Abstract

The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to distinguish writer profiles on the basis of students’ cognitive processes and motives for argumentative writing and (2) to study differences in the distribution of students’ background characteristics and in students’ writing outcomes across writer profiles. Participants were students who are enrolled in the academic track of upper-secondary education (aged 16–18). The current study uses questionnaire data from two independent samples (n _{sample 1} = 386 students; n _{sample 2} = 383 students) and writing test data from sample 1. A hierarchical and k-means cluster analysis was conducted on both samples revealing two clusters: (1) process-oriented writers with a high autonomous writing motivation and (2) writers who reported overall lower levels of cognitive writing processes and who simultaneously were less autonomously motivated to write. Furthermore, we found statistically significant differences between the writer profiles in terms of gender distribution and the results also showed that profile 1 students felt significantly more self-efficacious in argumentation and in regulating their writing behavior compared to students in profile 2. The present study contributes to the limited amount of person-centered profiling studies in writing research, especially since no studies to date have investigated writer profiles by combining cognitive and motivational cluster variables.

摘要

本研究的目的有两个：（1）根据学生的认知过程和议论文写作动机来区分作家概况；（2）研究学生背景特征分布和学生写作成果的差异。作家简介。参与者是就读于高中教育学术轨道的学生（16-18 岁）。目前的研究使用来自两个独立样本的问卷数据（n _{样本 1} = 386 名学生；n _{样本 2} = 383 名学生）并从样本 1 中编写测试数据。分层和k-均值聚类分析对两个样本进行了分析，揭示了两个聚类：（1）具有高度自主写作动机的面向过程的作家和（2）报告认知写作过程总体水平较低且同时自主写作动机较低的作家。此外，我们发现作家档案在性别分布方面存在统计学上的显着差异，结果还表明，与档案 2 的学生相比，档案 1 的学生在论证和规范写作行为方面的自我效能感明显更高。本研究有助于在写作研究中以人为中心的剖析研究数量有限，特别是因为迄今为止没有研究通过结合认知和动机集群变量来调查作家画像。