This article presents a revised version of the writer(s)-within-community model of writing. Writing is conceptualized as a social activity situated within specific writing communities. Writing in these communities is accomplished by its members. The model proposes that writing is simultaneously shaped and bound by the characteristics, capacity, and variability of the communities in which it takes place and by the cognitive characteristics, capacity, and individual differences of those who produce it. The model further proposes that writing development is a consequence of participation in writing communities and individual changes in writers’ capabilities, which interact with biological, neurological, physical, and environmental factors. This newer version of the model places a greater emphasis on communication and the reader. It expands the description of a writing community to include the social, cultural, political, institutional, and historical influences that shape it. It further describes the tenets that underlie the operation of the model.

There is a general consensus that writing is a challenging task for students with learning disabilities (LD). To identify more precisely the extent and depth of the challenges that these students experience with writing, the authors conducted a meta-analysis comparing the writing performance of students with LD to their typically achieving peers. From 53 studies that yielded 138 effect sizes, the authors calculated average weighted effect sizes, showing that students with LD obtained lower scores than their peers on the following writing outcomes: writing quality (–1.06); organization (–1.04); vocabulary (–0.89); sentence fluency (–0.81); conventions of spelling, grammar, and handwriting (–1.14); genre elements (–0.82); output (–0.87); and motivation (–0.42). Implications for research and practice are provided based on these findings.