By Dr Ragnar Purje
In The Educator (27 May, 2026), the following headline was presented: “Principals call for NAPLAN writing test to be axed.” This was followed by the following: “One of Australia’s largest Principals’ associations has called for the NAPLAN writing test to be abolished, saying it would mark “the first step in modernising Australia’s National Assessment Program”.”
According to this article, the purpose of this “writing test axing” is “to review the writing in order to make it relevant for today’s learners.” Further to this, the article declares that “the review should consider the need for higher-order skills students need in an increasingly AI-enabled world.” Furthermore, the article points out that “any review needs to look at how to involve enhanced use of adaptive online testing, shorter targeted assessments, and tasks that measure critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and digital literacy.” All for the purpose of “modernising Australia’s National Assessment Program”.
Two decades of educational and pedagogical research
With this in mind, it is imperative to note the results of two decades of educational and pedagogical research, presented in The Educator (22 May, 2026) under the headline: “AI, 'The Powerful', does it all. But what about skills, knowledge and learning?”
This article, dated 22 May 2026, referred to a 20-year, $30bn (US) study on the impact of technology on thinking and learning. The title of this two-decade study was: “The $30 Billion Experiment: How a National Push for Classroom Technology Produced a Less Cognitively Capable Generation.”
As this article notes, the intention of this 20-year, $30bn technological initiative was to modernise learning and accelerate achievement and cognitive potential. From this stated intention to modernise learning and elevate cognitive potential, it is important to examine how this national experiment actually unfolded.
The intention was to modernise learning and accelerate achievement
The origins of this two-decade initiative, which began in 2002, reveal the scale and ambition of the technological transformation that the policymakers believed would redefine American education. In this 22 May 2026 article in The Educator, the following was presented:
This $30 billion national push to digitise American classrooms began in 2002 with the State of Maine’s one-to-one laptop program and was significantly expanded by 2024. According to the research, the intention was to modernise learning, democratise access to information, and accelerate achievement. Yet two decades of data now show the opposite: a measurable decline in students’ cognitive capabilities.
And despite sustained investment and effort, over 20 years, student scores in Maine never improved, foreshadowing national outcomes later confirmed by neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath. In 2026, Horvath informed the U.S. Senate that Gen Z is the first modern generation to perform worse than the one before it in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving, with declines strongly correlated with increased school-based screen time.
The keyboard and handwriting research of Mueller and Oppenheimer
Additionally, research by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) adds further weight to this outcome. In their study, they compared and contrasted university students who typed lecture notes on laptops with those who wrote their notes by hand during the same sessions. In terms of initial outcomes, Mueller and Oppenheimer found that the laptop keyboard typing users produced substantially more words, and – even more “impressively” – their typed notes tended to be near‑verbatim transcriptions of the lecture.
On the basis of these initial typed observations, Mueller and Oppenheimer logically and self-evidently assumed that the greater volume of typed words (which were almost, as noted, verbatim with the lecture) and, along with the apparent totality of typed notes, all of these typed notes – in absolute academic and educational terms – would “self-evidently” confer a significant and even profound literacy and knowledge-based advantage over handwritten notes.
With this “self-evident” hypothesis in mind, at the conclusion of the lectures, both groups (the handwriting group and the keyboard typing group) were assessed by Mueller and Oppenheimer on the material presented. Surprisingly, this assessment found that students who wrote their notes by hand scored significantly higher on measures of recall, knowledge, and understanding than those who typed their notes.
This immediately raised the question: Why? According to research by Mueller and Oppenheimer (the students who handwrote their notes consistently), consciously engaged in higher-order cognitive reasoning and the associated intellectual actions of critical thinking.
Active listeners
According to Mueller and Oppenheimer, throughout the lecture, students who were handwriting their notes were described as active listeners. With this intensive, active-listening intention taking place, these “handwriting students” also actively selected and intellectually evaluated what was important enough to record.
As a result of this active handwriting process, the research indicates that this consciously committed, intense focus on what was being said, followed by selective transcription by hand (i.e., the act of handwriting), led to deeper processing and learning. At the same time, as noted, this effortful act of handwriting produced higher levels of reasoning, advanced critical-thinking potential, and learning gains. This, in turn, led to deeper self-reflective insights, more rigorous intellectual analysis, and a far more sophisticated understanding of the information that was being presented in the lectures (Luo et al., 2018; Morehead et al., 2019).
Further to this, Luo et al. (2018) found that handwritten notes also contained higher levels of meaningful content. This finding therefore indicated that deeper cognitive processing was taking place, along with greater conceptual organisation and higher levels of intellectual analysis, which, in turn, produced higher scores on knowledge-based assessments.
The advantages of handwriting were more pronounced
Added to this, research by Morehead et al. (2019) further demonstrated that the advantages of handwriting were more pronounced when students were evaluated on higher-order, complex conceptual reasoning and depth of understanding, rather than on simple factual recall.
Taken individually and collectively, these studies affirm that handwriting was, and is, in immutable absolute terms, a profound neuromuscular (fine and gross motor) skill and a concomitant cognitive process that develops highly advantageous intellectual activity, thereby enhancing learning and deeper understanding across the broad spectrum of education.
This research and quantifiable evidence from these university classrooms, tutorials and lecture auditoriums also point to a broader universal principle: that the effortful action of handwriting as a note-taking method (neurologically and cognitively) develops deeper-thinking skills. As the research indicates, when students write by hand, they must actively select, organise, and synthesise information. This act of handwriting immediately engages conscious, critical thinking and higher-order reasoning.
As a result, students who handwrite their notes are continually deciding what is essential, how ideas relate, and how best to represent those ideas in their own words. This involves instant summarisations that involve critical thinking and higher-order reasoning. There is no academic “modern technological magic wand” here. This is all about continuous, self-motivated, holistic, brain, mind, and effortful body actions taking place.
As such, the evidence certainly pragmatically indicates that this sustained engagement in handwriting develops, advances, and strengthens critical thinking (the capacity to analyse, evaluate, and make reasoned judgments) and higher‑order reasoning, the conscious process that involves the capacity to interpret, integrate, and manipulate information to draw inferences, identify relationships, generate explanations, and construct justified conclusions that extend beyond the information directly presented.
All of this is taking place because handwriting requires more intensive cognitive effort and sustained concentration, producing direct neurological benefits through increased “firing and rewiring,” which, in turn, continues to positively impact how the brain and mind function. As the brain-based research consistently shows, these benefits far exceed those associated with typing (Arden, 2010; Arrowsmith Young, 2012; Claxton, 2015; Coyle, 2009; Doidge, 2010, 2015; Luo et al., 2018; Morehead et al., 2019; Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014; Suzuki, 2015).
Complementing these cognitive findings, neuroscience research demonstrates that handwriting engages broader and more integrated neural networks than typing, thereby activating sensorimotor, perceptual, and associative regions essential for deeper learning (James & Engelhardt, 2012; Van der Weel & Van der Meer, 2024).
Caution
This neurological activation pattern provides a biological explanation for the cognitive advantages outlined above. Extending this evidence base further, studies by Alonso (2015), Mangen and Balsvik (2016), Arnold et al. (2017), and Van der Weel and Van der Meer (2024) caution that the widespread replacement of handwriting with typing in educational settings may be seriously pedagogically misguided, as it risks diminishing the very neural and cognitive processes that support robust and deeper intellectual learning potential.
Van der Weel and Van der Meer (2024) further emphasise the importance of maintaining educational practices that align with contemporary neuroscience evidence in an increasingly digital world. They argue that children must first master handwriting—particularly complex, coherent narrative handwriting—before typing is introduced. Their rationale is clear: “the neural connectivity patterns underlying handwriting and typewriting are distinctly different.”
The tripod grip
Therefore, being aware of when to write by hand or use a digital device is crucial, whether for taking lecture notes to learn new concepts or for writing longer essays. From this perspective, neuroscience confirms that if the profession of education is genuinely concerned with empowering the brain, mind and body, then, from the first day of school, handwriting must be explicitly taught, beginning with the biomechanically efficient tripod grip and then practised and consistently applied throughout the primary and secondary years of schooling.
According to research, this neurobiological developmental pathway is essential for cultivating advanced narrative writing skills that shape and strengthen the brain and mind, supporting the emergence of intellectually sophisticated, analytical, and critically engaged thinkers prepared for the demands of higher-order reasoning throughout life (Van der Weel & Van der Meer, 2024). As was and is the case in the research presented by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014)
The biomechanical and neurological efficiency of the tripod grip
All of these university-level findings reinforce the critical importance of teaching handwriting at the very beginning of a child’s educational journey, with the tripod grip at its centre. Research demonstrates that the tripod grip provides the biomechanical, ergonomic, and neurobiological foundations required for developing efficient and intellectually effective narrative handwriting skills (Lust & Donica, 2011).
Academic achievements
Evidence from early childhood research supports this developmental trajectory. Dinehart and Manfra (2013) found that fine motor skills—including the tripod grip and early handwriting—predict later academic achievement. Longcamp et al. (2005) showed that continuous handwriting practice enhances letter recognition, which then develops into narrative writing. These processes, in turn, strengthen and advance higher-order reading and narrative writing skills more effectively than typing.
Further to this, James and Engelhardt (2012) demonstrated that handwriting experience activates brain regions associated with literacy in pre-literate children. Collectively, this body of research confirms that handwriting develops the neuromuscular motor skills and neurological foundations essential for both immediate and long-term cognitive growth, intellectual development, and academic achievement.
Handwriting rewires the brain and body
Neuroscience research also demonstrates that handwriting is far more than a mechanical skill; it actively rewires the brain. Functional imaging studies show that writing by hand engages neural systems associated with memory, language, and executive function, thereby creating new pathways and strengthening existing ones that support higher‑order thinking and reasoning.
This results in richer, more integrated connections between simple and complex ideas and enhances the capacity to evaluate sophisticated information—benefits not observed to the same extent with typing. All of this research consistently indicates that handwriting develops, advances, and enhances skills, knowledge, insights, creativity, deeper understandings, and associated sophisticated intellectual gains. And the best formal place to begin this journey is on the first day of school. This handwriting process must, as the research indicates, continue throughout the primary and secondary years, and even into the tertiary years (James, 2010; James & Engelhardt, 2012; Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014; Planton et al., 2013).
Handwriting is not optional
Consequently, the research and evidence indicate that handwriting is not optional. As the evidence irrefutably indicates, these academic and intellectual benefits only begin to emerge through sustained handwriting practice – and eventual narrative writing – all of which demands consistent, unrelenting motivation and mental and physical effort. There is no modern technological magic wand that can replace the profound importance of handwriting.
Taken together, all of this firmly demonstrates that when learners intentionally commit themselves to their handwriting, which then advances to narrative writing which then leads to the writers being able to hopefully grapple with complex ideas, articulate nuanced arguments, and generate original insights; this is when the cognitive conditions for advancing and enhancing critical thinking, higher‑order reasoning, creativity, deeper knowledge, self‑reflective insights, and intellectual analytical advancement begin to take shape. As noted and affirmed, these handwriting and cognitive capacities do not arise automatically; they are the direct consequence of deliberate, effortful engagement with ideas, which must begin in Grade One. As the research informs, these are the very engagements that handwriting uniquely sustains and strengthens.
Dr. Ragnar Purje (PhD; M.Ed.; M.Ed.(Guid.& Couns.); M.Ed.(Lead.&Man.); B.A. (Psych.); B.App.Sc. (P.E.); Grad.Dip.Ed.; Grad.Dip.SportSci.; Grad.Dip.Ex.&SportSci.; Grad.Cert.(Comm.); Grad.Dip.(Health Couns.); Certificate IV in Assess.&Workplace Training). Adjunct Senior Lecturer at CQUniversity. Author of Responsibility Theory®. Classroom Behaviour Specialist.