What is the Effectiveness of Modeling for Teaching Handwriting?

Table 6: Author: Debra Bower, OTS

Author / Study Objectives / Study Design/Participants / Level of Evidence / Sample Size / Interventions & Outcome Measures / Summary of Results / Study Limitations
Abbott & Berninger (1993) / Analyze the relationships
between individual differences in developmental
skills for learning to write and
individual differences in component writing skills and also to
determine whether these relationships change over the course of typical development. / -Multiple-group structural equation modeling
-300 1st ,2nd ,and 3rd grade children were tested individually in 2 sessions / III / 300 students / Finger tasks, orthographic coding, and phonological coding were used to assess the effect of equation modeling on handwriting skills. / A significant correlation between modeling and orthographic coding presented / Similar patterns of finding for handwriting and spelling, age of participants, limited focus on handwriting accuracy.
Hayes (1982) / Determine whether various treatments incorporating varying levels of perceptual prompting would result in different effects on handwriting performance in sequence reproduction. / Perceptual prompts used during training sessions included visual demonstration, verbal demonstration, and subject verbalization of stroke sequence
45 Kindergarten children were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 demonstration techniques
2x5 Factorial design with age crossed at level of prompting / IV / 45 K children and 45 3rd grade students were observed / Effects of visual and/or verbal modeling in copying letter-like forms / K students performed better with combined visual and verbal modeling.
3rd grade students performed better with visual modeling only. / Small sample size
Kirk (1981) / Investigate the nature of learning involved in the acquisition of perceptual motor skills in children / To evaluate the effects of rule-based instruction on rule observance, copying
performance, and discrimination skills, a pre- and posttest paradigm was used.
3 ways of imparting rules were examined, including demonstration, verbal description, and combined demonstrated-verbal description. / IV / 54 K students were randomly assigned to 4 groups each getting a different type of demonstration: visual only, verbal only, visual and verbal combined, or none / Effects on visual and/or verbal modeling learning 12 uppercase and 12 lowercase / Combined demonstration has the best results.
Any modeling is better than no demonstration at all. / Limited opportunities to practice and no feedback about the use of rules to the control group.
LaNunziata et al. (1985) / Compare the effects of still illustrations, motion illustration, and live modeling on lower-case manuscript letter formation. / Lower-case manuscript letters were divided into three sets of 8 or 9 letters representing letter families of the alphabet. Baseline data and three antecedent models were continuously introduced to each set of letters in random order.
14 Kindergarten students, ranging in age from 5 to 6 years of age / IV / 14 K children in an alternating treatment design / Still models vs. animated illustrations vs. live modeling / Live modeling resulted in improvement in letter-writing while the other conditions did not.
Teachers should model letter formation prior to student practice. / Small sample size and limited research to incorporate into study.
Wright & Wright (1980) / Compare effectiveness of traditional still modeling and flip books specifically designed to depict motion on handwriting performance / Participants copied from traditional still models while others copied from models of manuscript letters that depicted motion and traditional still models
116 children- 62 boys and 54 girls all from the same school in the rural South region. / IV / 116 first grade students randomly assigned to two conditions / Flip books vs. static form as a letter model / No evident difference in handwriting performance. / Modifications made during study on models and small sample size

Summary: The listed research suggests that combined techniques of various modeling models results in an improvement in handwriting performance. Recommendations include further research to strengthen level of evidence and to overall enhance the quantity of evidence regarding the effects of modeling techniques on a child’s handwriting.