Teaching Hiragana writing in a special needs classroom

Efficacy and social validity of line connecting and writing tasks

Abstract

The efficacy and social validity of hiragana writing material developed for children enrolled in specialneeds classes were examined. Three first-grade students enrolled in a special needs class taught by two homeroom teachers participated in the study. The study used a multiple baseline design across behaviors. The data were measured by shortening the baseline assessment as much as possible. The tasks included connecting pictures and hiragana letters with lines, kana copying, and kana writing using pictures as discriminative stimuli. The participants wrote kana letters using pictures as discriminative stimuli in the post-study test. The results of test accuracy as the dependent variable indicated that all the participants acquired hiragana writing skills. Moreover, the teachers responded positively to a questionnaire survey on the social validity of the teaching method. We concluded that the hiragana teaching method used in this study was effective. However, this method assumes that participants can copy hiragana letters smoothly. We suggest including measures for teaching children with writing problems in future studies.