Background and Rationale

The ability to explain biological processes using appropriate academic language is a core component of scientific literacy in upper secondary education. However, classroom practice frequently reveals that students struggle to construct coherent written explanations and to use subject-specific terminology accurately. Instead of analytical and causal explanations, students often rely on everyday language, fragmented statements, or descriptive lists.

Although curricula emphasise academic literacy and scientific explanation, these skills do not develop automatically through content instruction alone. Students require explicit support in identifying key concepts and integrating them into structured written responses. This challenge is particularly evident in biology, where understanding depends on explaining mechanisms, relationships between structures and functions, and cause-effect links.

This study investigates a keyword-based text analysis approach combined with scaffolded writing tasks as a means of supporting students' academic writing in upper secondary biology. The intervention was embedded within a regular biology lesson and examined through a classroom-based action research design.

Theoretical Framework

The study is informed by three complementary theoretical perspectives, which are integrated into both the design of the intervention and the interpretation of findings rather than applied as separate frameworks.

Disciplinary and academic literacy research highlights that subject-specific writing must be explicitly taught, since academic language conventions differ substantially from everyday communication (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012; Moje, 2015). In biology, this includes using technical terminology, causal connectors, and analytical verbs. More recent scholarship has extended this to science education specifically, emphasising that writing in science is not merely a vehicle for communicating pre-formed understanding but a means of constructing it (Bazerman et al., 2017; Hand & Choi, 2010; Klein & Boscolo, 2016).

Scaffolding theory suggests that structured support enables learners to engage with tasks beyond their independent capability (Wood et al., 1976; Hammond & Gibbons, 2005). Writing templates and guided prompts function as temporary supports that can be progressively reduced as students develop confidence and control over academic language. Recent work on writing-to-learn in science has reinforced the value of such scaffolded approaches, particularly in secondary contexts (Gillies, 2016; Bazerman et al., 2017).

Formative assessment theory informs the use of peer and self-assessment to promote reflection and metacognitive awareness (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Panadero & Jonsson, 2013). In this study, Bloom's taxonomy verbs were used as linguistic cues to guide students' evaluation of written responses and to support progression from descriptive to analytical explanations.

Methodology A classroom-based action research design was adopted (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; Menter et al., 2011), with the teacher simultaneously acting as researcher. This design was chosen because it allows for the systematic examination of a targeted instructional intervention in an authentic teaching context, while generating practical knowledge relevant to classroom practice. The participants were students from one upper secondary biology class in a secondary school. No institutional or national identifiers are provided to preserve anonymity. As the study involved minors, ethical considerations were carefully observed: participation was voluntary, students were not identifiable in any data or reporting, and the teacher-researcher maintained awareness of the dual role and its potential influence on data collection and interpretation. Informed consent was obtained in accordance with school procedures. Data were collected through students' written responses produced before and during the intervention, the completed keyword extraction worksheets, the peer and self-assessment rubrics, and the teacher's observational notes. These sources provided multiple data points for analysis. Data analysis combined comparative and thematic approaches. Comparatively, written responses from earlier in the lesson (baseline writing) were examined alongside the structured post-intervention written explanations to identify changes in language use, terminology, and text organisation. Thematically, responses were coded for recurring features, specifically: use of subject-specific vocabulary, presence of causal connectors, structural coherence, and degree of analytical versus descriptive language. Bloom's taxonomy levels functioned as an analytic lens to categorise the cognitive quality of written explanations. Trustworthiness was supported through the use of multiple data sources (triangulation), consistent application of the rubric criteria across all student texts, and reflective teacher notes that documented the reasoning behind interpretive decisions (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The Intervention Students were guided to analyse a scientific text by identifying keywords related to biological processes using the Cornell note-taking method. Extracted keywords were then used as the basis for constructing written explanations. To address learner diversity, differentiated writing templates were provided at varying levels of scaffolding, including sentence starters and causal structures (e.g., "If…, then…, therefore…"). Peer and self-assessment were incorporated using a rubric aligned with Bloom's taxonomy verbs, with the aim of encouraging students to reflect on the analytical quality of their own and peers' written explanations.

The findings suggest that keyword-based text analysis combined with scaffolded writing tasks can support academic language development in upper secondary biology. Comparison of pre- and post-intervention written responses indicated that students used scientific terminology more consistently, developed clearer cause–effect explanations, and produced more structurally coherent texts. Students became less reliant on simple descriptive listing and more able to organise biological explanations in an academic manner. The intervention also showed that differentiated scaffolding supported students in different ways. Students with stronger prior writing skills were able to work with minimal template support, while students requiring additional assistance benefited from structured sentence frames. Peer assessment appeared to increase students’ awareness of academic quality criteria, as reflected in their feedback and subsequent revisions. However, the findings should be interpreted cautiously because the study was conducted in a single class and within one lesson. Time constraints also limited the completion of all stages of writing and peer review. Therefore, the results are best understood as indicative rather than generalisable. Overall, the study highlights the value of integrating literacy strategies into science teaching and suggests that further action research cycles are needed across different topics, class sizes and science subjects.

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