The Effect of Journal Writing on Achievement in and Attitudes Toward Mathematics Murad Jurdak and Rihab Abu Zein American University of Beirut A teaching experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of journal writing on achievement in and attitudes toward mathematics. Achievement variables included conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, problem solving, mathematics school achievement, and mathematical communication. Subjects were selected fromfirst intermediate students (11 -13 years) attending the International College, Beirut, Lebanon, where either English or French is the language of mathematics instruction. The journal- writing (JW) group received the same mathematics instruction as the no-journal-writing (NJW) group, except that the JW group engaged in prompted journal writing for 7 to 10 minutes at the end of each class period, three times a week, for 12 weeks. The NJW group engaged in exercises during the same period. The results ofANCOVA suggest that journal writing has a positive impact on conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, and mathematical communication but not on problem solving, school mathemat- ics achievement, and attitudes toward mathematics. Gender, language of instruction, mathematics achievement level, and writing achievement level failed to interact with journal writing. Student responses to a questionnaire indicated that students found journal writing to have both cognitive and affective benefits. Writing has been proposed as a learning vehicle by many theorists. The Vigotskyan view assumes a dia- lectic relationship between language and thought in which both are transformed in the act of representation (Borasi & Rose, 1989). As such, writing is a learning tool, since it is a means for transforming concepts and skills. According to Emig (1977), who attempted an integration of cognitive and psychological theories to explain the connections between writing and learning, writing provides information processing at the motor level (hand moving the pen), the sensory level (eyes reading), and the cognitive level (intellectual and ana- lytical processing of the message). Moreover, writing can engage all students actively in the deliberate struc- turing of meaning, it allows learners to leam at their own pace, and it provides immediate feedback by enabling learners to read the product of their thinking on paper. There is no lack of theoretical assertions regarding the potential benefits ofjournal writing in mathematics learning. This kind of analysis is best articulated by Borasi and Rose (1989), who asserted that journal writing in mathematics teaching has beneficial thera- peutic effect on the feelings and attitudes of students, as well as positive effect on their learning of math- ematical concepts and problem solving skills. The teachers’ potential benefits include better evaluation and remediation of individual students, as well as improved teacher reflection on teaching. Borasi and Rose also asserted that the interaction of students and teachers through journal writing may produce a benefi- cial supportive class atmosphere. What the literature lacks in the area of writing and mathematics learning is an adequate research base to support such assertions. Research regarding the differential effect of writ- ing on the specific cognitive levels of learning out- comes is generally inconclusive. At the elementary level, a positive effect of writing on general mathemat- ics achievement was reported by Evans (1984) and Millican (1994). Madden (1993), however, reported limited positive effect for conceptual understanding of one chapter test but not for other chapter tests, the cumulative test and retest, or the computation, con- cept, and application subtests. At thejunior high school level, Shepard (1993) and Human (1993) reported a positive effect of writing on achievement; however, the results reported by Clarke (1987) and Smith (1993) were not as conclusive. At the senior high school level. Bell and Bell (1985) reported a positive effect of writing on mathematical problem solving. Stewart (1993) reported improvement in achievement as a result of including a writing compo- nent in algebra classes, whereas Phillips (1993) did not find significant differences when writing activities were included in trigonometry classes. At the college level, Grossman, Smith, and Miller (1993) reported strong relationships between writing ability, concep- tual understanding, and problem solving. School Science and Mathematics