News release

From: Edith Cowan University

The writing is on the wall — Are kids ditching pens for keyboards?

A nation-wide study of more than 500 Australian primary school students in Year 2 has revealed how beginner writers’ attitude and motivation towards writing is related to the quality of their writing and writing skills (handwriting vs keyboard automaticity).

The research led by Dr Anabela Malpique, senior lecturer in literacy from the School of Education at Edith Cowan University (ECU), in collaboration with colleagues from the Writing for All research group, examined students’ specific attitudes toward writing on paper compared to writing using a computer. The researchers also looked at how primary school-aged students feel about writing more generally.

“In the digital age, it is critical to gain insights into how beginner writers feel about writing as they navigate the unique challenges of composing both paper and computer-based texts,” Dr Malpique said.

The purpose of the study was to determine whether young children’s general attitudes towards writing, and specific attitudes towards both paper and computer-based writing, could significantly predict children’s writing outcomes.

“Handwritten national exams have been discontinued in Australian primary schools. Students are required to complete online literacy and numeracy tests from Year 3—so it’s important to understand the difference in their writing performance between paper-based and computer modalities.”

Handwriting vs keyboarding

“We found that children held very positive attitudes toward both writing formats, but only their handwriting attitudes significantly predicted the success of their paper-based work. Keyboarding attitudes did not show a similar link to computer-based writing performance,” Dr Malpique said.

When children hold negative attitudes, lack interest and self-belief towards handwriting and their handwriting skills, their motivation to write and the quality of their handwritten texts are of a lower standard than children who hold positive attitudes toward handwriting.

“Contrastingly, specific attitudes towards writing computer-based texts did not make a unique or statistically significant contribution in predicting computer-based compositional quality and productivity,” she said.

The study highlighted that keyboarding automaticity is a more powerful predictor of digital writing success than student motivation.

“We also interviewed children and learned that they value writing using paper and pencil as well as using computers. However, despite holding more positive attitudes towards using computers for writing, they felt more capable of writing texts using paper and pencil. Children associated handwriting with physical fatigue and digital writing with technical difficulties, such as struggling to locate keys,” Dr Malpique explained.

Children’s comments offered additional insights:

• Negative attitudes related to the physical effort of writing using a pen or pencil (“hurts my hand” or “get tired doing it”)
• Lack of knowledge of letter position on a keyboard and difficulties with typing and coordination (e.g., “harder to find letters” and “it will be harder because, um, instead of doing a word you have to look down”)

Dr Malpique recommends a balanced approach to teaching writing in primary classrooms.

“Teachers should focus on developing both psychomotor skills and positive motivational beliefs to support emerging writers in the digital age.”

The study forms part of a research project investigating student and contextual-level factors contributing to the development of paper and computer-based writing in early primary education. Motivation to write in the digital age: examining early primary students’ attitudes towards paper and computer-based text composing is included in the Writing for All: Handwriting and keyboarding skills in the Early Years project funded by The Ian Potter Foundation.