Effects of hand-drawn and computer-generated concept mapping on expository writing and writing attitudes of middle level students with learning and reading disabilities

This study examined the effects of concept mapping as a prewriting strategy. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two forms of concept mapping, hand-drawn versus computer-generated, on the expository writing of middle level students with learning and reading disabilities. A secondary purpose was to investigate the effect of concept mapping on learning (LD) and reading disabled (RD) students\u27 attitudes toward written language. Twenty-four eighth grade students with learning disabilities (n = 12) and reading disabilities (n = 12) participated in the study. Students wrote under three conditions which included: (a) descriptive essays with no-mapping, (b) descriptive essays with hand-map support, and (c) descriptive essays with computer-map support. The expository compositions were compared on four dependent measures which included: (a) number of words (fluency), (b) number of T-units, (c) syntactic complexity (MLT-unit), and (d) holistic writing scores. Writing attitude was examined from two perspectives: (a) pre- and post-intervention, and (b) between writing conditions. For students with LD, both the hand- and computer-mapping conditions demonstrated significant increases above the baseline writing samples on number of words, number of T-units, and holistic writing scores. Students with RD also showed significant increases above the baseline writing samples on holistic writing scores for hand- and computer-mapping conditions. The hand- and computer-mapping conditions demonstrated similar outcome effects on all dependent variables for students with LD and RD. Both LD and RD students made significant gains in their writing products when using the concept mapping strategy. However, because carryover effects occurred in the no-mapping condition, firm conclusions about concept mapping could not be drawn. Results of this study showed preliminary evidence for a learning effect across the time of intervention. This outcome provides an indication that students may have acquired writing skills that generalized into their writing when not using maps. In addition, students with LD demonstrated a more positive attitude toward writing when using computer-mapping over the other conditions. This outcome has implications for selection of hand- versus computer-mapping strategies