Virginia Berninger, a University of Washington Professor of
Educational Psychology, discovered that children write better
and longer essays at a faster pace when using a pen.When I read
the article it referenced, though, it actually stated: "Children
consistently did better writing with a pen when they wrote
essays. They wrote more and they wrote faster." said Berninger.I
would first point out that writing “more and faster” is not
necessarily the same as writing better, so I think NSBA might
want to update their verbiage in that post. (The article did
state that the students wrote more complete sentences in that
portion of the study which might be considered “better,” but
that wasn’t the essay portion.) The study also left me with more
questions than answers (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
The study looked at second, fourth and six graders, and they had
to complete a variety of tasks on paper using a pen and on a
computer using a keyboard. But nowhere in the article (not sure
about in the research its