Today's preschoolers are facing a secular decline with their motor development. Intervention, via physical education in preschool, can be effective to remediate gross motor delays. Teachers need ongoing support in order to intervene. If teachers intervene, children may be placed onto a positive developmental trajectory towards lifespan health. Children's gains in gross motor can transcend into other domains of development. Thus, the author urges early childhood policymakers to strongly consider hiring a licensed physical educator to implement daily physical education to preschoolers to maximize positive developmental trajectories of health. If these policy changes do not occur, children may continue on their secular decline with deleterious consequences across multiple developmental domains and school readiness.
TopWhat Is Motor Development?
Motor development begins at birth and ends at death. According to Clark and Whitall (1989), motor development refers to the “changes in motor behavior over the lifespan and the processes which underlie these changes and the factors that affect them,” p. 194. Motor development is the result of how individuals experience different tasks within their particular environment across time (Goodway, Gallahue, & Ozmun, 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019; Newell, 1986). From this perspective, every individuals’ motor development journal is unique. All people function and change across time differently. Therefore, motor development is age-related, not age-dependent.
Motor refers to the biological and mechanical factors (which are not observable) that affect observable movement outcomes (Goodway et al., 2019). Psychomotor skills require a combination of cognitive, biological, and mechanical factors to create a desired movement in response to environmental stimuli (Haywood & Getchell, 2019). Psychomotor skills are movements that are activated purposefully through the mind or thinking. Psychomotor skills are in contrast to motor skills, such as reflexes, which are made possible through the firing of neurons without conscious thought (Haywood & Getchell, 2019). Psychomotor skills can be divided into gross motor and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills require the use of major muscles and groups of muscles while fine motor skills only include small movements from the fingers, toes, lips, or tongue (Goodway et al., 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019). The focus of this chapter will be on gross motor skill development.
Gross motor skills include three categories of skills: stability, locomotor, and manipulative skills. Stability skills, such as bending, twisting, curling, and maintaining balance in one space, support the body’s movement within a fixed place in space (Goodway et al., 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019). Stability skills support movement within on place in space (statically) also movements that occurs across space or dynamically (Goodway et al., 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019). Movements that are dynamic and occur across space must also include locomotor skills along with stability skills. Locomotor skills (e.g., running, skipping, galloping, jumping, hopping, etc.) transport the body, via movement, from one place in space to another (Goodway et al., 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019). In contrast, object control skills, which are also known as ball skills or manipulative skills, include kicking a ball, catching an object, throwing a ball, striking an object with an implement or with a body part, and others (Goodway et al., 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019). Manipulative skills can involve object propulsion (such as a throw), reception (catching), or both (striking a moving object). Manipulative skills must include the control of objects with an external part of the body such as the hands or the feet (Goodway et al., 2019; Haywood & Getchell, 2019).
As stated earlier, motor development is age-related not age-dependent. This age-related concept of development is contrary to the misconception that motor development occurs through the natural passing of developmental time (Brian et al., 2019). In fact, gross motor development occurs via the dynamic, transactional interactions among the individual and the tasks they complete in a positive, safe, and supportive environment (Gagen & Getchell, 2006; Haywood & Getchell, 2019; Newell, 1986). If children do not experience tasks in a safe environment, then they run the risk of stymied and possibly arrested development (Brian et al., 2019).