moving their understandings forward.

The guidelines included above draw from a five-year study being conducted by Dr. Judith A. Langer, director of the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement. She and a team of researchers have been investigating English programs in 44 classrooms in 25 schools in 4 states. By comparing typical programs with those that get outstanding results, Langer and colleagues have been able to identify the features of the more effective programs.

The results of this research are reported in a set of research reports and case studies including, Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well , which details the features of effective instruction that are the subject of this booklet. Excellence in English in Middle and High School: How Teachers’ Professional Lives Support Student Achievement examines the professional contexts that contribute to teachers’ success.

These reports, the case studies, and related articles can be found on CELA’s website .

Related professional development services also available from The Center on English Learning and Achievement. Contact Janet Angelis at [email protected] for more information.

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15 Essential Resources for Elementary Writing Instruction

Authored by Janine Henley, this blog post offers 15 essential resources for elementary educators to enhance their writing curriculum and instruction. From webinars to books and podcasts, each resource is carefully selected to empower teachers, literacy coaches, and reading specialists in cultivating proficient writers in their classrooms. Dive into this curated collection of resources to unlock writing success, strengthen foundations, and foster creativity among young learners.

Table of Contents

• Articles, Guides & Research

Books : Effective Writing Instruction

• In “Keys to Early Writing,” you’ll find a comprehensive guide aligned to Keys to Literacy’s professional development modules. This resource is designed to support educators with an introduction to writing instruction, detailed instructional practices, real classroom examples, and engaging professional learning activities. The book also features numerous reproducible templates that you can use with your own students.
• The Institute of Education Sciences’ “Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers” guide offers four insightful recommendations to enhance elementary students’ writing skills. With detailed implementation steps and solutions for common challenges, this guide is a must-have for teachers, literacy coaches, and educators dedicated to improving their students’ writing proficiency. Explore this resource to learn more about effective elementary writing instruction!

Articles, Guides & Research : Elementary Writing Instruction

• 826 Writing Reports aims to ignite the power and joy of writing, envisioning a world where every student has access to quality writing education. Their dedication to creating more writing spaces and empowering teachers resonates deeply with our own commitment to literacy. 826 is working towards a future where writing flourishes in every classroom, enriching the lives of students and educators alike. The 826 Writing Reports explore the current state of writing instruction and research based best practices that will help move the needle on student achievement.
• In the latest edition of “Best Practices in Writing Instruction,” experts dive into strategies to help create a supportive writing environment and strategies to teach writing for different purposes. There are also several chapters that explore how to support students in honing specific skills—from handwriting and spelling to sentence construction and the writing process. This definitive text translates new research into effective guidelines for teaching writing across grades K–12, offering educators practical insights and real classroom examples to cultivate a comprehensive, high-quality writing program.
• The Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Tool provides educators with a valuable resource to assess the alignment of curricula with evidence-based practices in reading instruction. With the Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (CEGs) Reviewer Workbook, curriculum review teams can effectively rate and record evidence of potential red flags. It’s crucial to ensure that instructional practices align with the scientific evidence base of how children learn to read, particularly in Tier I instruction. The guidelines are meticulously designed to identify any non-aligned practices, or “red flags,” across key areas such as Word Recognition, Language Comprehension, Reading Comprehension, Writing, and Assessment
• In the article “5 High-Impact Writing Strategies for the Elementary Grades,” educators are encouraged to broaden their perspective on writing instruction beyond traditional storytelling and informational pieces. While these are undoubtedly valuable, the article emphasizes the importance of foundational transcription skills, such as handwriting. The article also discusses integrating writing across all content areas to deepen students’ understanding and prepare them as proficient writers. By incorporating writing into various subjects and providing opportunities for student choice, educators can nurture a strong foundation for young writers to excel in authoring texts across genres.
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• In this insightful webinar, Margie B. Gillis, Ed.D, a nationally recognized literacy expert, discusses the critical role of syntactic knowledge in student comprehension. As we explore the Syntax Attitude Educator session, Margie shares valuable research insights and practical strategies for educators to teach students how to understand the functions of sentence parts within text. During the webinar, Margie’s expertise shines through as she equips educators with evidence-based practices to enhance reading comprehension in the classroom. When we focus on syntax, we help strengthen not only our students’ reading comprehension but their written composition skills as well. This webinar will help equip you with the knowledge of sentence parts so you can teach syntax effectively!
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Janine Henley, M.Ed

Janine is currently a Literacy Specialist at Heggerty. Before joining Heggerty, she served as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, and literacy coach. Janine holds a Master’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Mary Washington and earned her reading specialist endorsement from the University of Virginia. Trained in Orton Gillingham, she has worked with diverse grade levels, spanning from K-8, showcasing her passion for education.

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Comparative effects of dynamic geometry system and physical manipulatives on Inquiry-based Math Learning for students in Junior High School

• Published: 02 May 2024

Cite this article

• Hao Guan 1 , 2 ,
• Jing Li 1 ,
• Yongsheng Rao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-3658 1 ,
• Ruxian Chen 1 &
• Zhangtao Xu 3  

Mathematical inquiry involving hands-on activities has received increasing attention in mathematics education. Besides various customized physical teaching aids, subject-specific information technology, such as Dynamic Geometry System (DGS), finds extensive use in mathematical inquiry activities. However, effects of DGS and physical manipulatives on inquiry-based math learning remain an open question. Hence, by adopting a quasi-experimental research design, this paper aims to empirically compare the immediate learning outcomes, knowledge retention, and learning interest of seventh-grade students who explore with virtual manipulatives (i.e., the DGS) and who explore with physical manipulatives. Specifically, 131 students participated in learning activities centered on exploring pyramids and prisms. During the inquiry process, Group A ( n  = 33) constructed pyramids and prisms in DGS, Group B ( n  = 34) observed pre-made virtual models in DGS, Group C ( n  = 32) observed physical models, and Group D ( n  = 32) made physical pyramids and prisms with polymer clay and small sticks. Moreover, pretest, post-test, and delayed post-test designed according to the Van Hiele model, as well as an adapted interest questionnaire, were employed to evaluate students’ performances; and collected data were analyzed by means of ANCOVA and t-test. Findings of the study revealed that in the context of construction, students employing the DGS exhibited superior immediate learning outcomes and greater knowledge retention compared to their peers who utilized physical manipulatives; while in the case of observation, the virtual and physical manipulatives yielded similar impacts on students’ immediate learning outcomes, but students who involved in the DGS demonstrated higher knowledge retention. Furthermore, regarding the DGS environment, students who engaged in constructive manipulation surpassed their peers who engaged in observing manipulation. In terms of interest, the DGS proved to be more effective in both stimulating and maintaining higher interest compared to the physical manipulatives, and constructive manipulation was more effective than observing manipulation. In summary, as compared to the physical manipulatives, DGS, particularly when employed with constructive strategy, has shown to encourage students to more actively engage in task-related cognitive behaviors, thereby supporting and enhancing inquiry-based math learning of students in junior high school.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks in particular the teachers and students who participated in the study. In addition, thanks to Aunt He, who is a dedicated math teacher as well as an enlightened mom.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62172116) and the Innovation Research for the Full-time Postgraduates of Guangzhou University (No. 2022GDJC-M34).

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Hao Guan, Jing Li, Yongsheng Rao & Ruxian Chen

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Perceptions of and preparedness for cross-cultural care: a survey of final-year medical students in Ireland

• Lesley O’Brien 1 ,
• Nicola Wassall 1 ,
• Danielle Cadoret 1 ,
• Aleksandra Petrović 1 ,
• Patrick O’Donnell 1 &
• Siobhán Neville 1  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  472 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Migration is increasing globally, and societies are becoming more diverse and multi-ethnic. Medical school curricula should prepare students to provide high-quality care to all individuals in the communities they serve. Previous research from North America and Asia has assessed the effectiveness of medical cultural competency training, and student preparedness for delivery of cross-cultural care. However, student preparedness has not been explored in the European context. The aim of this study was to investigate how prepared final-year medical students in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) feel to provide care to patients from other countries, cultures, and ethnicities. In addition, this study aims to explore students’ experiences and perceptions of cross-cultural care.

Final-year medical students attending all six medical schools within the ROI were invited to participate in this study. A modified version of the Harvard Cross-Cultural Care Survey (CCCS) was used to assess their preparedness, skill, training/education, and attitudes. The data were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 28.0, and Fisher’s Exact Test was employed to compare differences within self-identified ethnicity groups and gender.

Whilst most respondents felt prepared to care for patients in general (80.5%), many felt unprepared to care for specific ethnic patient cohorts, including patients from a minority ethnic background (50.7%) and the Irish Traveller Community (46.8%). Only 20.8% of final-year students felt they had received training in cross-cultural care during their time in medical school. Most respondents agreed that they should be assessed specifically on skills in cultural competence whilst in medical school (83.2%).

Conclusions

A large proportion of final-year medical students surveyed in Ireland feel inadequately prepared to care for ethnically diverse patients. Similarly, they report feeling unskilled in core areas of cross-cultural care, and a majority agree that they should be assessed on aspects of cultural competency. This study explores shortcomings in cultural competency training and confidence amongst Irish medical students. These findings have implications for future research and curricular change, with opportunities for the development of relevant educational initiatives in Irish medical schools.

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Patient-centred care is linked to improved health outcomes for patients and represents a pillar of quality in healthcare delivery [ 1 ]. However, providing patient-centred care becomes more complex with increasing diversity of patient populations. Miscommunication and misunderstandings in the clinical setting can lead to patient dissatisfaction, reduced adherence to treatment regimens and poor health outcomes [ 2 ]. Cross-cultural competence is an important factor in the ability of clinicians to deliver appropriate care to patients from different sociocultural backgrounds [ 1 ]. There have been multiple definitions of cross-cultural competence developed in the literature, and for the purpose of this study cross-cultural competence can be taken to mean a shared knowledge from collective experiences of diverse groups and the integration of behaviours and attitudes by healthcare professionals to empower them to engage effectively and collaboratively with patients from these diverse backgrounds [ 3 ]. Healthcare providers skilled in cross-cultural care can improve quality of care for minority ethnic groups and help eliminate health disparities by improving communication with patients, building trust, and overcoming gaps in understanding [ 2 ]. Therefore, it can be argued that cross-cultural competence is an essential skill for clinicians and should be included in medical school curricula.

To provide appropriate cross-cultural care, clinicians must engage in effective communication with, and provide high quality care to, patients from diverse sociocultural backgrounds [ 4 ]. Whilst there is no accepted definition of cultural competence, Betancourt et al . [ 5 ] described cultural competence training as specific efforts to enhance knowledge of sociocultural factors, health beliefs and behaviours held by patients, with an aim to develop skills to manage these factors in the delivery of equitable health care. Ultimately, training should help clinicians understand the impact of sociocultural factors on a patient’s health. However, there is variability in the methods, timing, and quality of this training [ 6 ]. Some institutions prioritise theory over practical skills, and many fail to address bias and disparities in healthcare [ 6 ]. Cross-cultural training requires standardisation to consistently produce culturally competent clinicians.

There has been a drive to improve cross-cultural care training in medicine, as studies in various countries have shown that both medical students and practising clinicians feel unprepared to deliver patient-centred, cross-cultural care [ 1 , 2 , 6 ]. Using the Cross-Cultural Care Survey (CCCS), a tool developed and validated for assessing cultural competency in medicine, Green et. al. [ 6 ] reported that final year Harvard medical students felt they lacked experience with diverse patient populations and experienced dismissive attitudes towards cross-cultural training from educators. As a result, they felt unprepared in many facets of delivering cross-cultural care. Medical students in Taiwan reported no improvement in preparedness to deliver cross-cultural care or address health inequities, as they progressed from preclinical to clinical training [ 7 ]. In Pakistan, researchers found that there was little difference between medical school year groups in their preparedness to care for patients with cultural customs and/or beliefs with the potential to affect clinical care [ 8 ]. In Switzerland, Casillas et al. [ 2 ] surveyed a group of healthcare providers, which included physicians and clinical nurses, and found that participants felt least prepared to care for patients whose religious beliefs affect treatment, and working in a department that provided some form of cross-cultural training was associated with higher levels of preparedness. Hudelson et al. [ 9 ] assessed the communication skills of both healthcare providers and local medical students when caring for migrant patients, which found that medical students scored lower than their qualified colleagues in clinical skills, intercultural communication skills and general intercultural skills.

There have been several studies conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) examining the cultural awareness of medical students and delivery of cultural competency training [ 10 ]. Studies show that UK medical students wish to be more aware of cultural differences in their patient population, and some students had not encountered any form of cultural competency training in their clinical curricula [ 11 , 12 ]. They recommended the incorporation of cultural competency training in both clinical and didactic material [ 12 ].

In the Irish context, the health of the Irish Traveller community raises particular equity concerns. This minority ethnic group faces higher mortality rates and lower average life expectancies than the general population, likely due to factors including discrimination, and access to health and social services [ 13 ]. This group was formally recognised as an indigenous ethnic minority in 2017 [ 14 ]. Diversity in Ireland has also been increasing, which adds to the complexity of delivering patient-centred care. From 2011 to 2016, the non-White-Irish population increased at a rate three times that of the White Irish ethnic majority. Preliminary results for the 2022 census revealed a population increase of 361,671, and estimated net immigration of 190,330 [ 15 ]. More recently, over 60,000 Ukrainian refugees arrived in Ireland in less than a year, with many requiring access to health services [ 16 ]. Despite these big changes, there is no research we can find that examines the preparedness of medical students in Ireland to provide cross-cultural care . The Health Service Executive (HSE), Ireland’s public health and social care service, recommends that academic institutions should integrate cultural competency training into undergraduate and postgraduate medical programmes [ 17 ]. Ireland’s changing demographics necessitate effective cross-cultural training in medicine to ensure all patients receive high quality care. Varying degrees of cross-cultural training have been employed by Irish medical institutions to provide students with skills required to navigate cross-cultural consultations. It is important to gauge the effectiveness of this training, particularly as there is no national standard in this area.

The aim of this study is to examine whether final-year medical students in Ireland feel prepared to provide high-quality care to patients from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Furthermore, this study aims to explore how these students have encountered this concept in their training thus far. In addition, we sought to explore the perceptions of students regarding ethnicity and health and identify potential areas to build on in medical school curricula. Researching the student perspective can provide medical educators with information on where students are receiving training in cross-cultural care, where students are finding greatest engagement, and areas of cross-cultural care in which students feel underprepared. Teaching basic skills required for navigating cross-cultural care consultations early in a medical student’s education establishes a foundation to build upon throughout their career and aid in the delivery of equitable healthcare for all patient cohorts.

Population and recruitment

We recruited final-year medical students, due to graduate in 2022, from both undergraduate and graduate-entry programmes in all six medical schools within the ROI: National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University College Cork (UCC), University College Dublin (UCD), and University of Limerick (UL). We used social media channels to distribute the survey, posting to final year medical student groups on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms. We included a prize draw as an incentive to participate. Ethical approval was granted by the University of Limerick Faculty of Education and Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee.

Design and procedure

The Harvard cross-cultural care survey (CCCS) is a validated tool developed in the United States to assess cross-cultural competence in medicine and was adapted for the Irish context [ 6 ]. For example, questions were included regarding the Irish Traveller population. This cross-sectional survey design was used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data on four elements of cross-cultural care: i) preparedness, ii) skill, iii) training and education, and iv) attitudes. Information was collected on the medical training received by each participant, in addition to experiences outside of medical school. We assessed students during their final semester of medical school from January to June 2022. The survey was created using the online survey platform Qualtrics in line with the Harvard cross-cultural care survey layout. It was distributed via social media channels, and in addition, posters with a QR code link to the survey were placed in communal student settings in Irish hospitals.

Survey responses were stored and analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 28.0. All components of the survey, including demographics, preparedness, skill, training and education, and attitudes were examined using frequency analyses. Fisher’s exact test was used to investigate statistically significant differences between gender and ethnicity groups, in reported preparedness and skill. Fisher’s Exact Test was chosen to provide accurate p values for low frequency samples in this study.

Participants were asked initially to disclose whether they were a final year medical student from the outset. Those who responded “no” were filtered out from the participation in the survey. Demographic data collected were analysed to investigate for gender and ethnicity difference in responses without cross-analysing two variables, e.g. institute and ethnicity or gender and ethnicity, to ensure confidentiality. Following completion of the survey, participants were offered the chance to participate in the prize draw. If accepted, participants were taken to a separate survey in which they were asked to include their email for a chance to win. No names were collected to protect confidentiality.

Pilot study

A pilot study of recently qualified doctors was carried out in 2021 to further refine the CCCS for the Irish context. The survey was distributed to recent graduates from six medical schools in the ROI via social media. The pilot study was completed by 49 participants. The reliability of the survey was tested using data collected from the pilot study. Cronbach’s alpha for the subscales within the survey were (α = 0.705–0.887) indicating acceptable reliability.

A total of 105 survey responses were collected from final-year medical students across the six medical schools in the ROI. Twenty-eight responses were excluded—four were not final year medical students and twenty-four were incomplete. There was a target population of approximately 1200 students, however the true number of students viewing the survey link is not known, therefore an exact response rate cannot be calculated.

Demographics

NUIG returned the most responses, (Table  1 (demographics), N  = 77). There was a higher proportion of female to male participants (75.3% and 24.7%, respectively). 57 participants self-identified as “ethnic majority” (74%), 19 self-identified as “ethnic minority”, (24.7%), and one did not disclose their self-identified ethnicity (1.3%).

Preparedness

Participants were asked to evaluate their perceived level of preparedness to care for patients in the contexts presented in Table  2 (Preparedness). 80.5% of participants felt prepared to care for patients in general. 50.7% felt prepared to care for patients from ethnic minorities, and 46.8% felt prepared to care for Irish Travellers specifically. Participants felt unprepared to care for new migrant patients (62.4%), patients with limited English proficiency (57.2%), and patients whose religious beliefs may affect clinical care (57.2%). There were statistically significant differences when comparing ethnicity groups. Ethnic minority participants felt more prepared to care for patients from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds (68.42% vs 43.86%, p  <  0.05 ), patients with limited English proficiency (26.32% vs 22.81%, p  <  0.05 ), and new migrant patients (26.32% vs 17.54%, p  <  0.05 ) when compared to those who did not identify this way. There were no statistically significant differences between gender groups.

Participants were *similarly prepared* to care for other minoritised patient communities, including those who identify as LGBTQIA + (54.6%) and those with disabilities (48.1%), as compared to patients from minority ethnic backgrounds (50.7%).

Participants were asked to evaluate their perceived level of skill in relation to the contexts presented in Table  3 (Skill). A high proportion of participants reported being skilled in adapting communication styles to fit a patient’s needs (80.5%) and building rapport with patients from ethnic backgrounds different to their own (76.6%). Participants reported a higher level of skill in identifying a patient’s understanding of spoken English (64.9%) compared to written English (42.9%). Participants reported being unskilled in working effectively with a medical interpreter (45.5%) and identifying religious beliefs and cultural customs that may affect clinical care (44.2%). Ethnic minority participants reported greater skill in identifying how well a patient understands verbal English than their ethnic majority counterparts (78.95% vs 59.65%, p  <  0.05 ). There were no statistically significant differences observed between gender groups.

Training and education

Participants were asked to evaluate how their educational experiences have prepared them to care for ethnic minority patients (Fig.  1 ). Participants identified experiences prior to, or outside of, the formal medical curriculum as the most useful in preparing them (36.8% “strongly agree”, 42.1% “somewhat agree”), followed by clinical electives (13.3% “strongly agree”, 40% “somewhat agree”) and formal clinical years (10.4% “strongly agree”, 41.6% “somewhat agree”). The pre-clinical education period (usually the first half of medical school training) was where a minority of students surveyed gained educational experience relevant to this topic, (6.5% “strongly agree”, 9.1% “somewhat agree”).

Training and Education: Experience. Participants were asked to self-evaluate the usefulness of the educational experiences presented above in preparing them to care for ethnic minority patients using a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. % N  = percentage frequency of number of total participants, ( N  = 77)

Participants were asked to identify whether they had been exposed to various aspects of cross-cultural training whilst in their medical school (Fig.  2 ). Participants agreed they had practical experience caring for diverse patient populations during this time (16.9% “strongly agree”, 36.4% “somewhat agree”). A minority of participants felt they had not encountered diverse patient populations (22.1% “somewhat disagree”, 14.3% “strongly disagree”). Few agreed they had undergone cross-cultural training (9.1% “strongly agree”, 11.7% “somewhat agree”). A small majority agreed they had encountered positive attitudes to cross-cultural care amongst senior clinicians on placement, (16.9% “strongly agree”, 39% “somewhat agree”). A similar proportion encountered negative or dismissive attitudes amongst senior clinicians, (9.1% “strongly agree”, 33.8% “somewhat agree”). A majority of participants reported encountering positive attitudes towards cross-cultural care amongst their student peers (33.8% “strongly agree”, 32.5% “somewhat agree”). There were no statistically significant differences between gender or ethnic groups.

Training and Education: Exposure. Participants were asked to self-evaluate whether they had been exposed to the scenarios presented above using a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. % N  = percentage frequency of number of total participants, ( N  = 77)

Participants were asked to evaluate how they felt their medical school had incorporated and prioritised the teaching of cross-cultural care. Many disagreed that their respective schools had incorporated cross-cultural issues into teaching (Fig.  3 A) (36.4% “somewhat disagree”, 23.4% “strongly disagree”). Similarly, they disagreed that their medical school had made the care of ethnic minority patients a priority for medical education (Fig.  3 B) (36.4% “somewhat disagree”, 40.3% “strongly disagree”).

Student Perceptions on Current Cross-Cultural Training in Medical School. Participant perceptions were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. A Participants were asked whether their medical school had incorporated cross-cultural issues into teaching and clinical care. Strongly disagree (23.4%), somewhat disagree (36.4%), neither agree nor disagree (10.4%), somewhat agree (22.1%), strongly agree (7.8%). B Participants were asked whether they felt their medical school makes learning about the care of ethnic minority patients a priority. Strongly disagree (40.3%), somewhat disagree (36.4%), neither agree nor disagree (7.8%), somewhat agree (9.1%), strongly agree (6.5%). % N  = percentage frequency of total participants, where N  = 77. No statistically significant differences were identified between ethnic groups or gender groups

Participant attitudes towards cross-cultural care were assessed. The majority of participants agreed that it is important to have clinical experience with diverse patient populations (Fig.  4 A) (93.5%). Furthermore, 83.2% of participants agreed that students should be assessed for their skills in cultural competence (Fig.  4 B).

Participant attitudes to cross-cultural care were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. A Participants were asked whether they felt it is important for medical students to have clinical experiences with a diverse mix of ethnic minority patients. “Strongly disagree” (0%), “somewhat disagree” (1.3%), “neither agree nor disagree” (5.2%), “somewhat agree” (9.1%), “strongly agree” (84.4%). B Participants were asked whether during medical school, students should be assessed for skills in cultural competence. “Strongly disagree” (5.2%), “somewhat disagree” (9.1%), “neither agree nor disagree” (2.6%), “somewhat agree” (37.75%), “strongly agree” (45.5%). Total number participants, ( N  = 77)

Finally, participants were invited to share ideas of how cross-cultural care may be further incorporated into their learning. Fourteen respondents put forward their thoughts on ways to deliver effective cross-cultural care within their curriculum. These may be considered under three broader categories—the method of delivery, the resources used, and the content delivered. Respondents felt methods of delivery should include specified lectures and/or modules on cross-cultural care, clinical sessions with patients from diverse backgrounds, and opportunities for involvement in community initiatives delivering care to minority populations. Respondents highlighted the need for learning resources that are inclusive of diverse patient populations. Finally, respondents highlighted a need for specific training in key content areas, including unconscious bias and working with medical interpreters.

This is one of the first studies in a European context to evaluate medical students’ preparedness to care for diverse patient populations using a validated survey tool and identifies areas of need to equip students to provide high-quality cross-cultural care. Previous studies have provided limited insight into the medical student perspective on aspects of cross-cultural training, usually as part of wider studies focusing on the perceptions of clinicians or schools delivering training [ 9 , 12 ].

The self-reported preparedness points to a specific lack of experience engaging with patients from diverse backgrounds. With a majority of respondents reporting proficiency in cross-cultural skills assessed in this survey, this may reflect an under-confidence in self-reported preparedness of Irish medical students. The difference in preparedness between self-identified ethnic groups, whereby ethnic minority students reported greater preparedness in cross-cultural care, may be due to a shared experience of being minoritised in society and finding a commonality between being from cultures outside of the ethnic majority. Other studies have found similar results, with participants that identify as ethnic minority or even sexual minority reporting greater preparedness to care for patients from different cultural backgrounds and different sexual orientations [ 8 , 18 ]. It may suggest that these experiences may be collected, shared, and taught in cross-cultural education, so that future clinicians are able to better understand their diverse patients and ultimately deliver better care.

Preparedness to care for LGBTQIA + patients and patients with disabilities were included in the survey, as these groups also often face barriers to care. While few survey respondents felt prepared to care for these communities, the figures were similar to those collected in the USA and Taiwan [ 6 , 7 ]. This suggests an area to improve upon when cultivating student preparedness to care for other diverse populations, populations that are often neglected or discriminated against in the health care setting despite a potentially shared culture or ethnicity [ 18 ].

The Skills section highlighted specific areas of student concern, which can direct the development of future medical curricula on cross-cultural training. Participants in this study identified areas where they felt least skilled in delivering cross-cultural care, including identifying religious or cultural beliefs affecting clinical care and working effectively with a medical interpreter. They highlighted experiences outside the formal medical curriculum as most preparatory in building their cross-cultural competence. Research indicates that the informal or “hidden” curriculum, where students encounter a variety of patient populations and learn through direct observation, immersion, and interaction with these diverse groups, plays a crucial role in developing their cultural competence. This unintentional learning process is essential in enhancing their ability to effectively work across different cultural contexts [ 19 ]. This suggests that schools should offer and encourage elective opportunities or volunteering placements within diverse communities, as they are a rich source of cross-cultural education. Unfortunately, medical schools in Ireland are often limited by geographical location and availability of clinical placements. However, this may be an area schools can improve upon as the Irish population continues to diversify rapidly.

Despite varying cross-cultural training programs implemented in Irish medical schools, many participants in this survey felt they had not received training in cross-cultural care during their time in medical school, nor was it felt to be a priority in their curriculum. Further reinforcement of these programmes should be implemented across all years of medical school, via both theoretical and practical means. As per participant suggestions put forth in this survey, lectures, small group sessions, involvement in local community programmes, and dedicated cross-cultural clinical sessions could be implemented to enhance cultural competency. A cultural humility approach has been shown to be beneficial, which incorporates self-reflection in cross-cultural training [ 12 ]. A scoping review by Brottman et al . [ 19 ], revealed eleven cross-cultural educational methods to cultivate cultural competence, whilst Liu et al . [ 20 ], demonstrated the ways in which the hidden curriculum can influence cross-cultural competence. From these studies, multiple methods of cultivating cross-cultural competence can be utilised, and there is no method has been proven superior to another [ 19 ].

The majority of participants agreed that they should be assessed for skills in cultural competence during medical school training. Schools may look to assess this in Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) stations. There have been previous calls for greater use of objective measures of assessment of cultural competence in the literature to date [ 6 , 8 , 11 ]. A recent review by Deliz. et al. [ 21 ] found that the most commonly adopted assessment modality of cross-cultural care training in medical schools were pre- and post-training self-assessment surveys, but other forms of assessment included objective measures, namely knowledge-based tests and standardised patient encounters. It is unknown whether the medical schools listed in our study have implemented objective assessments for cultural competence among their student population.

The Attitudes section suggests that survey participants have encountered negative or dismissive attitudes towards cross-cultural care in clinical settings. This follows findings from UK studies, which revealed that ethnic minority students specifically felt isolated and subject to stereotyping by clinicians whilst on placement [ 12 , 22 ]. This suggests that clinical staff should also be exposed to cross-cultural training as role models for future health care professionals [ 19 ]. Fortunately, positive attitudes greatly outweighed negative attitudes amongst the participants’ own peer groups.

One limitation of this study was the low number of responses received, which may have been impacted by our method of recruitment and timing of our data collection. Our data were collected through indirect social media channels, therefore the number of medical students that had the potential to interact with our survey was unknown. There was a low response rate from some institutions compared to others, namely TCD, RCSI, and UCC, again likely due to method of recruitment, thus the data cannot be taken to represent all undergraduate and graduate medicine courses in the ROI. The data collection took place in the latter half of the final year, a time when student anxiety regarding final exams is high. This may have impacted the rate of participation observed in our study. While there is no public data available regarding the ethnic makeup of the medical student population in Ireland, our survey received responses representing self-identified majority and self-identified minority student perspectives. Though this may not reflect the national average, this response ratio ensured representation from both cohorts. The interpretation of data inferred from ethnicity differences cannot be overstated due to the low total number of responses. Also, it should be noted that this study asked students to self-identify as ethnic minority or majority, which may inherently pose difficulty for some.

Students engaging in a survey on cross-cultural care are likely interested in this area of medical education, which may influence the responses. This survey asked students to self-report their feelings of preparedness and skill and may not be a true reflection of their abilities. Students may feel unprepared at this stage of their career due to “imposter syndrome” or anxiety about entering the workforce, which may create a negative self-perception bias [ 23 ]. There is limited data published regarding how the schools represented in this survey implement their training in cross-cultural care. Finally, this survey tool relies on participant recall, introducing potential for recall bias as observed in similar studies [ 7 ]. Suggestions for further research include repeating this survey with alternative recruitment methods to boost response rates and collect data representative of all ROI medical institutions, assessing students’ preparedness for diverse patient populations during different stages of their medical education. The preparedness of medical students to care for patients with disabilities and/or patients from LGBTQIA + communities should be further explored. Finally, it would be advisable to assess non-hospital consultant doctors’ (NCHDs) preparedness to care for diverse patient populations in Ireland.

This was the first study assessing the perceptions of final-year medical students across Irish universities in their preparedness, skill, and attitudes towards cross-cultural care. This survey has helped to clarify the student perspective on current cross-cultural training employed by medical schools, with students reporting an unpreparedness to care for diverse patient cohorts. It highlights areas in which students do not feel adequately trained to deliver cross-cultural care. Most students have a positive perception of cross-cultural competence and feel it is important to incorporate cross-cultural competence into their education to ensure the delivery of equitable health care to diverse patient cohorts. Students expressed how they hoped to see more cross-cultural competency training, including further lectures, modules, and clinical sessions added to their curriculum. This survey has highlighted areas of medical education that students desire further training in to develop their skills in cross-cultural competence.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the potential for individual privacy to be compromised but are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Cross-Cultural Care Survey

Health Service Executive

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual + 

Non-Consultant Hospital Doctor

National University of Ireland, Galway

Observed Structured Clinical Exam

Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Republic of Ireland

Trinity College Dublin

University College Cork

University College Dublin

United Kingdom

University of Limerick

United States of America

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Alisha Jaffer for her contribution to the conception and early development of this project, and Seoidín McKittrick for her time and expertise in analysing our pilot study dataset. Finally, the authors would like to thank the final-year medical students in NUIG, RCSI, TCD, UCC, UCD, and UL who shared the survey with their peers, and all the participants who completed the survey.

No funding was required for this study.

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School of Medicine, University of Limerick, Limerick, Republic of Ireland

Lesley O’Brien, Nicola Wassall, Danielle Cadoret, Aleksandra Petrović, Patrick O’Donnell & Siobhán Neville

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All authors contributed to the conceptualisation and design of the study. L’OB, NW, DC, and AP contributed to participant recruitment and data collection. LO’B performed statistical analysis of the results. PO’D and SN contributed to participant recruitment, and supervision of the study. LO’B and NW wrote a draft paper, which has been reviewed and revised critically by all authors. All authors approved the final version to be published and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Authors’ information

LO’B is an NCHD Intern at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. NW is a Foundation Doctor FY1 at North Devon District Hospital. DC is a General Surgery Prelim/Interventional Radiology PGY1 at Corewell Health, Michigan State University. AP is a final year medical student at the School of Medicine, University of Limerick. PO’D is a General Practitioner and Associate Professor of General Practice at the School of Medicine, University of Limerick. SN is a Consultant General Paediatrician at University Hospital Limerick, and Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the School of Medicine, University of Limerick.

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Correspondence to Lesley O’Brien .

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Informed consent was obtained from all students prior to their participation in the study once they had read and agreed to the terms of the ethical consent form. All methods were performed in accordance with the regulations and guidelines provided by the University of Limerick Faculty of Education and Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee. Approval to conduct this study was also granted by the University of Limerick Faculty of Education and Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee. Data collected included identifiers such as participant’s medical school, gender identity, and whether a participant identified as ethnic minority. Data was analysed only to investigate potential gender differences or ethnic identity differences, without cross matching two identifiers to ensure participants identities remained anonymous. Data collected is retained for 7 years in a password protected file in accordance with Irish and European Data Protection Law.

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O’Brien, L., Wassall, N., Cadoret, D. et al. Perceptions of and preparedness for cross-cultural care: a survey of final-year medical students in Ireland. BMC Med Educ 24 , 472 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05392-4

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Received : 20 August 2023

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Published : 29 April 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05392-4

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What Can You Do With a Medical Degree?

If you don't want to be a doctor who treats patients, options range from research and writing to consulting and counseling.

Different jobs with med degree

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Doctors in the pharmaceutical research field may work for pharmaceutical companies, research organizations or regulatory agencies in medicine discovery, development and licensing.

Key Takeaways

• There are options aside from being a doctor who treats patients.
• An alternative career may require additional training or education.
• Medical schools prefer to admit students who will practice medicine.

After graduating with a medical degree, most doctors complete a full three-year residency training program. While it's possible for medical school graduates to earn a general medical license after completing a single postgraduate year and passing all three steps of the United States Medical Licensing Examination, clinical opportunities are extremely limited for those who don't complete residency and become board-certified.

Most doctors go on to become traditional clinicians, examining, diagnosing and treating patients.

For those who want to treat patients, the long list of medical and surgical specialties includes pediatrics, internal medicine, radiology, psychiatry, oncology, emergency medicine, anesthesiology, general surgery, plastic and maxillofacial surgery, ophthalmology and orthopedics.

Because a medical degree represents enormous financial and personal sacrifice, and pursuing a clinical career means years of rigorous training beyond medical school, most physicians expect to stay in clinical practice for decades. And while almost two-thirds of doctors say they’d still choose the profession if they had their career to do over, according to a 2023 survey by The Physicians Foundation, life as a clinician is not for everyone.

Dr. Steve Liggett, vice dean for research at the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida and associate vice president for research at USF Health, is a doctor who isn't in clinical practice. As a professor of internal medicine and of molecular pharmacology and physiology, he focuses on research and leads the USF Health Office of Research.

“To succeed in the nonclinical space is going to take additional training,” he says. “It's not really feasible, for example, to be a molecular biologist – which is what I am – and not having had any molecular biology training.”

Here are some careers you can pursue as a doctor, including some that don't require completing residency or additional training.

Pharmaceutical Research

Liggett says he sees doctors who have completed their clinical training move on, after just a few years of practice, to work in early clinical trials and drug development in the pharmaceutical industry.

"They really love it. They don't see as many patients, but they're really involved at the cutting edge of what's going to be the next generation of drugs that are going to come out, often in their specialty,” he says, “and so that is one of the more common paths that I've seen.”

Doctors in this field may work for pharmaceutical companies, research organizations or regulatory agencies in medicine discovery, development and licensing. Potential roles include medical adviser or medical science liaison officer, medical reviewer, clinical research physician, pharmacovigilance (drug safety) practitioner and medical affairs specialist.

Health care consulting is a common path for medical school graduates who move into a nonclinical career, says Dr. Daniel Clinchot, vice dean for education at the Ohio State University College of Medicine and a professor at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center .

They may consult for corporations or insurance companies, he says, or use their knowledge of clinical care to help doctors and clinical health care facilities improve their business and management practices.

Other consulting roles include being an adviser to a medical startup company, working with a market research company, educating physicians on equipment or technology, or giving input on the operations of a hospital or health care system.

Teaching and Clinical Education

Medical schools rely on doctors who can teach for clinical rotations, where third- and fourth-year students learn from preceptors – and experts say schools across the U.S. are struggling to find them. Clinchot says most med schools prefer to hire teachers who have some clinical experience in addition to a medical degree.

Liggett says doctors who choose teaching typically provide didactic instruction for first- and second-year medical students, or bedside teaching with small groups.

"Medical schools are taking that very seriously and want full-time teachers," Liggett says, "and an M.D. could certainly do that.”

Public Health

Public health deals with population-level health problems, including causes, prevention and intervention.

“Some people get a master's in public health " after graduating from medical school, Liggett says, "and then they're able to be more of an epidemiologist and look at national trends, analyze data across states or across zip codes to try to understand environmental basis of disease or the way communicable diseases might be passed, for example.”

But there are public health roles for doctors beyond epidemiology. According to PublicHealth.org, physicians who transition to work in public health "may still provide individual clinical care, but they also devote more of their time to developing public health programs and initiatives. Their credentials as medical doctors uniquely qualify them to advise and author public health initiatives and provide community-wide medical advice and education."

Medical Writing

Medical writers communicate complex scientific and clinical data to diverse audiences. The field includes scientific writers, technical writers , regulatory writers, promotional writers, health care marketers and health care journalists, according to the American Medical Writers Association.

Per AMWA, there's growing demand for medical writers to produce continuing medical education materials, health care policy documents, scientific and medical journal articles , abstracts for medical conferences, magazine and newspaper articles, medical books, advertising materials, regulatory documents including U.S. Food and Drug Administration submissions, white papers and decision aids for patients.

Other Careers for Doctors

• Clinical informatics specialist
• Genetic counselor
• Forensic specialist
• Policy adviser
• Grant writer
• Health care benefits adviser

Choosing a Path

While there are many alternate careers for doctors who want to move away from clinical care, Clinchot says medical schools aim to admit students who will ultimately practice medicine – in part because the U.S. faces a serious doctor shortage that's expected to worsen as medical students and doctors struggle with debilitating stress, burnout and disruptive changes in health care practice.

The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates the U.S. could face a shortage of up to 86,000 doctors by 2036, and according to a June 2023 survey by Merritt Hawkins for The Physicians Foundation, 28% of doctors who responded said they would like to retire within the next year – up from 21% in 2022.

“Our entire curriculum and our career counseling is all geared towards clinical careers, so we don't even have a track within the M.D. program for nonclinical-related careers,” Clinchot says. “We have several tracks (including a track) for research that's a clinician scientist, so you're doing both clinical work and research. We don't have a track for students that just all they want to do is nonclinical work.”

Clinchot says most students – even those who choose not to complete a three-year residency – don’t stop at earning their medical degree.

“Most will go on for at least one year," he says, "because the one year of additional training after your M.D. degree gives you an ability to get a license to practice medicine."

That extra year is worth it for most, Clinchot says, since they've already devoted several years to medical school.

Should You Become a Doctor?

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