Research Article: Parents, Teachers, and Community: A Team Approach to Developing Physical Competence in Children
Abstract:
Increasing children’s physical activity engagement has short- and long-term health benefits. Developing physical competence is a key component of children’s engagement in physical activity. The purpose of our study was to assess if a 12-week home, school, and community-based physical literacy intervention improved the physical competence of children in kindergarten and grade one. Four schools were either assigned to receive the intervention (n = 2 schools) or continue with their usual practice (control sites) (n = 2 schools). Physical competence was evaluated pre- and post-intervention in 103 intervention (41 female) and 83 usual practice (36 female) children using PLAY Fun. PLAY Parent and PLAY Coach tools measured parent and teacher perspectives of children’s physical competence, respectively. The intervention effect was assessed with repeated measures MANOVA to evaluate change in physical competence, with alpha set at p < 0.05. Children in both groups improved their locomotor, object control, and overall physical competence (p < 0.05) over the 12-week intervention. There was a significant intervention effect for locomotor and overall physical competence (p < 0.05). Interestingly, parents did not perceive these changes in physical competence (p > 0.05). However, teachers perceived improved physical competence for children in the intervention. Our physical literacy intervention improved the physical competence of children in kindergarten and grade one.
Introduction:
Physical activity is beneficial to the health and wellness of children [1,2,3], and these benefits track into adulthood [2]. Despite the known benefits, only 17.5% of Canadian children 5 to 11 years of age were found to be reaching the Canadian physical activity guideline of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day in 2020 [4]. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has been suggested to have further negatively impacted physical activity levels in children and youth [5,6,7]. Therefore, finding ways to…
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