Young children's divergent movement ability: a study revisited

Abstract

The effectiveness of Mosston and Ashworth's [2008. Teaching physical education (1st online ed.). Retrieved September 10, 2010, from http://www.spectrumofteachingstyles.org/ebook] divergent discovery style of teaching on eight-year-old children's critical thinking was explored in this study. The participants (N = 58) were randomly assigned to a treatment group (divergent discovery, n = 29) or a control group (no instruction, n = 29). The same skill themes and movement concepts were taught to the learners in both groups (20 45-minute lessons). Three fundamental movement tasks were employed to measure divergent movement ability (DMA), an aspect of critical thinking, prior to and after instructional intervention. A 2 × 2 (group × gender) analysis of variance on the post-test scores showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups favouring the treatment group (p < 0.041) and no significant gender effect or interactive effect. A separate 2 × 2 (group × test) repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant improvement of DMA for the treatment group (p < 0.001). The study supports certain tenets set forth by Mosston and Ashworth (2008) for the divergent discovery style.

Keywords:

• teaching styles
• critical thinking
• fundamental movement patterns
• spectrum

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sara Ashworth and Frances Cleland for providing him with support on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

Notes

Asking questions and being asked questions are two behaviours that were monitored and checked on the analysis checklist by the observer (Nos. 6 and 9 in Figure 6).

This behaviour was also recorded by the observer (No. 15 in Figure 6).

In the production teaching styles, students are engaged in cognitive operations such as problem solving, inventing, comparing, contrasting, and synthesising. The class climate favours patience, tolerance, and individual cognitive and emotional differences. Feedback refers to the production of divergent responses; not to any individual or set of ideas (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008).