Movement for Life! A physical literacy resource for early childhood caregivers

Abstract

Early childhood education settings play a critical role in offering opportunities for children to develop physical literacy. The purpose of the present study was to investigate if Movement for Life! (M4L), a physical literacy education program for adult caregivers of children ages 0-6, translated to change in the provision, knowledge, and understanding of physical literacy by early childhood educators (ECEs). Using a pre and post-test design 84 ECES completed two measures: the Physical Literacy Environmental Assessment (PLEA; Caldwell et al., 2020), and a survey regarding personal behaviours for providing physical literacy development opportunities. In addition, six childcare centre directors completed the Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Childcare (Ward et al., 2008). The results demonstrate that the participation in the M4L program has a positive impact on the physical literacy environment of early childhood care centres. Additionally, ECEs believed it was important to provide physical literacy development activities. They reported increased confidence to provide effective physical literacy development activities from pre-test to post-test and reported significantly decreased difficulty providing effective physical literacy development activities from pre-test to post-test, although some barriers were suggested to still exist. The results indicate the M4L program was effective and successfully implemented with ECEs.

Keywords

• physical activity
• education
• early childcare
• early childhood educators