The impact of digital devices vs. Pen(cil) and paper on primary school students' writing skills – A research review

Highlights

• We reviewed 10 studies on early writing comparing pen and paper and digital tools.

• These studies can be located within three theoretical perspectives.

• The majority indicate that handwriting outperforms keyboarding in early writing.

• Methodological flaws: inadequate control for experience; lack of nesting effects.

Abstract

In the light of the continuing digital revolution in education and learning in general, and in literacy instruction in particular, the purpose of this review is to assess the emerging literature on such digital writing tools as computers and tablets compared with traditional writing tools like pen(cil) and paper, on early writing outcomes among first writers. We limited our review to studies published in international peer-reviewed journals during the last decade, within different theoretical perspectives. We identified a relatively small number of studies that can be categorized, as qualitative studies applying a case study design or within-subject design, and as quantitative studies, either quasi-experimental or cohort studies. These studies can be located within three research perspectives: 1) cognitive psychology, 2) neuroscience and learning and 3) socio-cultural theoretical perspective. While findings across the three perspectives were inconsistent, they were rather consistent within each perspective. While studies with a cognitive psychological and those with neuroscience and learning perspective point in favor of handwriting, studies with a socio-cultural perspective rather point in favor of digital writing. The studies that used a cognitive psychology and neuroscience and learning approach applied quasi-experimental or cohort designs, while studies based on a socio-cultural perspective mainly were qualitative. When analyzing the studies regarding methodological quality we found three flaws: small sample size (of quantitative studies); a lack of nesting effects; and inadequately controlling for experience for early writing. Facing an interdisciplinary research topic in rapid development, we provide some implications for further research, and suggestions in particular in terms of methodological challenges.

Introduction

The continuing international public and scholarly debate dealing with the future of early literacy instruction, i.e. instruction in becoming a reader and a writer, in primary school, is highly polarized. On one side, proponents of digitalization in education emphasize the possibilities of tablets and keyboards in early writing instruction and the potential of such tools to motivate students, in particular struggling learners (Genlott and Grönlund, 2013, Trageton, 2012) and students with specific learning disabilities (e.g. Berninger, Nagy, Tanimoto, Thompson, & Abbott, 2015). A meta-analysis by Morphy and Graham (2012) for example found clearly positive effects of word processing programs on different writing outcomes, for weaker readers and writers.

On the other side, a growing literature has shown the importance of handwriting for early writers' further cognitive development (e.g., Dinehart, 2015). Handwriting appears to activate particular areas in children's brains more than other forms of fine motor manipulation tasks, like tracing or typing letters (e.g., James and Engelhardt, 2012, Kersey and James, 2013). Dinehart and Manfra (2013) found that handwriting skills more strongly could predict reading and math. They argue that writing letters by hand leads to the development of an “internal model of the alphabetic character” (ibd. 155), regarded as a foundation for further academic achievement in contrary to simply pressing on a keyboard. Writing movements themselves appear to be involved in the process of memorizing and the visual representation of letters, and thus, support the benefits of ‘motor practice’ (Vinter & Chartrel, 2010: 484) for early writing (e.g., Longcamp et al., 2003, Longcamp et al., 2005, Vinter and Chartrel, 2010). In sum, these studies defend the practice of handwriting in early school years, as handwriting skills clearly have shown to be positively associated with further academic skills.

With this and ongoing controversy about the future of literacy instruction at primary school as a backdrop, the purpose of this article is to review internationally-published research of the last decade on the impact of pen(cil) and paper compared to digital (writing) tools (keyboards or digital tablets) in early writing instruction, on early writing outcomes.

While most of the existing literature focuses on secondary school students (e.g. Clarke & Svanaes, 2012) or university students, (Fortunati and Vincent, 2014, Taipale, 2014), relatively little attention has been paid to primary school students' early writing instruction (see also Boscolo, 2008), literature comparing digital tools with pen and paper. Among the existing literature on early writing instruction, a great number of studies exclusively deal with handwriting instruction (see for review: Dinehart, 2015; see also Accardo et al., 2013, Berninger et al., 1992, Graham et al., 2000, Pontart et al., 2013). Studies on early literacy instruction, covering both reading and writing – have focused mostly on early reading and its importance for further learning and academic achievement (e.g. Hattie, 2009). According to the hypotheses of the Matthew effect in reading, further learning and academic outcomes will increase to larger proportions for strong early readers; this means an increasing gap in academic achievement over time between strong and weak readers and writers (Cipielewski and Stanovich, 1992, Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997, Stanovich, 1986). Thus, paying attention to early literacy skills is crucial to foster further learning and educational progress.

In line with scholars focusing on the importance of early reading, and in line with scholars focusing on the importance of early writing (e.g., Graham et al., 2015, Persky et al., 2003), we argue that early writing skills are a prerequisite for further learning and academic achievement, particularly in the digital age (e.g., Burnett and Merchant, 2015, Merchant, 2007, Juzwik et al., 2006), a discourse with a rather shifting focus from text reception to text production. To cite Berninger et al. (2015:154): ‘The Great Debate about Reading during the Industrial Age [ … ] has been replaced with a new debate about writing in [ … ] information age’.

As two intertwined categories of literacy, we can also understand reading and writing more widely as a social process. According to Scribner and Cole (1981: 236) literacy can be conceptualized as ‘a set of socially organized practices which make use of a symbol system and a technology for producing and disseminating it. [Thus,] [l]iteracy is not simply knowing how to read and write a particular script but applying this knowledge for specific purposes in specific contexts of use.’ Addressing social contexts, the wide research area of ‘New Literacies Studies' (Lankshear and Knobel, 2003, Marsh, 2007) address different perspectives of literacy, from more narrow concepts of literacy limited to the dualism between reading and writing (Barton, 2007) to broader concepts including for example visual and auditory elements distinguishing between different levels and conceptions (e.g., Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001). In our review, some studies draw on such an approach, considering the complexity of literacy needs in the digital age (e.g., Burnett and Merchant, 2015, Moje et al., 2000). These studies (Hultin & Westman, 2013) are included in the section of socio-cultural studies. The scope of our review, however, is limited to a more narrow approach of early writing instruction.

Focusing on students in preschool and early grades in primary school – early writers – we include studies on the use of digital writing tools including keyboards and tablet computers with touch screen technology as an alternative to pen and paper (handwriting) in early writing instruction. Our perspective is comparative, with focus on the dualism between digital writing instruction vs. traditional writing instruction by using pen-and-paper devices. Thus, we will not include in our review studies that explicitly focus on ‘handwriting tools with new technologies’ (Onofrei, Smaranda, Ţicău, & Şoitu, 2014) or ‘pen-based systems’ (Djeziri, Guerfali, Plamondon, & Robert, 2002), in other words, hybrid writing tools that combine features of digital writing tools and ‘traditional’ tools like pen and paper as this is beyond the scope of this review.

Further, we look at early writing outcomes like letter writing, spelling and simple sentences, in addition to subjective outcomes (writing experience). As our focus is on first writers, we do not explicitly consider higher-level writing outcomes such as planning, revising and editing (Berninger & Chanquoy, 2012). As we review a relatively new emerging field, we will include both exploratory and hypotheses-testing studies to consider both objective and subjective writing outcomes of first writers.

The next section gives a brief overview over the topic of early writing instruction by using pen and paper vs. digital tools according to the theoretical perspective applied, followed by a brief section on the method used to review the included studies. The remaining sections present the results and discuss the main findings, and finally inform the wider debate on future studies on the effect of digital devices vs. pen and paper in early literacy instruction in formal and non-formal settings.