Research project
Efficacy trial of Writing Roots
- Start date: 1 November 2024
- End date: 31 December 2026
- Funding: Education Endowment Foundation
- Value: £200k
- Partners and collaborators: RAND Europe
- Primary investigator: Prof Louise Tracey
- Co-investigators: Dr Erin Dysart, Dr Paula Clarke
- External co-investigators: Elle Speciani, Rand Europe (Principle Investigator), Dr James Merewood
Research shows that structured writing interventions can significantly enhance pupil outcomes (Slavin et al., 2019), especially when implemented across the whole school (Graham et al., 2012). There are inherent complexities of such approaches (Loxley et al., 2007), including staff training and curriculum integration (Harris and Jones, 2017).
The Writing Roots programme developed by Literacy Tree is an intervention designed to improve pupil’s writing attainment across the whole school (Years 1-6) through a book-based pedagogical approach. It offers an alternative to the ‘genre-based’ approach to teaching literacy that is conventional in schools, with a wider range of texts chosen to engage pupils in multiple conventions and apply them in writing, rather than pupils being taught to emulate a particular genre over the course of a term. Diversity of texts within the classroom is correlated with improved pupil engagement (O’Leary et al., 2024), with pupil motivation and enjoyment in writing strongly correlated with writing outcomes (Ofsted, 2022; Slavin et al., 2019).
Writing Roots has not been independently piloted, but Literacy Tree has delivered elements of the programme to 974 schools, with 65 receiving the INSET training package that will be part of the trial delivery model. As Literacy Tree has already extensively delivered Writing Roots, or elements of it, they have had the opportunity to the refine the intervention with participation of schools to ensure suitability and have developed clear criteria for fidelity, making it suitable for an efficacy trial.
The evaluation of Writing Roots will assess the intervention’s efficacy in improving pupils’ writing capabilities and self-efficacy over business as usual. The current evaluation is planned as a two-arm, cluster-randomised intervention trial. Writing Roots is a whole-school intervention, so we will implement school-level randomisation, with all pupils in years 1-6 in schools assigned to the intervention group receiving Writing Roots. Control schools will proceed with business as usual for the duration of the trial, and will be offered Writing Roots at a discounted price after the trial.