Levels of Inquiry into the Nature of Expertise in Writing

Abstract

Research on writing is notable for its extreme diversity and for the lack of interconnections. Scardamalia and Bereiter (1985b) describe nine separate strands of research that are currently prominent: research on the early development of written symbolism, discourse analysis, story grammar, basic writers, the new rhetoric, writing apprehension, classroom practices, teacher and peer response to writing, and the nature of the composing process. To say that these strands are separate is to say that there is little cross-referencing of research across strands and that findings from one strand seldom impinge on findings from another. Undoubtedly this is partly a reflection of the newness of many of these lines of research, but it is also a reflection of the preparadigmatic state of writing research (Emig, 1978)-the lack of agreedupon constraints on theoretical questions and answers. The Levels of Inquiry schema (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1983b) provides a framework within which research on various questions, using diverse methods, can be brought into conjunction. A major reason for developing this schema was the belief that the current diversity in kinds of inquiry into writing