Handwriting without tears®: General education effectiveness through a consultative approach

Abstract

OBJECTIVE. This study explores the effectiveness of the Handwriting Without Tears® (HWT) kindergarten printing curriculum in general education through a consultative approach with occupational therapy. METHOD. One cohort of students was the control (n 5 19), whereas two other cohorts were experimental groups learning printing through the HWT curriculum (n 5 20 each). The Test of Handwriting Skills Revised (THSR) was used to collect end-of-year legibility scores for all cohorts. RESULTS. Both experimental groups individually and both experimental groups combined into one group outperformed the control group on all 10 of the THSR subtests-scoring significantly higher (p < .05 using analysis of covariance controlling for age and gender) on 6 of the subtests for the former and 7 for the latter-and on overall score. Large treatment effects were found for the standard score for each experimental group (d 5 0.81, 1.03, and 1.00). CONCLUSION. This study supports the consultative role of occupational therapy with teachers in general education for handwriting curriculum implementation and the success of HWT for printing instruction.