"'Scared-ish' about writing": An exploration of the effects of bibliotherapy and dialogue journaling on fourth-grade students' writing apprehension and motivation to write

The ability to communicate well through writing has never been more critical. Writing is a necessary skill to make a living and a life. Even before beginning school, children try to make themselves known by writing. Graves (1983) writes that a child’s marks on paper-or a wall-say to the world, “I am” (p. 3). Children are aware of the value of writing, yet only 14% of them have writing that is considered “competent” (NCES, 2012). Lackluster results on national tests have spurred an increase in high-stakes testing. For students who experience fear and discomfort associated with writing, known as writing apprehension (Daly & Miller, 1975), practice for these tests and most other evaluative writing can cause an already negative disposition toward writing to become worse. Avoidance of situations that involve writing can lead to long-term consequences beyond school failure. This convergent-parallel mixed methods study explored the effects of an intervention that combines bibliotherapy and dialogue journaling on the writing attitudes of eight fourth-grade student participants. This purposive sample was chosen because these fourth-grade students were preparing to take the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) writing test in the spring of the 2019-2020 school year. Drawing upon social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), and Graham’s Writer(s)-Within-Community model (2018), this study is rooted in the belief that learning is a social activity. In keeping with this belief, the eight fourth-grade participants met with me for twelve weekly meetings after school in the school library of a south Texas Title I school. This study was social activity by design, so it was imperative that the student participants feel a sense of togetherness and camaraderie. For this reason, I chose to call our group a “club” from the beginning. Webster’s New World Collegiate Dictionary defines the word “club” as a group of people associated for a common purpose or mutual advantage, usually in an organization that meets regularly (Webster’s, 2002). “Club” in this context applies well to the group that the student participants and I created. After reading a book in which a character overcomes adversity, we discussed connections to the book before the student participants wrote a response in a dialogue journal that I responded to after the meeting. In addition to transcripts of these journal entries, other qualitative data included survey responses from the fourth-grade language arts teachers, my field notes, and a post-intervention focus group interview. Quantitative data was gathered in the form of two surveys administered pre- and post-intervention. The qualitative data set was transcribed, coded, and analyzed for emergent themes, and quantitative data was analyzed statistically. Both data sets were compared side-by-side to discover congruent and discrepant findings. Findings from the quantitative analyses revealed no statistical significance between pre and post-intervention administrations of the surveys. Qualitative findings suggested that the student participants demonstrated increased confidence and were in the process of developing more positive attitudes toward writing.