Handwriting instruction: a commentary on five studies

Handwriting is still a prominent mode for composing for both children and adults As a result, it is important that developing writers acquire fluent and legible handwriting. This article examines the five investigations that were presented in this special issue on handwriting instruction, providing a summary of their collective contributions as well as the limitations of each paper.     

The Chinese character: handwriting between utility and identity in twentieth-century China

ABSTRACT

In China, unlike in many of the other cases treated in this special issue, it would seem that the standard style of writing by hand did not undergo any significant changes over the course of the twentieth century. Accordingly, the development of everyday Chinese handwriting has not been studied much. This article, however, shows that subtle yet significant changes occurred in both handwriting and the teaching of handwriting. Those changes were part and parcel of China’s twentieth-century quest for identity in a changing world. By analysing curricula and handwriting manuals from the 1900s to the 1980s, I demonstrate how, within a standard framework of “good” handwriting inherited from Imperial China, economic, societal, and nationalist considerations of the Republican, Maoist, and reform-era regimes caused the emphasis to shift back and forth between speed, down-to-earth pragmatism, and aesthetics – or, in other words, between utility and identity. Even within one given standard style of handwriting, therefore, seemingly minor shifts can tell us a lot about larger political and economic developments. To provide some background, I also briefly refer to the debates and measures regarding the abandonment or simplification of Chinese characters during the first half of the twentieth century.     

Graphonomics,automaticity and handwriting assessment

A recent review of handwriting research in Literacy concluded that current curricula of handwriting education focus too much on writing style and neatness and neglect the aspect of handwriting automaticity. This conclusion is supported by evidence in the field of graphonomic research, where a range of experiments have been used to investigate this issue from a movement perspective. The present article offers a brief introduction to a graphonomic approach to handwriting analysis and the findings of graphonomic research about handwriting automaticity. These findings indicate that attentional control to any characteristic of the writing process (e.g. direction, lexical status, movement, style) results in an impairment of handwriting automaticity. These findings support and add a new dimension to previous conclusions.     

Handwriting in the New Curriculum

How to interpret and assess the handwriting requirements of the National Curriculum is still far from clear. Dr Jean Alston, editor of Handwriting Review, and formerly senior lecturer in special needs at Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education, Cheshire, continues the discussion begun by Christopher Jarman in the December 1990 issue of the journal.     

笔迹分析在人才素质测评领域的研究述评

笔迹分析是以笔迹学、笔迹心理学为基础的新兴学科。过去研究表明，笔迹与个体人格特征有一定的联系，其科学性得到了普遍的肯定。所以笔迹分析已经进入很多人才素质测评领域，成为了常规测评人才素质的手段。但是笔迹分析的信度、效度问题一直是学术界争议的话题。研究者应从科学的角度出发，发展和完善笔迹心理学，让笔迹分析有更坚实的理论基础。从而为人才素质测评提供有利的手段和依据。     

浅析《南方周末》年度特刊的特色

许多报纸都会选择在岁末年初推出一份年度特刊,这种报道模式可以充分体现媒体的实力,也是媒体塑造品牌、吸引受众的契机.本文选择具有代表性的<南方周末>为例,从报道角度、继承与创新、品牌化经营策略这几个方面分析了其年度特刊的特色,有针对性地提出一些建议.最后,从<南方周末>年度特刊的特色出发,得出对报纸年度特刊的一些启示,以及对未来发展趋势的建议.     

Handwriting: what do we know and what do we need to know?

Handwriting has a low status and profile in literacy education in England and in recent years has attracted little attention from teachers, policy‐makers or researchers into mainstream educational processes. This article identifies a substantial programme of research into handwriting, including studies located in the domains of special needs education and psychology, suggesting that it is time to re‐evaluate the importance of handwriting in the teaching of literacy. Explorations of the way handwriting affects composing have opened up new avenues for research, screening and intervention, which have the potential to make a significant contribution to children's progress in learning to write. In particular, the role of orthographic motor integration and automaticity in handwriting is now seen as of key importance in composing. Evidence from existing studies suggests that handwriting intervention programmes may have a real impact on the composing skills of young writers. In particular, they could positively affect the progress of the many boys who struggle with writing throughout the primary school years.     

从电脑打字对青少年汉字书写的影响谈汉字书写教育

频繁使用电脑打字已对青少年的汉字书写造成了不良影响。汉字书写有着电脑打字不可比拟的优点和特点，对青少年的健康成长有着极其重要的意义。青少年汉字书写教育应引起我们的重视。社会、家长、学校要相互配合，齐抓共管，提高青少年自身意识，促进其汉字书写能力的加强。     

高师书法教学改革新探

高师书法教学要与时俱进 ,就应充分依据高师教育特点 ,进行针对性教学改革 :一 ,让学生充分认识书法的文化根性 ,进行有思想支撑的书法教学 ;二 ,侧重把握书法形式与技法的基本规律 ,合理吸收借鉴法帖特色 ;三 ,加强书法有相关能力培养 ,带动综合素质的发展。从认识到实践等方面为高师书法教学的改革与完善 ,提供了新的教改思路。     

School‐based health promotion: An introduction to the practitioner's edition

In this age of increasing professional accountability, it is important that school practitioners engage in evidence‐based practices. In support of this goal, the intent of this special issue is to disseminate practical, user‐friendly, evidenced‐based information related to school‐based health issues. This article introduces the Psychology in the Schools “Practitioner's Edition” on school‐based health promotion. A conceptual framework for the issue, encompassing universal prevention strategies and tertiary intervention strategies, is described. First, school practitioners have unique opportunities to promote healthy behavior for all children and to engage in universal prevention of common health conditions. Second, practitioners should recognize the special needs of children with specific diagnosed medical conditions and employ individualized intervention strategies for these children. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Shorter Method for Computing the Coefficient of Correlation

ABSTRACT

Handwriting is used throughout the school day and is important to demonstrate knowledge. This research evaluated how handwriting instructional practices and intrinsic and extrinsic factors in actual classroom settings impacted learning handwriting over the course of the school year. Findings indicated that extrinsic factors (educational instructional practices, spatial constraints) and intrinsic factors (task cognitive complexity) influenced handwriting performance, but not always in the same way for writing product and process measures. In addition, stronger relationships were found between writing process measures and handwriting fluency than legibility. Even though handwriting improved over the school year, some instructional practices resulted in a widening performance gap as the school year progressed. The impact of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting instruction and guiding future research is discussed.     

The Progress of Kindergarten Pupils in the Elementary Grades

ABSTRACT

The unit of analysis and the unit of measurement in handwriting research are usually topographically defined. We explored the use of a functional response-class definition for the units of analysis and measurement of cursive handwriting. The sensitivity of this functional definition to differentiate easy-to-read from difficult-to-read cursive handwriting was assessed by calculating a percentage of legible letters. The ranges, means, and individual percentages showed (a) no overlap between the categories of easy-to-read or difficult-to-read handwriting and (b) small sample-to-sample variability with the easy-to-read handwriting and larger sample-to-sample variability with the difficult-to-read handwriting. The data are consistent with social validity rankings of the easy-to-read and the difficult-to-read handwriting.     

我国传统书法在现代艺术设计中的运用

书法艺术是一种抽象艺术,在现代艺术设计中发挥着重要的作用,如何科学衔接传统与创新之间的关系,是书法文化发展亟待解决的重要课题。本文就书法艺术在现代艺术设计中的表现形式,传统书法与现代艺术设计的关系进行探讨。     

Healthy Birth Practices Revisited

In this column, the editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education describes this special issue where distiguished authors provide updated evidence-based reviews of the Lamaze International Six Healthy Birth Practices that promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth.This issue is dedicated to Elisabeth Bing on the occasion of her 100th birthday.     

钱南园书法艺术

全面论述清代书法家钱南园学习、变化、创造的历程，这在钱南园书法研究中尚属首次。并提出几个独特观点；钱早年柔和风格作品的价值、意义；钱与颜真卿书法在时代气息与审美上的区别；两百年来对书法家思路、技法的影响。     

The Role of Orthographic–Motor Integration in the Production of Creative and Well‐Structured Written Text for Students in Secondary School

There is a strong relationship between orthographic–motor integration related to handwriting and students' ability to produce creative and well‐structured written text. This relationship is thought to be due to the cognitive load which results when attention is required by writers to write letters and words on the page. Lack of automaticity in orthographic–motor integration means that writers do not have sufficient cognitive resources to accomplish the more demanding aspects of text production such as ideation, text monitoring, and pragmatic awareness. A systematic handwriting program can significantly improve the quality of written text by young children experiencing problems with orthographic–motor integration. This study investigated the effectiveness of a handwriting program in remediating older students' problems in orthographic–motor integration and consequently enhancing their written language skills. Two groups of students in Grades 8 and 9 were provided with either practice in handwriting or daily completion of a written journal. There were no differences between the two groups at pre‐test. However, at post‐test, the handwriting group had significantly higher scores in orthographic–motor integration as well as for the length and quality of the text they wrote.     

Visual–motor symbol production facilitates letter recognition in young children

Previous research has suggested that handwriting letters may be an important exerciser to facilitate early letter understanding. Experimental studies to date, however, have not investigated whether this effect is general to any visual–motor experience or specific to handwriting letters. In the present work, we addressed this issue by testing letter knowledge using three measures in preschool children before and after a school-based intervention. Participants were divided into four training groups (letter-writing, digit-writing, letter-viewing, digit-viewing) that either wrote letters or digits or viewed letters or digits, twice a week for 6 weeks. We hypothesized that the visual–motor experience of handwriting letters or digits would improve letter knowledge more than viewing experience and that this effect would not be specific to training with letters. Our results demonstrated that the writing groups improved in letter recognition—one component of letter knowledge—significantly more than the viewing groups. The letter-writing group did not improve significantly more than the digit-writing group. These results suggest that visual–motor practice with any symbol could lead to increases in letter recognition. We interpret this novel finding as suggesting that any handwriting will increase letter recognition in part because it facilitates gains in visual–motor coordination.     

The Handwriting of Seven to Nine Year Olds

Jean Alston, senior lecturer in special education at Crwe and Alsager College of Higher Education, reports from a longitudinal study of handwriting in pupils from a representative sample of Cheshire schools. She examines performance changes between the first and second years of junior school and identifies those who have handwriting difficulties at the age of nine.