A new research validation study of handwriting retention in elementary school now tells us that one handwriting style, commonly called “italic”, may be more beneficial than continuous looped cursive styles.
A 9-year-long correlation study by Betty Duvall, looked at the handwriting of 756 eleventh-grade students in Great Falls, Montana, who had received continuous looped cursive writing instruction since grade 3. “Although no students had received instruction in italic, [by 11th grade] 47% of the students wrote italic cursive or italic print and nearly 2.5 times as many students wrote italic cursive as wrote the [continuous] cursive style they had been taught.” Duvall therefore concluded that there was a logical rationale to teach italic handwriting.
Duvall’s work has been validated by Nathaniel Hansford and Elizabeth Reenstra of Pedagogy Non Grata (https://www.pedagogynongrata.com). They give the Duvall study a U.S. Department of Education Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) Tier 3 rating. “This study shows promising evidence that italic handwriting instruction correlates with higher levels of retention than other forms of handwriting instruction,” writes Hansford.
Read the validation report here.