Investigating levels and determinants of primary school children’s basic motor competencies in nine European countries

Autoři	WÄLTI Marina SEELIG Harald ADAMAKIS Manolis COLELLA Dario EMELJANOVAS Arunas GERLACH Erin KOSSYVA Irene LABUDOVÁ Jana MASARYKOVÁ Dana MIEŽIENE Brigita MOMBARG Remo MONACIS Domenico NIEDERKOFLER Benjamin ONOFRE Marcos PÜHSE Uwe QUITÉRIO Ana SALLEN Jeffrey SCHEUER Claude VLČEK Petr VRBAS Jaroslav HERRMANN Christian
Rok publikování	2022
Druh	Článek v odborném periodiku
Časopis / Zdroj	Zeitschrift für Grundschulforschung
Fakulta / Pracoviště MU	Pedagogická fakulta
Citace
www	https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42278-022-00155-w
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42278-022-00155-w
Klíčová slova	motor competence; physical education; learning objectives; curriculum; physical activity
Popis	Basic motor competencies (BMC) belong to the key learning goals of Physical Education (PE) in primary school curricula in Europe. These competencies are necessary to participate in sports inside and outside of school. Children should therefore achieve age-adequate BMC in PE and any need for educational motor support should be identified at an early stage. Studies in German-speaking countries showed that various endogenous and exogenous factors are related to children's BMC, but international studies are missing. In the present cross-sectional study, the two BMC areas object movement (OM) and self-movement (SM) as well as the associations with endogenous (age, sex, body mass index) and exogenous (participation in extracurricular sports) factors were investigated in 1721 8- to 10-year-old primary school children from nine European countries. Over 25% of the children showed need for educational motor support in OM and 20% in SM. BMC levels differed significantly between the country-specific subsamples. In all subsamples, boys showed better performances in OM, while girls scored better in SM. Older children performed better in OM and SM than younger children. Higher body mass index predicted lower BMC scores in both competence areas. Participation in ball sports was positively associated with OM and SM, and individual sports participation was a significant predictor of SM. As exogenous and endogenous variables consistently predicted BMC in all subsamples, there must be other reasons for variation in BMC levels. Future studies should address country- and school-specific characteristics like content and amount of PE.