Explicit vs Metacognitive writing instruction: A teacher choices trial

Client:             Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)

Duration:        2026 - 2027

Geography:     England

Solutions:        Evaluation, Research‍ ‍

Writing is an essential life skill that supports personal and academic success. It enables pupils to organise and communicate their thoughts, deepen understanding across the curriculum, and achieve academically. Sentence construction and combining are central to effective writing and are emphasised in the Department for Education’s writing framework as foundational skills that enable children to express ideas clearly and coherently.

Evidence suggests that many pupils have not securely developed these foundational skills by the end of Key Stage 1, or even by Year 3. As a result, schools frequently revisit and reteach sentence construction and combining as part of writing instruction. 

Despite broad agreement on the importance of these skills, there is limited evidence on whether explicit or metacognitive approaches to sentence-combining are more effective for supporting their development. Explicit instruction focuses on clear modelling and structured practice to help pupils master sentence-combining techniques. Metacognitive approaches encourage pupils to reflect on and regulate their sentence-combining choices by planning, monitoring, and evaluating their writing. 

Following successful completion of the scoping phase, Oxford MeasurEd is conducting a Teacher Choices trial to compare these two approaches across 50 primary schools in England. Within each participating school, one Year 3 class and one Year 4 class will each be randomly allocated to receive either explicit instruction or metacognitive writing instruction. Teachers will deliver at least three 15–25-minute reteaching sessions per week over a 12-week period (January-April 2027), using guidance materials provided by the evaluation team. 

Teacher Choices trials test everyday classroom practices that teachers can implement without additional specialist training. Approaches demonstrating positive impacts may inform future programme development or guidance for schools. 

Key Activities:

• Teacher-administered writing tasks at baseline and endline 

• Endline teacher questionnaire on writing instruction 

• Fortnightly teacher implementation surveys 

• In-person visits to a selection of schools, including lesson observations and short teacher interviews 

• Online focus groups with teachers from non-case study schools