by Lynne M. Z. Lafave, Nadine Van Wyk, Alexis D. Webster, Joyce Hayek, Mark R. Lafave
BackgroundNurturing physical literacy in young children offers a unique opportunity to address global physical inactivity trend. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) environments, with their extensive reach into this age group, and early childhood educators, through their daily interactions with children, are strategically positioned to influence children’s physical literacy development. However, enhancing educators’ ability to foster physical literacy requires valid and reliable assessment tools to measure holistic physical literacy constructs (i.e., cognitive, affective, behavioral) to assess the impact of physical literacy educational interventions.
ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to develop a holistic digital tool to measure physical literacy knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behaviors of early childhood educators (PLKASB-ECE) for both their professional teaching context as well as the educator’s own personal physical literacy behaviours.
MethodsThis study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 involved item generation and content validation. Phase 2 employed a cross-sectional validation study design to assess the psychometric properties of the PLKASB-ECE tool.
ResultsBased on a literature review an initial 19-item instrument was developed that subsequently underwent three rounds of expert content validation. Six additional items were added, resulting in a final 25-item self-report measure with a readability score equivalent to an 8th grade reading level (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.7). This included 1 global rating item, 2 qualitative response items, 7 knowledge items, and 15 items addressing physical literacy attitudes, self-efficacy and behaviors using a 7-point Likert response scale. The PLKASB-ECE tool was administered to 470 educators in Alberta, Canada between 2019 to 2022. The 15 items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis and resulted in a five-factor scale with one item not loading. The five-factor scale held with the final 14 items with loadings ranging from 0.481 to 0.886, Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.70 to 0.82, with ordinal omega ranging from 0.72 to 0.82. Usability, as assessed by completion time, was 8.15 minutes.
ConclusionThese findings demonstrate good indices of reliability and validity for the PLKASB-ECE tool. This tool will be valuable as a research outcome measure for assessing educational interventions aimed at enhancing educators’ understanding, confidence, and strategies for fostering holistic concepts of physical literacy in young children within ECECs.
