Introduction
The education attainment gap has been one of the key concerns for educators and researchers. Self-regulated learning can be widely used as one way of accessing the attainment of the education gap. Researchers, policymakers, and teachers always try to suggest various ways to manage the education attainment level in schools, thereby improving education provision to the student both at primary and secondary schools. The need to widen the knowledge on the roles of the students in acquiring education plus practical methods of implementing learning tactics and evaluation is well notable. Education attainment inequalities affect students in disadvantaged families (Burgess and Thomson, 2019). There are great imbalances between children from different socio-economic backgrounds in mental development and socio-emotional well-being. The representatives of vulnerable socio-economic and cultural groups are disproportionately exposed to attainment inequality (Choudry, 2021). Thus, the persistence of the issue in the increasingly diversified societies necessitates solutions, which the research literature has addressed.
Research shows that the level of knowledge children from different socio-economic backgrounds obtain varies. McCluskey (2017) argues that children’s accomplishment in school corresponds to every child’s standardized anticipation for their age level. For most school-going children, only half of the students (50%) achieve grade 5 or higher in the English language and the mathematics GCSEs (Ahmed, 2020; Coe et al., 2020). The students from low socio-economic communities, a small group of around 25%, are the ones that manage to meet these standards (Barefoot et al., 2018). For those who manage to leave the basic level of learning called the primary school in disadvantaged families, it is only above the average, accounting for around 51% who achieve the set grades in reading, mathematics, and writing (Berger and Wild 2017). Thus, there is a solid body of evidence proving that the attainment gap is significantly dependent on students’ socio-economic status.
Several factors have been the main contributors to the attainment gap in the learning centers. Indeed, poor nutrition, a transport system, indecent housing, and inadequate or poor clothing are obstacles to learning (Lens and Levrau, 2020). The discrepancies in funding for different education centers imply that students from less fortunate families could have inadequate learning resources and incompetent teachers (Mcduff et al., 2018). In several cases, there has been great concern about the size of a class, revealing various ways in which the classes are allocated to students and the teachers’ preferences in classes management that affects learning.
The factors beyond socio-economic particularities have also been addressed in the research literature reviewed for the project. Indeed, age- and development-specific issues related to children learning behaviors have been associated with attainment. In particular, Beesley et al. (2018) states that the transition to middle school is commonly associated with poor learning outcomes which require improved methods of formative assessment to mitigate attainment gaps. In addition, the large size of the class has a great impact on the learning, also attributed to other students within the same classroom (White, 2017). Furthermore, the metrics of the attainment gaps in the levels of secondary and the primary school for a long period have been used in making comparisons on the bases of the rates of the student. At each level, the learners are expected to reach the set standards mostly in grade 4 on writing, mathematics, and the reading ability with each revealing performances excellence both in English and mathematics at GCSE (Coe et al., 2020). Thus, literature demonstrates that developmental and organizational issues play their role in predetermining attainment gaps.
There is a significant attainment gap for the student in less fortunate families in rural areas. The literature indicates that students in private schools have a better transport system and feeding program in their schools, hence encouraging school attendance and retention, unlike their counterparts in public schools (Taylor and Barrett, 2018). They complete their primary school education mostly more than a year behind students from high-income families. There are very minimal opportunities that these students will obtain a proper level of education since a small ratio of 1 to 15 will manage to acquire five excellent GCSEs, both Mathematics and English (Austen et al., 2017). A lot of concerted effort will be needed to reduce these widening gaps in education attainment.
Poverty has been a major stumbling block in the great effort to decrease the attainment gap in education. Most of the student in England comes from disadvantaged families, making it challenging to reduce the attainment gap since it cuts across all the sector of the economy, including education (Pangelinan, 2017). The majority of the families are struggling to provide the basic needs for the well-being of their children, including a decent shelter, provision of clothes, and a balanced diet. For the first time in history, there has been an indication that the attainment gap in England came to a halt in decreasing and started increasing (Bunce et al., 2021). More effort should be put by major contributors both in the private sector and the government to end poverty. Providing the education materials to the less fortunate student in schools will create an alternative income and save the families huge spending on purchasing the educational materials (Smith, 2017). It has exploited the family budget in several families, leaving them with nothing to save and, in worst cases, left with nothing to acquire other basic needs.
Ethnicity has been widely addressed as a significant factor in the attainment gap. The increase in the differences between the white and black ethnic groups in the attainment gap is important in several countries (Claridge, Stone and Ussher, 2018). The results of the Black Caribbean students doing the final GCSE exams in 2019 indicated that they were almost 11 months back than the British White student in both English and Mathematics (Tate, 2020). This widening attributed to the race has been due to lower IQ levels by students in different ethnic groups. The majority of education centers in rural areas have been showing a cognizable difference in academic performance compared to those in urban areas (Ellis and Rowe, 2020). This finding indicates that students in rural areas have minimal or inadequate learning materials and resources. Most of the students in the urban regions access their education at a nearby distance with improved social (Mowat, 2018). In addition, learning in rural areas is associated with minimal opportunities for exposure due to inadequate or lacking social amenities.
Several suggestions and contributions have been made to reduce the attainment gap. The widening gap in educational attainment can be minimized by prioritizing resources allocations to the students in less fortunate families than in families of high socio-economic status (Hadden et al., 2020). Such an approach will help reduce the attainment gap in both primary school and secondary school. Moreover, McCluskey (2017) suggests that children’s free time, including during the pandemic period, should be managed to provide learning to students in disadvantaged families. Provision of social amenities and infrastructural development, including the transport systems, health programs, nutritional diet, learning materials and resources, competent teachers, and good class size, will go a long way toward reducing the widening gap in educational attainment.
Importantly, among the suggested solutions to attainment gap closing was the use of specific teaching methods. In particular, when tackling the writing attainment gap, scholars argue that the use of talk for writing proves to be an effective solution (Forse, n. d.; Strong, 2020). The method of talk for writing has been designed by Pie Corbett to help students develop their writing skills by teachers’ use of talking methods for building students’ ability to write compositions (“Talk for writing,” 2022). In particular, the essence of the approach is in the oral representation of the text that needs to be written as a predecessonr of the actual writing process. Thus, the use of such an approach delivers positive outcomes in closing attainment gap in writing.
Literature Findings to be Introduced to Practice
The review of the literature has provided a significant body of data that might be practically used when conducting the research study. Indeed, the factors contributing to the attainment gap and the proposed solutions demonstrate the overall picture of the state of affiars in the contemporary educational setting. From the empirical literature, it was learned that reducing the education attainment gap among students in less fortunate families is of significant importance. However, less fortunate families and the Black ethnic group scored far below the average performance. Hence, the question in this study is why there is a widening gap in educational attainment among children in public schools as well as how can the use of talk-for writing method help closing the gap in writing.
The identified research gap justified the implementation of this research. Indeed, there is little research on reducing the writing attainment gap in the education of children in public schools. There is also a need to research the effects of the external factors contributing to attainment gap on the opportunities for imrpoveing student school learning outcomes in general, and writing skills in particular. The findigns of the literature review suggest that the dominating body of research is devoted to investigateing general issues of attainment gap with limited insights into the tackling of specific methodological solutions. Therefore, the current research is developed on the idea that efforts to narrow the education attainment gap are not well addressed. The research questions at the focus of the study are as follows:
- RQ1: How does the use of the talk for writing method in secondary school English language classes affect closing the attainment gap? How do these implications differ between public and private schools?
- RQ2: What is the relationship between ethnicity, socio-economic status, and educational attainment of students in primary and secondary school?
Data Collection
On the one hand, it is essential to consider using assessment in this process since it helps understand more about the students’ performance. On the other hand, the observation method is ideal to answer the research question and has been used in other studies before that involved matters about education (Beesley et al., 2018). This method involves gathering information by watching the behavior or events and noting the physical characteristics in their natural setting. It can be overt, whereby every individual knows that they are being studied or hidden, meaning no one recognizes they are being investigated (Chen et al., 2021). The latter’s advantage is that people have a greater chance of naturally behaving if they do not know about the investigation.
Nevertheless, one will require conducting overt observations due to ethical issues associated with concealing the study. In this research, participants were not initially told they were being studied, which is why it is mentioned above that it was an issue associated with the process (Correia and Harrison, 2020). Data concerning how students are currently performing and how this could be impacted when teachers utilize formative assessments will be gathered using direct and indirect observations. Two schools were selected for the investigation, and in each of them, two classes were identified to help answer the research question. After that, preparations were made before the start of the data collection.
The first step is determining the focus of the process. One thinks about the evaluation questions they want to answer via the method and selects a few focus areas to gather information. For instance, one may desire to understand how the curriculum is being implemented in the classroom (Johnson et al., 2019, p.2420). The areas might also be interactions between learners and educators and the latter’s skills, knowledge, and behavior.
The second step is designing a system for collecting the data. Once one has focused the evaluation, they are supposed to think about the particular items for which they want to gather information and then establish how they will accomplish that. There are various ways of obtaining data during the observation procedure (Fabiano et al., 2018, p.293). These techniques can be brought together to cater to data collection needs. They include recording sheets and checklists and checklists, observation guides, and field notes.
On the one hand, the first technique is the most standardized method of gathering observation information and includes both preset queries and their answers. Recording sheets and checklists are characteristically utilized for data collection that can be easily described earlier. On the other hand, observation guides list the interactions, behaviors, or processes to be observed with space to denote open-ended narrative information (Granberg et al., 2021). Lastly, field notes are the least standardized and do not include preset queries or responses.
These are open-ended narrative data dictated onto a shape recorder or written. One issue that may be encountered during observation is that it is susceptible to the observer’s bias. The other is that it can be time-consuming in contrast to other methods. This characteristic is based on the implication that the interview method could be utilized in data collection in this study. However, the interviewees, that is, the teachers and learners, cannot be trusted to offer unbiased information (Irons and Elkington, 2021). Additionally, some of the students may fail to understand the essence of the research and the overall impact on the education system. The issue one may face during data collection include dishonest participants whereby teachers and school management would tell the students to behave a certain way so that they appear different. Assessment can help to gather information by looking at a student’s performance over the years when the formative assessment tool was not used and when introduced.
The data collected for the study included the record of observation of students in the secondary school (public and private) performing writing tasks within the framework of teachers’ application of the talk for writing method. The observation lasted across two months which allowed for observing qualitative changes in the skills of students in writing. Pre- and post-experimental indicators of students attainment have been collected for further analysis and comparison. The grades on writing and the students’ perceived change in attainment under the influence of the used methodology were collected using the methods of record analysis, observation, and surveying.
Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics were used to showcase the respondent’s perceptions of performance on the change in writing skills and the English language writing attainment and the student’s well-being in educational attainment at schools. An analysis of the baseline data was done to determine the preconditions for using the quasi-experimental process in the form of instructions using enhanced formative evaluation of lessons taught for the various groups of students. Data analysis using the qualitative method is realistic for addressing both research questions. The use of this data analysis method is guided in identifying the various motives arising from the research data (Johnson et al., 2019). The researcher observed all the respondents before making a comparison. Then data were grouped into smaller sets; then, these sets gave a denotation with a detailed code (Thurston et al., 2019). After the coding, it was easier to group data in reaction to homogeneity, and various motives were differentiated for each group. In the end, these motives were used to interpret the result based on the research issues raised.
Interpretation of the Findings
Using both indirect observation and direct observation enabled the research to acquire accurate results and analyze the findings. The research questions were answered in the following way. The students in public schools demonstrated lower level of attainment in comparison to the average of the students from a private school. In contrast, their counterparts in public schools performed under the average, with only a quarter of them performing within the average. Moreover, the individuals representing ethnical minorities were less successful in terms of writing improvement and reported lower level of positive perception of the talk for writing benefits. The student’s performance in the private school was performance beyond the average. Since the study was conducted using the qualitative approach, the researcher’s stance might be illustrated. In particular, the dependence of learning process perception and the outcomes of education is predominantly influenced by external factors, which mitigates the benefits of internal solutions, like instruction adjustment.
The difference between students’ performance in writing before and after the use of talk for writing technique was linked with the background of the participants. In particular, the representatives of low-income communities who constituted the majority of public school students showed lower level of change in outcomes in comparison with high-income participants. Moreover, the writing attainment outcomes were better for the representatives of the white community in comparison to racial and ethnic minorities. The research further shows that education attainment shift using talk for writing in private and public schools differed. The students in private schools had better academic performance in writing in comparison to those in public schools which is congruent with the former research findings articulated by Richardson (2018). Thus, the socioeconomic status of student participants in the two types of school might have an impact on their writing attainment.
The findings illustrating the dependence of the attainment on external factors have been in accord with literature findings. Indeed, caregivers in private schools support their children to read and write and encourage them to attend school (Easterbrook et al., 2022). This observation is uncommon for students in disadvantaged families in public schools. Conducive learning at home was highly manifest for the student in private schools. At the same time, their counterpart in disadvantaged families with similar environmental conditions enabled the student in disadvantaged families to perform more than 50% in their academics (Ross et al., 2018). Research further indicated that the usage of computers gadget and internet connectivity for the student leads to the education attainment gap in most schools.
Theoretical Assignment
The theory used in this research is self-determination theory, which is used to understand the multifaceted context of the causes and manifestations of writing attainment gap in education. Student from the black ethnic group is less likely to close attainment gap, unlike their counterpart in the white ethnic groups (Nguyen et al., 2020). This was theoretically shown by self-determination theory, which suggests that achieving one’s full potential for the education attainment gap, together with well-being, is also controlled by environments that help persons achieve their needs for similar cognitive skills and autonomy.
The current study’s findings go in accord with the results of the existing literature. They suggest that education program can support the reduction in widening gap in the educational attainment for student (Hamilton, 2020). Moreover, the findings coincide with the studies suggesting a significant difference between the children’s performance in poor families and those in high-income families (Frings, Gleibs and Ridle, 2020). Moreover, the implied ethnic disparities in educational attainment have also been found. Early research on well-being outlined several causes, including changing situations like employment, the health of the family members, environmental factors, and geographical location (Knowles and Alliance, 2017). Some of the possible outcomes that results from the conducted intervention include the informed decisions encouraging policy-makers to address ethnicity-based disparities and economic status implications as particular factors for attainment. In addition, the solutions that this research study contributes to might challenge the research literature by emphasizing intersectional approaches on governmental level to incorporate multiple factors to improve educational attainment.
Conclusion
The attainment gap in writing is a significant issue in the contemporary education. The goal of the current research was to investigate the effectiveness of using a particular method in closing the attainment gap in the English language writing skills. A comprehensive literature review was conducted and informed the decision-making within the study. It was detected that there is a research gap in addressing the specific approaches to attainment gap closing in a specific area of student competence, such as writing. On the basis of the identified research gap, the following two research questions were formulated. They are How does the use of the talk for writing method in secondary school English language classes affect closing the attainment gap? How do these implications differ between public and private schools?
RQ2: What is the relationship between ethnicity, socio-economic status, and educational attainment of students in primary and secondary school?
The results indicated that the students from private schools performed better than those from the public school in both classes. Also further revealing was that those students from high income families performed better than those of disadvantaged families. Further revelations were that the use of talk for writing methodology yield an improved commitment by those students, with enhanced behaviors and a high level of confidence due to their background. Therefore, a conclusion can be made that there is a strong relationship between the high performances of the student in private schools due to the educational resources to those in public schools due to poor educational materials. Further conclusions can be made that there is a high correlation between student background and socio-economic context and writing attainment.
The students felt that talk fro writing was encouraging to make the learning and assessment process more demanding and interactive. They also indicated a guaranteed effect and the usefulness of talk for writing to the students’ rewards and active participation in learning. In the various group, both private and public schools revealed the usefulness of the talk for writing methodology. However, better results in improvement of skills were obtained in private schools than in public schools. Such a tendency is validated by the persistence of high income and predominantly white population in private schools. Thus the contextual factors such as socio-economic status, ethnicity, and race have their continuous impact on attainment gap closing opportunities.
The use of the observation method for the data collection, unlike other methods like the interviews of the respondent, revealed real data from the respondent. This is because the observation method has minimal chances of errors which the data collector can control like the biases. The interview methods of data collection have numerous challenges like the interviewees colluding to fake the affection hence giving a wrong impression. From the findings, it is clear that there is a widening gap in the education attainment gap among different students.
Caregivers in private schools support their children to read and encourage them to attend school, unlike their counterparts in disadvantaged families in public schools. Further, conducive learning at home should be ideal and calm for the student, even in disadvantaged families, to promote their socio-economic well-being. This will help reduce the education attainment gap hence good cognitive skills, thereby creating good opportunities for the jobs. A concerted effort should be put in place to address this widening gap in educational attainment.
Students in public schools should be provided with competent teachers who enable their students to receive thorough training by successfully covering their syllabus, using several teaching aids and reference materials, and conducting academic trips, among other extra curriculum activities. Students in disadvantaged families require extra time allocated for tuition, supportive staff for counseling and mentoring, provision of a school transport system like a bus, a balanced feeding program at school and home, and provision of educational supplies and school uniforms to promote their confidence and dignity. This will also reduce indiscipline cases and reduce the high rate of school dropout and early marriages among the girls. The crime rate will drastically reduce the income disparities brought about by poverty and be addressed.
The malnutrition among the children in disadvantaged families can as well be tackled. Such a goal might be achieved by providing feeding programs in schools and the homes of the less fortunate families. The diet needs to be well checked and ensure that it is well balanced. School uniforms should also be provided to the children in poor families to promote their dignity and enhance their confidence. Support staff can also be employed in these schools to provide counseling support and mentorship to these children. Their caregivers should be well trained to participate in their children’s reading while at home during the school holidays or the pandemics. Families with poor housing structures should be encouraged with shelter renovation. Where possible, students in poor families would be given proper rewards to motivate them to perform better.
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