INTRODUCTION
A playful attitude in teaching refers to an approach that incorporates
fun and creative activities into learning. It involves a teacher who is willing
to take risks, be spontaneous, and engage in activities that foster a positive
learning environment (Pinillos, 1996). In essence, a playful attitude is a
mindset that values the importance of play in the learning process. It is not
just about having fun but creating opportunities for students to explore and
discover new concepts in an enjoyable and engaging way.
Play in teaching is critical because it can have a profound impact
on student engagement and motivation. When students have fun while learning,
they are more likely to participate in the process and retain information
(Correa, et; al. 2019). A playful attitude can also help create a positive
classroom culture where students feel comfortable taking risks and creatively
expressing the information (Caputo, 2022). In addition, it has been shown that
playful learning modifies the neural structure of the prefrontal cortex, which
is the center of rationality and where cognitive functions such as working
memory, planning, monitoring and modulation of emotions are developed.
Playful learning can transform education by making it more enjoyable
and engaging for students (Guerra and Figueroa-Cespedes, 2018). It can also help
develop cognitive and socioemotional skills, such as problem solving,
communication, and collaboration (Pardo and Opazo; 2019). Game-based learning,
in particular, is widely recognized as a fundamental practice for the cognitive
and socioemotional development of students (Figueroa, et; al. 2022).
Ultimately, the attitude and especially the playful attitude of the teacher is
a determining factor for school learning and the success of their students
(Sproule, et al; 2019).
Developing a playful attitude in teaching can have a significant
impact on students' learning experience. One strategy to accomplish this is to
incorporate humor into lessons. Humor can be used as a transition strategy,
enhance understanding of the subject matter, or even serve as a motivational
method (Perez; et al. 2022). In fact, students tend to prefer classes with
teachers who incorporate humor into their teaching style (Candela, et al;
2020). By using humor appropriately, teachers can create a relaxed and
enjoyable learning environment, which can lead to greater engagement and
retention of information.
Encouraging creativity and imagination is another effective strategy
for developing a playful attitude in teaching. Creativity can help teachers
better understand what students may be thinking or feeling and can also help
students develop critical thinking skills (Figueroa, et; al. 2022). Teachers
can foster creativity in their students by providing opportunities for
self-expression through art and literature, as well as promoting a positive
attitude toward new situations (Pardo and Opazo, 2019). By fostering creativity
and imagination, teachers can help students see learning as a fun and engaging
activity rather than a chore.
Basic Motor Skills (BMS) are considered capabilities, motor actions
acquired by learning by the person to correctly perform a certain task, being
the basis for the execution of specific and sports skills and abilities.
According to (García-Marín and Fernández-López, 2020) points to the HBM as
"the basis on which more complex motor responses are built" (p.38).
The learning and development of the HBMs originate gradually between the ages
of 3 to 12 years, for this reason, the school stage is the source to achieve
their development, i.e. it should be the key within the educational
environment. "When we talk about basic motor skills, we refer to the
naturally occurring motor actions that form the basic sensorimotor structure
that supports the other motor actions that we humans develop" (Dara, 2018,
p. 227). Motor skills are the abilities to control body movements. It involves
coordinating the central nervous system, muscles, and joints to perform small,
precise movements called fine motor skills. Examples of fine motor skills are
picking up a small object or writing with the index finger and thumb (Lopez, et
al; 2022), while motor skills also include general body movements called gross
motor skills, such as running or jumping.
For (Imbernón-Giménez,
et al; 2020) Motor skills are not limited to physical movements, but also include
mental and emotional aspects such as spontaneity and creativity. This is a
learning process that children develop from birth and learn motor skills as
they grow (Hernández, et al; 2021). Fine motor skills develop after gross motor
skills, and both types of motor skills are crucial to a child's cognitive and
language development.
Locomotor skills are
all those coordinated movements that allow you to move from one point to
another in the environment. Types of displacement (locomotor skills): walking,
running, crawling, crawling, quadrupeds, jumping, climbing and descending.
(Massri, et al; 2022) the locomotor skills of students can be developed through
the application of games, allowing fun, motivation and participation, it can be
called ludo-motricity the same that can be activities of corporal expression,
dance, walking, traditional-popular games, juggling, acrobatics, etc. that
allow an improvement in the indicators of physical mobility. Pérez and Simoni
(2019) mention that "It is the use of play to promote human motricity
through motor actions associated with pleasure, joy, happiness and enjoyment,
resulting in conscious and directed learning with pedagogical intent" (p.
48).
Educational play is an
interactive activity that replicates expected real-world conditions to
stimulate learning in decision-making (Gómez-Álvarez and Zapata, 2022). To
achieve this goal, a competition is offered in which participants adopt rules
of conduct and make decisions that affect them and their competitors. (Garcia and
Taboada, 2021) ratifies that learning through play can promote critical
thinking, group communication, debate and decision making, elements that are
difficult to capture using only theoretical approaches. The purpose of the
study was to determine the effectiveness of playfulness in improving children's
locomotor development.
MATERIALS
AND METHODS
The study presents a quali-quantitative approach, using mathematical
processes determined in scales on the levels of motor development to interpret
the results obtained from the tests; it was correlational by the type of
variables, playful attitude and locomotor development; a pre and post-test
evaluation of the skills determined in the 3JS test was performed. The subjects
of the study were 160, 71 girls and 89 boys belonging to the Elementary Basic
sub-level of the "Rafael Cruz Cevallos" School in the city of
Quito-Ecuador, who were in an age range between 6-9 years old; children with
special educational needs were excluded.
The instrument used in this research is the "3JS" which
was validated by (Cenizo at el, 2016). The objective is to evaluate the level
of motor coordination of children aged 6-11 years, which contains seven tests
(see in Table 1): locomotor test, which measures running, turning and jumping:
and object control (hand-foot) such as throwing, kicking and dribbling the
ball. It is a quantitative qualitative procedure that details the motor
evaluation criteria.
|
TEST 3JS MOTOR DEVELOPMENT 7 SUBTESTS
|
|
Locomotor skills
(body control)
|
Projection skills
(object control)
|
|
Running
|
Throwing the ball
|
|
Vertical jumping
|
Precision shot
|
|
Longitudinal turning
|
Dribbling
|
|
|
Ball driving
|
Tabla 1. Skills
to be assessed in the 3JS Test.
This test is divided into 7 skills to evaluate the criteria for each
test. Each student was assigned a corresponding score ranging from 1 to 4
points depending on whether he/she met or did not meet the criteria. After
analysis, the results of the locomotor movement and object control phases were
aggregated. These results made it possible to determine the student's level of
motor development.
After the application of the pretest, the recreational games planned
for 12 weeks, such as: pursuit, collaborative, traditional-popular and
pre-sports games, intervened through the playful, motivating and creative
attitude of the teacher during class hours, in order to verify the improvement
in the development of motor skills by means of the post-test.
Figure 1. Graph of the
implemented procedure.
RESULTS
Results of the application of the "3JS" test in 160
students between 6 and 9 years old belonging to the elementary basic sub-level,
developed during 12 weeks with the theme "the game and playing" with
the application of recreational games planned based on the items to be
evaluated in the post-test.
|
Nivel
de desarrollo motor
|
|
Items
to evaluate
|
Vertical
jump
|
Turning
l
|
Running
|
Throwing
|
Precision
Hitting
|
Bounce
|
Driving
|
Total
|
Range
|
|
Body
control
|
Object control
|
|
|
|
26–
28
|
2
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
13
|
Very
Good
|
|
23–
25
|
11
|
7
|
13
|
4
|
4
|
6
|
6
|
51
|
Good
|
|
18-
20
|
11
|
6
|
17
|
8
|
7
|
7
|
6
|
62
|
Average
|
|
16-18
|
3
|
3
|
4
|
4
|
3
|
2
|
2
|
21
|
Poor
|
|
7–
15
|
1
|
0
|
3
|
3
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
13
|
Very
Poor
|
|
Total
|
160
|
|
Tabla 2. Pre-test results 3JS Locomotor and projection skills.
Table 2 shows the results of the application of 7 skills in the
pretest, and it can be observed that, among all the children, 8.7% were in the
very high range of motor development and object control, while 21.3% of the
children were in the lower ranges of the table, while the majority of the
students were at a normal level for their age and development.
Based on the results found, a guide of activities was applied,
related to playful games with creativity and imagination of the teacher; by
executing the playful activities three days a week for 12 weeks, the 3JS
posttest was applied, where the following results were reached.
|
Nivel de desarrollo motor
|
|
I Items to evaluate
|
Vertical jump
|
Turning
l
|
Running
|
Throwing
|
Precision Hitting
|
Bounce
|
Driving
|
Total
|
Range
|
|
Body control
|
Object control
|
|
|
|
26– 28
|
11
|
9
|
16
|
9
|
9
|
8
|
7
|
69
|
Very Good
|
|
23– 25
|
9
|
5
|
15
|
6
|
7
|
6
|
5
|
53
|
Good
|
|
18- 20
|
5
|
1
|
9
|
3
|
3
|
4
|
3
|
28
|
Average
|
|
16-18
|
1
|
0
|
3
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
8
|
Poor
|
|
7– 15
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
Very
Poor
|
|
Total
|
160
|
|
Tabla 3. Post-test results 3JS Locomotor and projection skills.
Table 3 shows the number of subjects who qualified descriptively
based on motor and object control in the follow-up, which showed that 76.2% of
the students were located within the highest ranges. Poor and very poor levels
according to the results obtained, 6.3% of the students are in the two lowest
levels of motor development, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the
playful attitude, the game to learn and have fun.
Correlation between study variables
To decide which test to use in the existing correlation between
variables, it is necessary to determine the level of normality distribution of
the statistical data, for this the Kolmogorov - Smirnov normality test was
used, since the sample was > 50, obtaining as results a significant value P=
< 0.001, based on these results, a Kendall's Tau-b non-parametric
correlation test was used to measure the level of correlation of the study
variables.
|
|
Kolmogorov-Smirnova
|
|
Statistic
|
gl
|
Sig.
|
|
Motor development
|
,378
|
160
|
<,001
|
|
Playful attitude
|
,327
|
160
|
<,001
|
Tabla 4. Kolmogorov - Smirnov Normality Test.
For the verification of the correlation of variables, Kendall's
Tau-b cross table was used, for which 3 high, medium and low levels were used
according to the results obtained in the 3JS pre- and post-test.
|
Interval
|
Category
|
|
De 0.00 a 0.19
|
Very low correlation
|
|
De 0.20 a 0.39
|
Low correlation
|
|
De 0.40 a 0.59
|
Moderate correlation
|
|
De 0.60 a 0.79
|
Good correlation
|
|
De 0.80 a 1.00
|
Very good correlation
|
Tabla 5. Interpretation of
the value of "Tau-b Kendall".
|
Symmetrical
measurements
|
|
|
Value
|
Standard error asymptotic
|
T approximate
|
Significance
|
|
Ordinal by ordinal
|
Tau-b de Kendall
|
,780
|
,019
|
18,063
|
<,001
|
|
N of valid cases
|
320
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tabla 6. Results correlation
"Tau-b Kendall".
When applying Kendall's Tau-b test, a value of 0.78 was obtained,
which indicates a good correlation between variables and an associated value of
p <.001, therefore, it is significant, which indicates that the playful
attitude has an impact on locomotor development in children from 6 to 9 years
old at the "Rafael Cruz Cevallos" School in the city of Quito,
province of Pichincha.
DISCUSSION
When talking about the contribution of the playful attitude of the
physical education teacher in the locomotor development of children, one can
deduce the importance of play in the learning process, where it is not only
about having fun, but also about creating opportunities for students to explore
and discover new concepts in a pleasant and fun way, as Arufe (Arufe, 2020)
explains. A playful attitude can also help create a positive classroom culture,
where students feel comfortable taking risks and creatively expressing
information. Encouraging creativity and imagination is another effective
strategy to develop a playful attitude in teaching. In addition (Castillero,
2018) notes that creativity can help teachers better understand what students
may be thinking or feeling and can also help students develop critical thinking
skills. In turn (Galiano, 2023) states that it is important for teachers to be
flexible and adaptable in their teaching approach, incorporating playful
activities that adapt to the diverse learning styles and needs of their
students.
The analysis of the 3JS test results show that most students are
within the very good, good and normal range as a level of motor development,
due to the motivation, guidance and creativity that the teacher applies in
(running, jumping, turning, throwing, kicking, driving and booting) in a global
way through the game, overcoming various levels of complexity, solving motor
and cognitive problems, as shown by the results of Kendall's Tau-b test, which
states a good correlation of 0.78 between the variables (Sailema, et al; 2017)
agrees that, motor skills are essential that allow the integral development of
the child. These skills range from coordination, flexibility, balance, strength
and endurance. For (Holguín, 2019) it is important that the teacher encourages
the development of these skills through play, ensuring that all play activities
proposed are focused on the development of these skills.
CONCLUSIONS
A fun and motivating learning environment in a playful way leaves
positive traces in the lives of your students and in their integral
development. It also helps to create a climate of trust, respect and
cooperation. It is the teacher's responsibility to create spaces conducive to
play, design motivating and adapted activities and provide the necessary
support so that all students can enjoy and benefit from it.
The 3JS test shows the adequate level of locomotor development and
object control achieved by the children through the application of recreational
activities such as: traditional games, chase games, individual and group games
that allow strengthening their motor skills, such as balance, coordination and
muscular strength.
The application of Kendall's Tau-b test allows us to confirm the
correlation between the established variables r= 0.78, which corresponds to a
degree of good correlation, it also shows that the playful attitude effectively
influences the development of locomotor movement in children from 6 to 9 years
old.
CONTRIBUTION OF
THE AUTHORS
The development of this study is the authorship of each researcher.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful for the support of the Technical University
of Ambato, the Faculty of Human Sciences and Education and the Operative Unit
of Research FCHE.
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