Original research
Effectiveness of a 16 week gymnastics curriculum at developing movement competence in children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2016.06.013Get rights and content

Abstract

Objectives

Internationally, children's movement competence levels are low. This study's aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a 16 week gymnastics curriculum on stability, locomotive and object control skills and general body coordination. It was hypothesised that the gymnastics intervention group would demonstrate significant improvements beyond a PE comparison group.

Design

This study used a non-randomised control design. The intervention and comparison groups were drawn from three primary schools. The study followed the transparent reporting of evaluations with nonrandomized designs (TREND) statement for reporting.

Methods

A total of 333 children (51% girls, 41% intervention) with a mean age of 8.1 years (SD = 1.1) participated. Intervention children (16 weeks × 2 h of gymnastics) were compared to children who received (16 × 2 h) standard PE curriculum. Children's movement competence was assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2, Stability Skills Assessment and the Körper-Koordinationstest für Kinder. Multilevel linear mixed models, accounting for variation at the class level and adjusted for age and sex, were used to assess intervention relative to comparison differences in all aspects of movement competence.

Results

Stability and object control skills showed a significant (p < 0.05) intervention × time interaction effect. No difference was found in locomotor skills or general coordination.

Conclusions

Gymnastics is effective at developing stability skills and object control skills without hindering the development of locomotor skills or general coordination. Accelerated learning of stability skills may support the development of more complex movement skills.

Introduction

The ability to perform various movement skills (e.g. running, kicking, jumping) in a proficient manner is defined as movement competence1, 2 which comprises three discrete constructs2: locomotor, object control, and stability skills. Collectively, known as fundamental movement skills (FMS), these are seen as the foundation for more specialised movements required in many sports and physical activities.3 Mastery of FMS is associated with health benefits4 and longitudinal evidence suggests children who have better FMS skills are more likely to possess superior cardiovascular fitness at 16 years of age.5 Typically, interventions designed to improve children's FMS have focused on the development of object control and locomotor skills.6, 7 Consistent with Gallahue et al.,2 recent work has suggested stability skills are a separate construct in the FMS family8 which currently are not adequately assessed or developed. Typically European assessment of movement competence does not focus on FMS but instead examines children's movement coordination with regard to their ability to undertake novel and unfamiliar gross motor tasks.9 Collectively, the absence of stability skills and general body coordination, may contribute to a lack of movement competence. Burton and Rodgerson10 argued that practice in physical education (PE) should be consistent with a theoretical model of movement competence and, interventions based in the PE setting should therefore develop and measure all aspects of children's movement competence.

Australian children have poor stability skills,8 they are significantly behind their Belgian counterparts in general non-sport specific body coordination11 and they perform poorly in tests of locomotor and object control skills.12, 13 This may be attributed to diminished PE time in schools14, 15 and an increased focus on the development of team sports at the cost of individual sports such as gymnastics.16 Gymnastics training has been found to produce superior stability skills.8 A lack of gymnastics training may be a contributing factor for children failing to develop more complex object control skills17 and having poorly developed general coordination and stability skills.11 The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a 16 week gymnastics curriculum developed by Gymnastics Australia (GA) to develop stability, locomotive and object control skills and general body coordination. It was hypothesised that the gymnastics intervention group would demonstrate significant improvements beyond a PE comparison group.

Section snippets

Methods

This study used a non-randomised control design (see Fig. 1) as the schools’ principals were unwilling to follow a randomised process as it would involve making changes to the schools’ timetables. Instead, the intervention and comparison groups were identified by the school principals, although it was requested that they did not select groups based upon judgements of who might benefit most from being involved in the intervention. Classes of children from three primary schools were allocated as

Results

Retention rate at post-test was 93% (see Fig. 1). The absent children were similar to the remaining participants in terms of sex, age, locomotor, object control, stability and body coordination performance (all p > 0.05). Participating children's mean scores for locomotor, object control, stability skills and general body coordination split by condition are shown in Table 1.

There was no significant difference between coaches’, teachers’ and PE teachers’ adherence to delivery of the lesson plans (F

Discussion

The aim of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the gymnastics curriculum in developing movement competence in children in grades 1–4. Children participating in the gymnastics curriculum showed significantly larger improvements in stability skills and object control skills, but not in locomotive skills and general body coordination, which was contrary to our expectations that all aspects of motor competence would improve. The larger improvements in stability skills, relative to the

Conclusion

This study demonstrated that a gymnastics-based PE curriculum has an accelerated effect on movement competence in comparison to a standard PE curriculum. This was indexed by larger gains in stability skills and object control skills. In addition, following a period of coach shadowing, the gymnastics curriculum was taught by the regular classroom teacher suggesting this model is sustainable and could be implemented on a larger scale.

Practical implications

  • Provides evidence that gymnastics is an essential part of the PE curriculum as it develops stability and object control skills at a faster rate than a standard PE curriculum.

  • Gymnastics accelerates a child's object control skills which is important as these skills are associated with physical activity and fitness later on in life.

  • Using coaches and class teachers working together provides a complementary synergy of content (coach) and pedagogical knowledge of child learning (class teacher).

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Marcus Leslie, and Alison Lyons the gymnastics coaches involved in this study. Thank you to all RAs, schools, parents and children for making this study possible. There was external financial support from the Australian Government through the Collaborative Research Network and Gymnastics Australia.

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