Relationship Between Teacher’s and Therapist’s Evaluations on Handwriting Performance in First-grade Children

Objectives: Handwriting dysfunction may harm children’s wellbeing. Therapists and elementary school teachers help to identify and improve children’s handwriting performance. The present study aimed to assess the relationship between therapists’ assessment and teachers’ perception of handwriting performance in first graders. Methods: This cross-sectional study involved (n=31) first-grade students, aged 6-8 years from an international school in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. Teachers evaluated the handwriting proficiency using the Handwriting Proficiency Screening Questionnaire (HPSQ), and the explored students were rated as proficient and non-proficient hand writers. Furthermore, therapists assessed students’ handwriting proficiency using the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment (MHA) (manuscript & D’Nealian styles) scores. The Mann–Whitney U test was used to assess the differences in MHA scores between proficient and non-proficient hand writers. Moreover, Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between the scores of MHA and HPSQ. Results: There was a significant difference in all component scores of MHA (except the rate) and both writing styles between the proficient and non-proficient writers (P