Who can best report on children's motor competence: Parents, teachers, or the children themselves?
Section snippets
Participants
A cross-sectional design was used to study children's MC from 6 to 11 years old. A convenience sample of 139 (consent rate of 79.6%) typically developing children (48.2% girls) from six schools in Spain participated (45 children aged between 6 and 7 years-old; 31 aged between 7 and 8 years-old; 12 aged between 8 and 9 years-old; 36 aged between 9 and 10 years-old; and 15 aged 10 or 11 years-old). Schools were selected based on having a diversity of schools (three public and three private; two
Results
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of children's actual MC and children's, parents' and PE teachers' perception of children's MC. Children's perception was weak or did not correlate with their actual MC (see Table 2). Parents were able to provide weak-moderate proxy report on children's MC. PE teachers' were able to provide moderate proxy report associations on children's MC.
Table 3 shows the results from the mixed effects models for the children's perception. All results presented are for
Discussion
Proficient motor skills allow children to interact with and explore their surrounding environment, and engage in daily occupations and physical activity (Brown & Lane, 2014). So this study aimed to understand the extent to which children's, parents' and PE teachers' can report on children's actual MC. Previous theoretical frameworks suggested the importance of children's and significant others' perception in children's behavioural and cognitive processes (Bandura, 1997, Stodden et al., 2008).
Conclusions
The analysis of different types of FMS (i.e., locomotion and object control) by using specific and directly aligned instruments in relation to perceived and actual MC provide an insight into children's MC. Among the three sources of information, children present limited ability to report their MC; whereas parents and PE teachers can report better on child competence. Taking into account the resources needed to objectively assess children's actual MC, this study offers alternative sources of
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the University of Valencia (grant number UV-INV-AE16-471273). Author 1 is supported by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Gobierno de España), Beca José Castillejo para jóvenes doctores (grant number CAS16/00048).
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Cited by (31)
Self and proxy (parents and teachers’) reports of child motor competence: A three-year longitudinal study
2023, Psychology of Sport and ExerciseCitation Excerpt :For instance, due to parents’ role in child development, parents were identified as key in reporting on children’s AMC; however, their capability was not confirmed (Estevan, Molina-García, Bowe, et al., 2018). Cross-sectional evidence shows inconclusive results, with parents’ proxy report, either not associated with child skill (Lalor et al., 2016), weakly associated (Estevan, Molina-García, Bowe, et al., 2018) or moderately associated (Estevan, Molina-García, Bowe, et al., 2018; Liong et al., 2015) - and this depends on the type of FMS domain. Indeed, parents’ perception of children’s AMC might be largely influenced by the socio-cultural environment (e.g., cultural and gender role stereotypes, values, attitudes) with important ramifications to their expectations (Horn, 2018).
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