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How Well Can Family Childcare Providers Report on Preschoolers' Motor Skill Competence?
Roger Figueroa1, Lisa Barnett2, Isaac Estevan3
1Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Insights
Family childcare providers (FCCPs) can accurately report on preschoolers' object control skills, offering a practical alternative for assessing motor competence. Further education is recommended for FCCPs on children's locomotor skill development.
Area of Science:
- Child Development
- Motor Skill Acquisition
- Early Childhood Education
Background:
- Objective assessment of children's movement skills is time-consuming and resource-intensive.
- Family childcare providers (FCCPs) spend significant time with young children, potentially understanding their motor skill levels.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the accuracy of FCCPs' reports on preschoolers' motor skill competence.
- To determine if FCCPs can serve as a proxy for objective motor skill assessments.
Main Methods:
- Seventy-eight preschoolers (ages 3-5) and their FCCPs participated.
- Objective motor skills were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2.
- FCCPs completed surveys reporting on children's motor competence, analyzed using correlations and regression.
Main Results:
- Moderate correlations were found between FCCP reports and objective measures for locomotion, object control, and overall motor skills.
- FCCP reports significantly predicted preschoolers' object control (β = .78, p = .011) and overall motor skills (β = .72, p = .022).
- FCCP reports explained 20.9% and 20.1% of the variance in object control and overall motor skills, respectively.
Conclusions:
- FCCPs can serve as a valuable alternative source for reporting young children's motor skill competence, particularly in the object control domain.
- There is a need for enhanced training for FCCPs regarding the development of children's locomotor skills.
Background:
Assessing children's movement skill competence objectively is resource and time intensive. Family childcare providers (FCCPs) are with young children for most of a normal weekday and may have an understanding of their motor skill competence.
Objective:
This study examined how well FCCPs can report on preschoolers' motor skills.
Method:
Seventy-eight 3-5 year olds (53.1% girls) from 26 FCCPs participated. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 assessed actual motor skill competence and a survey assessed preschoolers' motor competence as reported by FCCPs. Bivariate correlations examined associations between actual and FCCPs' proxy-report of preschoolers' motor skill competence. Regression models tested the predictive power of FCCPs' proxy-report on actual preschoolers' motor skill competence, accounting for age and sex.
Results:
There were moderate significant correlations for locomotion (r = .30), object control (r = .38), and overall motor skill competence (r = .36). The regression models showed proxy report was statistically associated with preschoolers' object control skills (β = .78, p = .011) and overall motor skills (β = .72, p = .022), but not locomotor skills (β = .52, p = .084). FCCPs' proxy-report of preschoolers' motor skill competence explained 20.9, and 20.1% of preschoolers' variance in object control, and overall motor skill competence, respectively after adjusting for biological sex and age (increasing).
Conclusions:
FCCPs may be used as an alternative source of information in reporting young children's actual motor skill competence, at least for the object control domain. There is an opportunity for education of FCCPs regarding children's locomotor skill development.
