An Investigation of the Importance of Domain Specific Knowledge for Writing Proficiency

Abstract

A current question in cognitive psychology concerns the role of domain-specific knowledge for the development of thinking skills. This study addressed a related question of whether having the content knowledge of educational psychology is a good predictor of writing competency within the domain. Seventy undergraduate and post-graduate subjects enrolled in an introductory educational psychology course were assessed for content knowledge and also produced a writing sample evaluating an article in the discipline. For the entire sample, content knowledge and writing proficiency were not significantly correlated. For a sample of ten high knowledge subjects and ten low knowledge subjects, results were inconclusive. Using the scores of one rater, the ten high subjects had significantly greater writing competency scores than the ten least knowledgeable subjects. Using the scores of the other rater, this difference did not occur. Certain factors, however, may have confounded the results, in particular, the fact that subjects were engaged in acquiring domain-specific knowledge rather than employing already established knowledge bases.