Physical Activity Routines, Education, Assessment, Literacy, and Information Technology Application in Young Children

Summary

Engaging in appropriate volumes of physical activity is important to our current and future health status. Being able to develop habits for physical activity during early years of life may have long lasting benefits throughout individuals' life course. For preschool-aged children, the World Health Organization recommends engagement in a range of activity of varying intensities (from light to vigorous intensities) for 180 minutes every day. However, one local study conducted by the Principal Investigator found that only 12.8% of children from Hong Kong met these recommendations. One key contributing factor to physical activity is one's fundamental movement skills (FMS), such as running, jumping, throwing, and kicking. FMS are considered the prerequisites or "building blocks" of many physical activities and sports. In addition to supporting an active lifestyle, researchers have shown that proficiencies in these skills are associated with better cardiovascular fitness and healthier weight statuses. Building children's fundamental movement skills proficiency from a young age is thus important. "Physical Development" is a development objective under the Hong Kong Kindergarten Education Curriculum. Hence all local preschools provide some form of education to develop children's FMS. However, most preschool teachers have not received formal training in physical education, and standardized curricula in the physical domain is currently unavailable. As such, preschool teachers' ability to instruct and assess children's development in these skills may be limited and suboptimal. Parents are significant influencers in children's development, therefore appropriate support from parents also contribute to the potential successes of the programme. In this study, we aim to address the aforementioned challenges by (1) providing preschool teachers professional development training in pedagogical knowledge and methods in the physical domain, (2) creating a set of teaching materials (in printed and digital formats) and methods that could be incorporated into the overall and preschool-based curricula, (3) creating a parental toolkit with contents mirroring the school materials, to enhance parents' knowledge and promote family-school collaboration, and (4) developing a smartphone-based artificial intelligence rating system to help preschool teachers conveniently and accurately assess children's motor skills, and provide appropriate instructional feedback.

Conditions

• Intervention
• Wait-List Control
• Healthy

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Movement education

(1) providing preschool teachers professional development training in pedagogical knowledge and methods in the physical domain, (2) creating a set of teaching materials (in printed and digital formats) and methods that could be incorporated into the overall and preschool-based curricula, (3) creating a parental toolkit with contents mirroring the school materials, to enhance parents' knowledge and promote family-school collaboration, and (4) developing a smartphone-based artificial intelligence rating system to help preschool teachers conveniently and accurately assess children's motor skills, and provide appropriate instructional feedback.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Wollongong

  collaborator OTHER

• University of British Columbia

  collaborator OTHER

• Research Grants Council, Hong Kong

  collaborator OTHER

• Chinese University of Hong Kong

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Amy S. Ha, Ph.D · Chinese University of Hong Kong

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

3 Years

Max Age

6 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-05-01

Primary Completion

2025-07-31

Completion

2025-07-31

Countries

• Hong Kong

Study Locations