Évaluation de la vitesse d'écriture d'élèves de différents niveaux scolaires

Occupational therapists involved in motor skill rehabilitation and school integration services often encounter school age children with handwriting problems. Therapists are requested to assess the child's skills and propose, if necessary, a functionally satisfactory method for writing which would allow the child to meet the demands of the education system. A wide range of assessment tools have been proposed in an attempt to adapt the testing to the cerebral palsy child's particular situation and problematic. In 1981, the journal Motricité cérébrale published an article on the slowness of handwriting where the authors put forward three tests to evaluate handwriting speed according to school level. The tests, designed for primary school pupils, were calibrated with a standard population enabling comparison with cerebral palsy children who could thus be identified as presenting or not retarded acquisition of writing speed. Handwriting projects could then be elaborated according to objective need. Occupational therapists continue to use this assessment tool, but are the handwriting speeds recorded in 1981 still valid today? In order to answer this question and check the validity of these “standard” speeds 25 years later, a calibration study was undertaken in primary schools. The results of this study show that the handwriting speeds have changed: expected handwriting speeds have declined from the fourth year of primary school. To complete this tool, we have continued the handwriting speed evaluation in secondary schools with the same assessment tests. This new calibration will provide a new standard for assessing handwriting speed among teenagers.