The effects of a wiki-based collaborative process writing pedagogy on writing ability and attitudes among upper primary school students in Mainland China

•A picture of collaborative Chinese writing process using MediaWiki was provided.•The Wiki-based Collaborative Process Writing Pedagogy (WCPWP) was improved.•Some findings show WCPWP had positive effects on students' personal writing ability.•WCPWP did not lead a statistically significant positive effects on writing ability.•WCPWP had significant positive effects on students' writing attitudes.

This study mainly explored the effects of a Wiki-based Collaborative Process Writing Pedagogy (WCPWP) on writing ability and writing attitudes among Primary Four students in Shenzhen, China. Besides, this study also investigated students' collaborative writing process with the WCPWP. Students wrote their compositions in a MediaWiki platform (www.joyouswriting.com) named Joyous Writing Club (JWC) developed by the first author. By using a quasi-experimental design, two groups (classes) of Primary Four students participated in this study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected including writing ability composition tests (pre-test and post-test), writing attitude tests (pre-test and post-test), online wiki documents, and observations. The results provided a general picture of the students' collaborative writing process and showed that the WCPWP had a positive but not significant effect on students' writing ability. Importantly, the results indicated that the WCPWP had a significant positive effect on the writing attitudes of students. The study further discussed the reasons related to the positive effects of the WCPWP on writing ability (not significant) and writing interests (significant). Implications and recommendations for primary school educators and Chinese language teachers are discussed.