Writing problems are a common phenomenon, which has a significant impact on the overall academic achievement and further education of children. In the school period (4th-6th grade) writing difficulties are two to three times more frequent than reading difficulties. The purpose of the master thesis is to investigate the incidence and the nature of writing problems and the prevalence of severe forms of specific problems in writing or developmental dysgraphia with school children according to age, gender and the type of record (dictation, text composition, copying). The existing research show that approximately 10 % of primary school children encounter profound difficulties in writing. Studies show as well that difficulties in writing and developmental dysgraphia are much more common among boys than among girls. Little research has been done about the incidence of dysgraphia and gender differences in writing in Slovenia. More studies have been conducted abroad, however, this area also in the international framework has not been sufficiently studied. The study included 45 fourth-grade primary school students (24 boys and 21 girls) and 52 eighth-grade primary school students (22 boys and 30 girls). Written samples for analysis (dictation, text composition and copying) were obtained at the end of the school year. In order to identify difficulties in writing and developmental dysgraphia the Assessment Scale for Handwriting Dysgraphia was used. The obtained results were statistically processed (descriptive statistics, measures of correlation, analysis of variance, etc.).
The survey results confirm the previous findings on the incidence of problems in writing and developmental dysgraphia with primary school pupils. A higher percentage of incidence of difficulties in writing and developmental dysgraphia was recognized among boys in all three samples of handwriting. The percentage of dysgraphia in the text composition was similar in the 4th and 8th grade while in the copying condition the percentage of dysgraphia was significantly lower in 8th grade, which suggests that the number of children with the identified dysgraphia handwriting decreases with age.
An analysis of gender differences according to age and type of writing will offer a greater insight in the nature of the individual differences and the writing difficulties, and will create the basis for better target-oriented interventions.
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