Proficiency scales for early writing development

Despite the growing prominence of writing in both educational contexts and society
at large, research-based knowledge about the development of writing remains
lacking, particularly regarding the developmental trajectories that students pass
through as they encounter and grapple with the complex system of more formal
writing during their primary years of school. This article presents a study that examined
writing development in Danish primary grade students (ages 6 to 8) from a
linguistic perspective to identify developmental patterns in students’ writing skills
during these years. In the study, we applied a multidimensional analytical framework
based on a text-oriented model of writing, for the coding of a large number
of digitalised student texts (N=803). Subsequently, we analysed the coding results
using statistical Rasch theory. Through this procedure, we were able to identify
developmental patterns in the students’ writing in the form of different proficiency
groups along four textual dimensions and to describe a number of linguistic levels
for each dimension. Furthermore, the article discusses didactic potentials and limits
from using proficiency groups when teaching writing in primary grades