Shaping young children's handwriting and keyboarding performance: Individual and contextual-level factors

Anabela Abreu Malpique
Edith Cowan University, Australia; Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Debora Valcan
Murdoch University, Australia
Deborah Pino-Pasternak
University of Canberra,Australia
Susan Ledger
The University of Newcastle, Australia
Bronte Kelso-Marsh
Edith Cowan University, Australia

There is a strong body of research showing associations between handwriting automaticity and children's writing performance. However, less is known about keyboarding automaticity and young students' writing performance. We investigated the relationship between handwriting and keyboarding automaticity and writing performance in both modalities in a sample of 49 students, as well as children's attitudes toward writing in each modality. We also examined the frequency and the nature of the teaching strategies implemented to support children's writing development at school, and the writing practices and support that children reported experiencing at home. Our findings showed statistically significant associations between letter writing automaticity in both modalities and the quality and the length of Year 2 children's handwritten and keyboarded texts. Results further suggested statistically significant moderate to strong associations between all handwriting and keyboarding variables assessed. While our findings concur with research stressing the importance of preparing students to become "hybrid" writers by mastering both handwritten and keyboarding modalities, they also stress the need to examine contextual factors, such as teaching and home writing practices, to gain a more comprehensive view of factors impacting children's writers by mastering both handwritten and keyboarding modalities, they also stress the need to examine contextual factors, such as teaching and home writing practices, to gain a more comprehensive view of factors impacting children's writing acquisition and development.
[ PDF full text for this article ]

Authors: Dr Anabela Malpique (corresponding author) is a senior lecturer in School of Education, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Her research interests focus on literacy development, particularly in writing development and instruction. She is leading the Writing for All initiative aiming to expand knowledge on individual and contextual-level factors explaining writing development from early-childhood till late adulthood. Her research involves typically developing writers in primary and secondary schools. Email: a.malpique@ecu.edu.au Dr Debora Valcan is an Associate Lecturer in Psychology at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Her research focuses on the early development of executive functioning; the family factors that support or hinder this development; and the relations between children's executive functioning, self-regulated learning and academic achievement. Email: d.valcan@murdoch.edu.au Dr Deborah Pino-Pasternak is an Associate Professor at University of Canberra, Australia. Her research interests concern young children's development of self-regulatory skills and how those are fostered or hindered by home and school environments, with an emphasis on the quality of parent-child and teacher-student interactions. Email: deborah.pino-pasternak@canberra.edu.au Professor Susan Ledger, School of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia, is an advocate for the teaching profession. She explores education policies and practices related to teaching diverse students in diverse contexts. Her broad experiential base in rural, remote, and international contexts informs her belief that all educators need to be confident teachers of literacy and language acquisition. Email: susan.ledger@newcastle.edu.au Ms Bronte Kelso-Marsh is PhD student at the School of Education, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Her work is focused on examining parental involvement in writing in primary education, including parents's motivational factors to support the writing development of beginning writers. Email: bkelsoma@our.ecu.edu.au Please cite as: Malpique, A. A., Valcan, D., Pino-Pasternak, D., Ledger, S. & Kelso-Marsh, B. (2023). Shaping young children's handwriting and keyboarding performance: Individual and contextual-level factors. Issues in Educational Research, 33(4), 1441-1460. http://www.iier.org.au/iier33/malpique.pdf