Applying Programming Principles to Remedial Handwriting Practice

Abstract

The use of a validation research strategy applied to the evaluation of a remedial handwriting instruction package is described The main feature of the package is a programming procedure used to adapt conventional worksheets and workbook pages that emphasize repetitive practice on manuscript letter formation. The main feature of the evaluation is that teachers in classes for learning disabled children used the package entirely under their own direction and under the prevailing classroom conditions. Thirty-four children and eleven teachers participated in the study which employed a pretest/posttest control group design. Results indicated that although teachers did not use the package as consistently or extensively as it had been used by the experimenters in a laboratory setting, they did achieve an acceptable rate of improvement in the manuscript letter formation performance of their students. These findings support the premise of validation researchers that results obtained on an instruction procedure or program when used under more or less laboratory conditions can not necessarily be expected to generalize to field conditions and that field evaluation must, as closely as possible, approximate projected condtions of use following dissemination.