The Need for a Handwriting Intervention Guideline for Occupational Therapists in the Malaysian Context

ABSTRACT

The objectives of this study are to analyze the factors of handwriting difficulties among children, the intervention strategies for handwriting problems, and the need to develop a handwriting intervention guideline for occupational therapists in the Malaysian context. The research employed individual semi-structured interviews with seven participants who offered three different sets of experiences and viewpoints, namely, the remedial school teachers’, occupational therapists’, and parents’ perspectives. A qualitative analysis approach was utilized. Thematic analysis was applied by using an inductive approach for open-ended questions in interviews. The results were presented according to research objectives. Five themes emerged to address the factors of handwriting issues among school children. The factors are motor skills deficiency, poor motor visual skills, lack of parental support, low self-motivation, and handwriting difficulties. Four themes were derived for intervention strategies to cater for handwriting problems among school children. The themes have an emphasis on developing motor skills, increasing motor visual activities, engaging occupational therapy components, and enabling active participation from parents and teachers. Finally, there is a crucial need to produce a guideline for handwriting intervention in order to improve children’s potential in handwriting skills, to provide a comprehensive guide for occupational therapists, teachers, and parents and to align practice in handwriting intervention. This study provides understanding of the factors of handwriting problem among school children and allows suitable intervention programs. Therefore, the need to develop a systematic guideline in handwriting intervention is significant, in that it would benefit the teachers, occupational therapists, and parents in the Malaysian context.

KEYWORDS:

• Handwriting difficulties
• intervention guideline
• occupational therapy
• school children

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the participants who took part in this study. We also expressed our gratitude to Special Education Division, Kedah State Education Division, Sarawak State Education Division, Special Education Service Centre or famously known as Pusat Perkhidmatan Pendidikan Khas (3PK) from Ministry of Education Malaysia for supporting this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

Ethical approval granted by the Sekretariat Etika Penyelidikan, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia UKM PPI/111/8/JEP-2020-491 and the Ministry of Education (MoE) Malaysia through the Educational Planning and Research Division (EPRD).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.