Barbara A. Fink

The contribution of handwriting to learning to write was examined in an experimental training study involving beginning writers with and without an identified disability. First-grade children experiencing handwriting and writing difficulties participated in 27 fifteen-min sessions designed to improve the accuracy and fluency of their handwriting. In comparison to their peers in a contact control condition receiving instruction in phonological awareness, students in the handwriting condition made greater gains in handwriting as well as compositional fluency immediately following instruction and 6 months later. The effects of instruction were similar for students with and without an identified disability. These findings indicate that handwriting is causally related to writing and that explicit and supplemental handwriting instruction is an important element in preventing writing difficulties in the primary grades.

Measurements of the thickness of the pre-corneal tear film, pre-lens tear film, post-lens tear film, and the lipid layer on the surface of the tear film are summarized. Spatial and temporal variations in tear film thickness are described. Theoretical predictions of tear film thickness are discussed. Mechanisms involved in the upward drift of the tear film after a blink, and in the formation of dry spots, are considered.

PURPOSE: To report baseline differences between eyes on key variables in the Collaborative Longitudinal Evaluation of Keratoconus (CLEK) Study cohort compared with a retrospectively assembled group of myopic contact lens wearers without ocular disease. METHODS: A total of 1,079 keratoconus patients who had not undergone a penetrating keratoplasty in either eye before their baseline visit were enrolled and examined at baseline. Records from 330 contact lens-wearing myopes were reviewed. Corneal curvature (keratometry), visual acuity, refractive error (manifest refraction), and corneal scarring were measured. RESULTS: The mean differences between keratoconic eyes are as follows (better eye-worse eye for each variable, separately). Flat keratometry: -3.59 +/-4.46 D and steep keratometry: -4.35 +/-4.41 D; high-contrast best-corrected visual acuity: 7.30 +/-6.83 letters; low-contrast best-corrected visual acuity: 8.53 +/-7.51 letters; high-contrast entrance visual acuity: 9.03 +/-8.40 letters; low-contrast entrance visual acuity: 9.43 +/-7.88 letters; spherical equivalent refractive error: 3.15 +/-3.84 D; and refractive cylinder power 1.55 +/-1.42 D. Twenty-one percent of the keratoconus patients had corneal scarring in only one eye. There is an association between patient-reported unilateral eye rubbing and greater asymmetry in corneal curvature, and between a history of unilateral eye trauma and greater asymmetry in corneal curvature and refractive error, with the rubbed/traumatized eye being the steeper eye most of the time. CONCLUSIONS: Keratoconus is asymmetric in the CLEK Study sample.

Teacher efficacy has been identified as a variable accounting for individual differences in teacher practice and student outcome. Because teacher efficacy is a specific rather than a generalized expectancy, an examination was done on the validity and reliability of a teacher efficacy instrument designed specifically for the area of writing. Consistent with previous teacher efficacy research, a factor analysis of the instrument yielded 2 dimensions: 1 measuring personal teaching efficacy and the other general teaching efficacy. Both factors were reliable and only slightly correlated with each other. The reported classroom practices of high- and low-efficacy teachers differed, providing further support for the validity of the instrument. It was also found that variation in efficacy scores was related to teachers' beliefs about how to teach writing.