Using Performance Feedback and Goal Setting to Improve Elementary Students' Writing Fluency: A Randomized Controlled Trial

A developmental perspective on feedback: How corrective feedback influences children's literacy, mathematics, and problem solving

Research in psychology and education indicates that corrective feedback can be a powerful learning tool. We provide a developmental perspective to focus specifically on how corrective feedback influences learning in childhood (~ages 3-11). Based on a systematic search, we review 44 empirical papers published between 1990 and 2022 examining the effects of corrective feedback on children's performance in the domains of literacy (n=18), mathematics (n=14), and problem solving (n=12). Across these domains, we synthesize research on how children respond to lessons and practice with, versus without, corrective feedback to provide theoretical and practical insights into (1) the effectiveness of corrective feedback in early childhood, (2) the features of effective feedback messages at different ages, and (3) the role of individual learner differences. We make several novel recommendations with some focused on future research questions and others focused on ways teachers can provide effective feedback to children.

Promoting Handwriting Fluency for Preschool and Elementary-Age Students: Meta-Analysis and Meta-Synthesis of Research From 2000 to 2020

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lower-level handwriting and motor skills and higher-order cognitive processes. It is important to allocate mental resources to these high-order processes since these processes place a great demand on cognitive capacity. This is possible when lower-level skills such as transcription are effortlessness and fluent. Given that fluency is a value in virtually all areas of academic learning, schools should provide instructional activities to promote writing fluency from the first stages of learning to write. In an effort to determine if teaching handwriting enhances writing fluency, we conducted a systematic and meta-analytic review of the writing fluency intervention literature. We selected 31 studies: 21 true and quasi-experimental studies, 4 single-group design, 3 single-subject design, and 3 non-experimental studies, conducted with K-6 students in a regular school setting. A total of 2,030 students participated in these studies. When compared to no instruction or non-handwriting instructional conditions, teaching different handwriting intervention programs resulted in statistically significant greater writing fluency (ES = 0.64). Moreover, three specific handwriting interventions yielded statistically significant results in improving writing fluency, when compared to other handwriting interventions or to typical handwriting instruction conditions: handwriting focused on training timed transcription skills (ES = 0.49), multicomponent handwriting treatments (ES = 0.40), and performance feedback (ES = 0.36). There were not enough data to calculate the impact of sensory-motor and self-regulated strategy handwriting interventions on writing fluency. The significance of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting fluency instruction and guiding future research will be discussed.