The Active Start Guidelines (NASPE, 2009; SHAPE, 2014) recommend that young children receive daily structured physical activity and develop fundamental motor skills. Few early childhood centers employ staff with a background in motor development (MD) and/or physical education (PE). Therefore, it is necessary to provide early childhood teachers with continuous professional development (PD) to promote Active Start Guidelines. This study was part of a larger project seeking to determine the influence of a teacher-led motor intervention on the object control (OC) skills of young children who are disadvantaged. However, this portion of the study served to provide a detailed account of what occurred during the process of the intervention. This description provides a snapshot inside the motor skill intervention “Black Box”. The purpose of this study was to describe the processes for how teachers demonstrated PE/MD knowledge and implemented an OC intervention with fidelity.
Method:
Teachers (N=5) participated in a six-hour initial PD workshop focusing on OC skills and were evaluated on six MD video exams to assess their MD/PE content knowledge. Subsequently, teachers implemented an eight-week (30 min x 2xs / week) OC motor intervention to their students (n=63). Continuous PD was provided to teachers during intervention sessions on a faded schedule. A fidelity instrument was created that identified Level-1 non-negotiable pedagogical behaviors and Level-2 highly desired pedagogical behaviors. In addition, total numbers of practice trials and percentage of correct practice trials were calculated from video recordings of each session (N=15; one lost due to weather).
Analysis/Results:
Descriptive analyses demonstrated teachers’ knowledge after the initial workshop, mean percent fidelity by level, and numbers of correct practice trials during the intervention. Teachers achieved over 80% (M=91%, SD=8%) on each MD/PE exam and overall fidelity mean of 47% (SD=12%). Furthermore, teachers scored a 52% mean (SD=13%) for Level-1 fidelity and a 34% mean (SD=7%) on Level-2 fidelity. Students participated in 13,847 OC practice trials across all six OC skills in which 60% (SD=12%) were successful.
Conclusions:
Teachers demonstrated MD/PE knowledge after the initial workshop. In turn, teachers promoted the Active Start Guidelines by providing an OC intervention for students with opportunities to practice and improve OC skills. The results of this study offer an evidence-base for assessing a teacher-led motor intervention. Future research is needed to analyze the frequency and duration of each pedagogically based behavior within fidelity levels and also to increase teachers’ fidelity by improving PD methods.