Schrijvend-Leren En Tekstanalyse

In the context of recent studies on writing to learn, concept maps are constructed in an attempt to make knowledge structures and conceptual change explicit. These graphic representations are based on the concepts and semantic relations in a student's text. However, a concept map does not give insight into the rhetorical text structure and other rhetorical features, nor does it show the way concepts are located and connected in this structure. Since the dialectic between content knowledge and rhetorical knowledge is essential in the process of 'knowledge transforming', and consequently conceptual change, an analysis tool that integrates both analysis of rhetorical text structure and of semantic structures in text is needed. In a pilot study of a forthcoming research project about writing to learn in the content areas in primary education, an instrument was designed for integrated text analysis and graphic representation. The analysis and representations were demonstrated with data collected from ll-to-12 year old students, who wrote an explanatory text for younger students about a climate issue. Revision was triggered by asking the student whether he expected a younger pupil to understand the written explanation. An analysis and graphic representations of two texts written by two different students focused on location and use of concepts, expansions of meaning of these concepts, and connections between concepts through coherence relations, all embedded in the rhetorical text structure. It was concluded that the analysis tool proposed here makes it possible to compare students' knowledge structures and accordingly can provide insight into conceptual changes, relative to writing.