The Synergistic Effect of Teaching a Combined Explicit Movement
Transcription
The Synergistic Effect of Teaching a Combined Explicit Movement
The Synergistic Effect of Teaching a Combined Explicit Movement and Phonological Awareness Program to Preschool Aged Students Deborah Callcott, Lorraine Hammond & Susan Hill Early Childhood Education Journal ISSN 1082-3301 Early Childhood Educ J DOI 10.1007/s10643-014-0652-7 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media New York. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J DOI 10.1007/s10643-014-0652-7 The Synergistic Effect of Teaching a Combined Explicit Movement and Phonological Awareness Program to Preschool Aged Students Deborah Callcott • Lorraine Hammond Susan Hill • Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract While movement is critical to young children’s development, there is an ongoing debate about the time devoted to teaching movement in early childhood classrooms. Nevertheless, research has established a link between specific precursor motor skills and early literacy development. This study investigated the synergistic effect of practising specific movements through daily actions and songs alongside the explicit teaching of phonological awareness and phonics in 400 preschool children (aged between four and five). Results indicate that students who received the combined intervention of explicit phonological awareness and movement were the only group to perform significantly better than the control group on measures of phonological awareness, invented spelling and spelling. An interesting outcome was that the literacy/movement group and not the movement group made significantly larger gains for the movement measure. These findings suggest that teaching pre-primary aged children early literacy and movement in tandem is more beneficial than teaching either in isolation. Keywords Early childhood Movement Phonological awareness Phonics Spelling Introduction Between the ages of two and six, the opportunity for children to be active and to develop and refine movement skills is central to children’s physical health and development (Callcott et al. 2012; Gabbard 2012; Pica 2010). The D. Callcott (&) L. Hammond S. Hill Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford St, Mt Lawley, Perth, WA 6050, Australia e-mail: [email protected] relationship between movement and cognition—more specifically, literacy skills—is contoversial and there is little current research that investigates this topic. While it is accepted that the ability to read, write and spell equips children with the skills for independent learning, to focus exclusively on the development of literacy skills is to forget that picking up a crayon, cutting with scissors and controlling occular movements in order to read from left to right depends fundamentally on the development of precursor motor skills that control the child’s ability to perform these tasks successfully. There is presently unprecedented attention on the care, development and education of young children in Australia, particularly in the area of literacy. The launch of the skillsbased Australian Curriculum (2012) and Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (2009) has drawn attention to the need to devote more time to the teaching of reading and spelling precursor skills such as phonological awareness and phonics. For early years teachers, the expectations at the Foundation level of the Australian Curriculum represent a departure from what typically has been expected of five year olds in the past. For example, by the end of the Foundation year the English Curriculum stipulates that students will be able to ‘‘read short, predictable texts with familiar vocabulary and supportive images’’ and ‘‘know that spoken sounds and words can be written down using letters of the alphabet and write some high-frequency sight words and known words’’ (Foundation Year Achievement Standard, ACARA, 2012). In order to meet this outcome, literacy instruction has become a priority in early years classrooms. Given this, concerns raised by teachers that they are required to embrace a ‘‘crowded curriculum’’(Emmel and Penney 2010, p. 33) are not ill-founded, with many reporting the ‘push down’ of formal learning to the 123 Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J kindergarten and pre-primary years (Adcock and Patton 2001). With greater emphasis on cognitive skills, the other curriculum areas—including movement (both formal instruction such as in the Physical Education Learning Area and incidental or play based)—have been sidelined in favour of subjects seen as having more influence in lifting national standards, for which schools and teachers are seen as being accountable (Bailey et al. 2009). Gabbard (2000) observed that many administrators acknowledge that movement is important, but express the view that there is limited time in the day to accommodate all that schools have to do. This economic rationalist view of timetabling diminishes the relevance of providing opportunities for movement, but more seriously overlooks the potential detriment that the limitation of movement experiences in the early years can have on the holistic development of the child. We argue that other factors are barriers to early years educators teaching movement. The terminology used to describe movement is complex and includes, for example, motor, movement, sensory-motor and perceptual-motor, the latter commonly used by allied professionals, such as occupational therapists. An understanding of the terms ‘motor’ and ‘movement’ is critical to this study. While the terms are often used interchangeably, ‘‘in its purest sense motor refers to the underlying biological and mechanical factors that influence movement’’ (Gabbard 2012, p. 6). This means motor development results from the interaction of biological processes and the environment and is related to the growth, development and maturation of the child. For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘motor skills’ is used to denote skills that develop as a result of growth, development and maturation. By contrast, ‘movement skill’ is used to denote the outcome of an efficient combination of these skills to produce a desired outcome through instruction and practice. History also bears testament to the range of motor and movement based classroom programs that teachers sometimes have been asked to implement. These include programs that claim to have a neuroscientific basis and to be of assistance for children with educational difficulties, especially ‘learning disabilities’ (Coltheart and McArthur 2012, p. 215), as well as those that teach the movement skills required to play most sports. Recently, in response to evidence of low levels of mastery of fundamental movement skills in primary aged children, Australian researchers Hardy et al. (2010) argued that teaching movement should begin in the early years. However, as Robinsonet al. (2012) observed, many early years teachers are ill-prepared to teach movement effectively and are not allocating time for physical activity in the curriculum. The importance of early movement cannot be overstated. Early movement experiences contribute not only to 123 physical health and well-being (Callcott et al. 2012) but also form the foundation of fundamental movement skills; the platform from which children continue to develop perceptual, cognitive and social skills as well as psychological attributes (Deli et al. 2006; Gallahue and Ozmun, 2006). These skills, best taught in the age range two to six, constitute the precursor movement patterns inherent in more specialised and complex physical skills. Perceptualmotor skills, or sensory-motor skills, are refined through early movement experiences and are defined as the capacity of an individual to utilise the information from the environment to plan and execute motor actions (Allison et al. 2007). Without the ‘‘dextrous grasp and skilled motor control of both hands‘‘ (Allison et al. 2007, p. 50) required to open a lunchbox, tie shoe laces or print letters, it will be difficult for children to interact effectively in a classroom environment and display evidence of their knowledge and understanding in a conventional way, which includes writing. The cerebellum has long been considered as primarily for movement skills and the prefrontal cortex for cognitive skills; however, Diamond (2000) suggests that the cerebellum is not only important for motor functions but for cognitive functions, and the prefrontal cortex ‘‘may play a role in motor function and not simply cognition’’ (p. 44). Others have described this interrelationship between sensory-motor development and cognition as providing the foundation by which motor development is linked to learning (Piek et al. 2008). The cerebellum is also thought to play a part in allowing children to anticipate and control behaviour through the development of ‘executive function’ (Koziol et al. 2012) allowing a child to maintain alertness and attention as well as plan and regulate behaviour. More recently the role of the cerebellum in cognitive functions has been established, particularly in learning new tasks and ‘‘abstract thought’’ (Diamond 2000, p. 519) and there has been interest in the use of movement as a medium for instruction in other learning areas (Dollman et al. 2006). While the physical benefits of movement are well documented, the consequences of denied opportunities to develop sensory and perceptual motor skills through movement exploration are not immediately obvious and difficult to assess ethically. As such, there is a paucity of research in this area on children. Research on the effect of early movement and sensory experience on the developing brains of animals, however, established that animals raised in enriched settings, where movement options through obstacle courses, toys and a treadmill were provided, demonstrated the most significant overall brain development compared to those in restricted and less enriched environments (Jones and Greenough 1996). This has led movement researchers to argue that engagement with a movement-rich and stimulating environment, because of Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J the positive effect of this exposure on brain development, needs to be considered in the link between movement and cognitive development, social activity and communication (Cech and Martin 1995; Piek 2006). Currently, movement programs used in Western Australian (WA) classrooms are, in many cases, derived from the early programs described by Berta and Karel Bobath (see, for example, Ayres 1972; Bobath 1963; Bobath and Bobath 1975; Delacato 1963). These perceptual-motor based programs such as Brain Gym (2006) and Smart Starters (Smart Start with 2002) are designed (as were their perceptual motor-based predecessors) to remediate underlying processes and facilitate academic learning particularly in the area of literacy. Hyatt (2007) reviewed four published studies on the effects of BrainGym, a popular educational program used widely in Australian schools (Stephenson and Wheldall 2008) and concluded that none of the studies were sound and that the program conveys no educational benefits. A further example of this type of program is the Dore program, which was initially promoted in the UK in the late 1990s and subsequently in Australia. The Dore program claimed to benefit those with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Aspergers syndrome (Dore 2006) by building new pathways to the cerebellum to improve cognitive and motor skills (Hall 2007). Costing up to £1900 in some cases (Collins 2005; Woods 2003), the Dore program was unable to substantiate any of the claims made for a cure or even for an improvement (Berg 2010; Stephenson and Wheldall 2008). To summarise, the validity and reliability of research which has attempted to establish the efficacy of perceptualmotor programs (PMP) to improve academic performance, in particular literacy skills, is not favourable. A metaanalysis by Kavale and Mattson (1983) reported that the evidence for the efficacy of perceptual motor programs depended mainly on narratives and case studies. Kaplan et al. (1993) concluded that perceptual motor programs made no significant difference to gross and fine motor skills, reading and mathematics. When considering the use of these programs in literacy development, Hammill (2004) concluded that PMP training would have no benefit for reading. Faced with negative and, at times, controversial reviews of movement programs, uncertainity about how to teach motor skills and the competing demands from other curriculum areas, it is not surprising that, ‘the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater’ with respect to teaching movement. As Morgan and Hansen (2007) observe, the end result is limited importance placed on providing movement based opportunities in the early childhood setting by teachers, or, worse still, a complete lack of developmentally appropriate and educative experiences being provided to students (Morgan and Hansen 2007). To address this situation we propose a daily classroom based movement program that, in the first instance, is practical for teachers to implement and will support young children’s physical, social and cognitive development. Second, we hypothesise that teaching specific movements to systematically practise and refine the motor skills that underpin the movement requirements of reading and writing will advantage pre-primary aged children, if taught alongside explicit instruction in precursor literacy skills. We base this hypothesis on the mounting evidence of a strong association between physical activity in a broad sense and cognitive ability as measured by the ‘‘perceptual skills, intelligence quotient, achievement, verbal tests, maths tests, developmental level and academic readiness of young people’’ (Sattelmair and Ratey 2009, p. 367). With respect to teaching movement that specifically targets those motor skills required for early literacy development, we conducted a review of the research literature and could find no research investigating teaching movement in isolation or in combination with early literacy precursors to achieve improved literacy outcomes. Compared to teaching movement, the teaching of literacy has always been regarded as a core part of any early years classroom. In the context of this study, reading is defined as the ability to decode, recognise and draw meaning from the printed word. This skill initially depends on children learning exactly how the written code relates to the spoken language they use to communicate each day. Spelling, the encoding of speech to writing, relies on much of the same underlying knowledge as decoding: understanding the relationships between letters and sounds (Moats 2005). Phonological awareness is the ability to detect, manipulate, or analyse the auditory aspects of spoken language (including the ability to distinguish or segment words, syllables, or phonemes), independent of meaning (National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) 2008, p. 3) and underpins both encoding and decoding words. Researchers have consistently linked deficient phonological awareness, specifically phoneme awareness, in kindergarten and the early grades, with poor reading and spelling achievement (National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) 2008; National Reading Panel (NRP) 2000). Phonics, the study of the units of sound in language and their corresponding letters, provides beginning readers and spellers with the skills and knowledge to decode and encode words (Treiman 2006). Weak letter-sound knowledge is another cause of difficulties children encounter trying to translate a printed word into its spoken form (Hulme et al. 2012, p. 576). According to the National Early Literacy Panel report (National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) 2008), measures of children’s alphabet knowledge yielded a strong relation with reading and spelling outcomes. 123 Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J For many Western Australian pre-primary teachers the pressure to teach precursor literacy skills is significant. Movement in our opinion is no less important and just as demanding to teach and allocate time for in an already busy early childhood program. To draw attention to the importance of movement, and its relationship to literacy development in the early years, we undertook to investigate whether pre-primary children who participate in a program comprising of two components: literacy (Let’s Decode); and movement (Moving on with Literacy), would demonstrate superior results in measures of movement and early literacy skills when compared with students receiving literacy only intervention, movement only intervention and a control group receiving no intervention. Mindful of the pressure on teachers to take on additional programs, both components were designed to require minimal preparation in terms of preparation and to be completed in no more than 30 min each day. Method A quasi-experimental design was used for the research. Eight primary schools located in suburbs of Perth with a similar middle to high Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSE) value were approached to participate in this project. We chose not to work in schools in low socio-economic areas to minimise any surrounding variables of disadvantage that may otherwise confound this study. Each school had two classes of pre-primary aged children (five years), with up to 25 children in each. This created a total of 400 children with approximately 100 children per intervention group. We matched schools to the different treatment conditions randomly with the exception of two schools that had previously trialled the literacy intervention, Let’s Decode (Formentin 1992). As each teacher, with the exception of the control group, was required to implement a new approach, the teachers selected to implement both movement and literacy programs were already familiar with Let’s Decode (Formentin 1992). Pre-test measures were completed in the first three weeks of the school year and we conducted professional development sessions for the intervention teachers immediately after. The day long sessions for literacy and for movement followed the same structure with teachers learning about the programs as well as how to deliver them. We demonstrated how to teach each song or literacy format to the teachers, and then demonstrated with a class of preprimary students. We subsequently visited each participating teacher in their classroom to observe them teaching the movement and/or literacy programs and to provide further demonstrations and support. Over the course of the 123 intervention, teachers were visited once per term to monitor for fidelity of implementation. The same procedure was followed for the control groups who received professional development sessions related to the importance of movement and early literacy development but did not receive either or both programs. In the third week of the final term of the school year, the students were retested on the same measures. Combinations of non-standardised and standardised measures were used to gather data and most children completed all measures at pre and post stages. Literacy Measures Test of Phonological Awareness The Test of Phonological Awareness (TOPA) (Torgesen 1994) measures sensitivity to rhyme and phoneme segmentation, two aspects of phonological awareness, and results are reported in standard scores. That the test features a ‘child friendly’ format with pictures and can be administered to groups of young children influenced our choice even though it is not the most contemporary measure of phonological awareness. However, Torgesen (1994) maintains the TOPA meets the requirements of the American Psychological Association and the TOPA yields standard scores that are sensitive to the time of the school year the test is administered. Coefficient alpha was .90 and total score reliability was reported by the authors as .91 (Cronbach’s alpha) by Yopp (1988) and this evidence supports the internal consistency of the TOPA and indicates a high reliability instrument. Developmental Spelling Test The Developmental Spelling Test (DST) (Tangel and Blachman 1995) is a non-standardised measure of invented spelling consisting of ten words dictated in isolation. Unlike spelling measures that require conventional spelling, the words are each scored on a 7 point scale from 0 (random letter string) to 6 (correct spelling), out of a total score of 60 points. The rating scale has been shown to be sensitive to changes in students’ ability to segment words into phonemes and apply orthographic knowledge. The authors reported Pearson correlation r = .999 p\.001 for the agreement of scores between assessors for this version of the DST. Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised: Spelling Subtest The Spelling subtest of the Wide Range Achievement TestRevised (WRAT-R) consists of three parts. First, children copy marks in the form of straight lines, circles and shapes in one minute. These shapes resemble letters and receive a Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J maximum score of 18. Second, children are given an additional minute to write their name. Children do not have to write their complete name; rather correctly writing any two letters in their name receives the maximum two points. A raw score of 20 equates to a ‘high average to average’ standard score for pre-primary aged children and acknowledges the importance of children’s visual motor integration, visual perception and eye-hand co-ordination, precursor motor skills in this test. Finally, the children write words to dictation. As opposed to awarding partial marks for qualitative changes in spelling development, this second spelling measure we chose has a dichotomous scoring system to measure the accuracy of beginning spelling. Jastak and Wilkinson (1984), the authors of the WRATR, reported median coefficients for Spelling range from r = .92 to r = .99, and cited moderate correlations between the California Achievement Test and WRAT-R Spelling. The test-retest reliability of the WRAT–R Spelling relevant to the age of student included in this study was r = .97. Movement ABC-2 Movement ABC (M-ABC) (1992) is one of the most popular instruments in the assessment of children with movement coordination problems (Ruiz et al. 2003). Movement ABC-2 (2007) is a revised and shortened version of the M-ABC and can be used by a variety of professionals including teachers, therapists and paediatricians. According to the M-ABC test manual (Henderson et al. 2007, p. 5), the four primary uses of the Movement ABC-2 assessment are: ‘‘for identification [of children with movement issues], for clinical exploration and intervention planning, for programme evaluation and as a research tool’’. The Movement ABC-2 is a standardised test that requires a child to perform a series of motor tasks in a strictly specified way providing qualitative data on performance in three categories: Manual Dexterity, Aiming and Catching and Balance (Henderson et al. 2007). For the purpose of this research only the MABC-2 standardised test, which involves the child directly, was administered. The second part involves a checklist which requires an adult to subjectively rate the child’s competence. Due to the large sample size and the difficulties in ensuring the validity and reliability in the collection of this information, only the quantitative data based on actual movement performance by each child was considered at this time. The test retest and inter-tester reliability of the initial M-ABC test was established in the UK using 360 children randomly selected from a population of 3,000. In test retest reliability the minimum value at any age was 0.75 and inter-tester correlation was 0.70. Interventions Of the eight schools participating in the research, two received both the Let’s Decode and Moving on with Literacy interventions (from here on referred to as the Lit?Movt group), two received only the Let’s Decode literacy intervention (Literacy group), and two received only the Moving on with Literacy intervention (the Movement group). The interventions were implemented concurrently leaving the final two schools who did not receive either of these interventions (Control group). In all schools, classroom teachers conducted their regular preprimary program, which included physical education and English, over the course of the study. Moving on With Literacy Moving on with Literacy (MowL) is an original program developed by the first author and comprises 30 action songs that a whole class sing and perform together as modelled by a teacher. The engaging action songs provide targeted movement practice that includes fine motor skill practice, eye-tracking, balance, rhythm, cross-lateral movement, gross motor skills, core strength and aerobic capacity and aim to improve overall co-ordination and rhythm. MowL encourages interpersonal skills as there is partner and small group work and the action songs take no longer than 15 min per day to practise. There are 30 songs incorporated in the program, each with its own movement challenge and language, so there are opportunities to challenge students with differing levels of movement in each song and accommodate individual differences. While written instructions are provided during the professional learning, the program does not require any resources, preparation (other than learning the actions and songs), and equipment or parent helpers. The familiar songs can be linked to classroom themes such as zoo animals, space or the circus, for example. Moving on with Literacy was developed to be implemented alongside the explicit teaching of emergent literacy in the pre-primary classroom. Let’s Decode (Formentin, 1992) Let’s Decode is an approach to teaching phonological awareness and systematic decoding instruction that is drawn from instructional formats first published in Direct Instruction Reading (Carnine et al. 1990) and based on the Theory of Instruction (Engleman and Carnine 1991). Teachers implementing Let’s Decode spend approximately 15 min each day explicitly teaching auditory analysis such as concept of word, blending, rhyming and phoneme segmentation, before letter sounds and the strategy of 123 Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J decoding words. Students are active participants during Let’s Decode lessons as there is a high rate of unison oral responding and teachers maintain a brisk pace to minimise interruptions and teach ‘more in less time’. In this study, teachers presented Let’s Decode to the whole class, preferably in the morning; however, the formats can be delivered to small groups and individual students. There is an emphasis on mastery learning and error correction is immediate. Students receive a high level of feedback, have many opportunities to practice particular skills and individual needs can be accommodated by selecting easier or harder examples. The efficacy of ‘structured, systematic, phonic’ approaches like Let’s Decode has been highlighted in influential reports such as the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (2005) and international reports on reading (National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) 2008; National Reading Panel (NRP) 2000; Rose 2006) and investigated locally (Formentin and Hammond 1997; Formentin et al. 1994). In particular, the Australian National Inquiry Committee (2005 p. 14) recommended that teachers provide systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code-breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency. These precursor skills include phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge and the alphabetic principle and are taught explicitly by teachers implementing Let’s Decode (Formentin 1992). Let’s Decode has proven to be a highly effective approach to teaching early literacy because it provides teachers with the instructional language and sequence to teach precursors to reading and spelling. This semi-scripted block of instruction can be included in morning mat sessions and requires no specialist equipment or materials. What has not been considered previously, which is the focus of this research, is the effect of combining Let’s Decode with a movement intervention. Analysis Three different perspectives were employed to analyse the pretest-posttest data: analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for pre-test score differences, univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the gain (difference) scores, and non-parametric analysis of gain scores using the Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U tests. The rationale for this multi-faceted analysis approach arises from two key points: the problem of non-normality with the dependent variables in our data and the debate in the literature regarding appropriate statistical tests to use with pre-test-post-test designs. Various authors (see for example (Dimitrov and Rumrill 2003; Knapp and Schafer 2009; Wright 2006) have argued the merits of gain score analysis 123 versus ANCOVA. A key point of agreement is that the two approaches answer different research questions (Hand 1994; Knapp and Schafer 2009; Maxwell and Delaney 1990; Wright 2006). As Knapp and Schafer (2009 p. 2) have described: ‘For the former, the question is: ‘‘What is the effect of the treatment on the change from pretest to posttest?’’ For the latter the question is: ‘‘What is the effect of the treatment on the posttest that is not predictable from the pretest (i.e., conditional on the pretest)?’’’ This distinction is sometimes subtle, and (Wright 2003, 2006) suggests that it is often advisable to conduct and report both analyses where the researcher is interested in both types of question. We believe that practitioners in particular may be interested in both questions and therefore report both results, as well as the non-parametric analysis of the gain scores as a means of validating the results of the parametric tests. There are several underlying assumptions of the data that should be met before conducting ANOVA and ANCOVA, including independence, normality, homogeneity of variance, and for ANCOVA the additional criteria of linearity and homogeneity of regression slopes. Various texts (for example (Allen and Bennett 2008; Field 2005) have noted that ANOVA and ANCOVA are relatively robust over moderate violations of the normality and homogeneity of variance assumptions, but violations of the linearity and homogeneity of regression slopes are more likely to be problematic. For this research, the four dependent variables were not normally distributed across all four intervention groups and transformation of the data did not satisfactorily resolve the matter. With the exception of the M-ABC test, the dependent variables also violated the assumption of homogeneity of variance. However, the assumptions of linearity and homogeneity of regression slopes were upheld. Since the violation of assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance cast some doubt on the validity of results derived from ANCOVA and gain score analysis, we also report the results of non-parametric tests. Results The means and standard deviations for each group on the pre-test, post-test and gain score are provided in Table 1, along with the main effect significance levels (p values) for the various statistical tests. A ‘visual’ summary of the pairwise significant differences is provided in Table 2. One-way ANOVA on the pre-test scores for each measure found no significant differences between groups at commencement of the research, except on the M-ABC test of conventional spelling (F(3, 288) = 2.966, p = .032). For this, pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni adjustment Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J Table 1 Comparison of groups on the pre-tests, post-tests, and gain scores Measure Group Pre-test n Mean Post-test (SD) Mean Gain score (SD) Adj. mean a Mean (SD) WRAT Lit?Movt 84 95.19 (15.50) 116.83 (20.77) 116.09 21.64 (21.90) Literacy 65 90.37 (25.79) 109.34 (14.05) 109.93 19.17 (21.53) Movement 66 92.64 (17.08) 108.47 (13.74) 108.44 14.92 (20.24) Control 78 91.33 (21.84) 105.45 (13.56) 105.78 14.46 (20.85) .482* p value \.001** .106? .039?? TOPA Lit?Movt 84 10.89 (2.56) 13.19 (2.04) 13.13 2.30 (2.68) Literacy 67 10.34 (3.15) 12.88 (1.90) 13.02 2.54 (2.61) Movement Control 67 79 10.60 10.99 (2.41) (2.78) 11.88 11.99 (2.17) (2.87) 11.93 11.89 1.28 1.00 (2.54) (2.78) .475* p value \.001** \.001? .001?? DST a Adjusted mean post-test scores, controlling for pre-test performance * One-way analysis of variance on pre-test conducted between groups ** Analysis of covariance on post-test conducted between groups, using pre-test as covariate ? One-way analysis on gain score conducted between groups ?? Lit?Movt 85 15.14 (15.14) 42.91 (8.46) 42.89 27.76 (10.18) Literacy 65 14.26 (14.26) 36.83 (10.63) 37.27 22.57 (9.78) Movement 67 14.87 (14.87) 32.99 (10.31) 33.11 18.12 (9.93) Control 77 16.03 (16.03) 28.35 (13.75) 27.89 12.32 (12.77) \.001** \.001? .859* p value \.001?? MABC-2 Lit?Movt 84 10.02 (2.55) 11.39 (2.73) 11.48 1.37 Literacy 63 9.78 (2.74) 10.37 (2.89) 10.53 0.59 (2.75) Movement 61 10.13 (2.53) 10.89 (2.41) 10.94 0.75 (3.05) Control 75 11.13 (2.94) 10.84 (2.25) 10.56 * p value .015 Table 2 Summary of pairwise significant differences for each of the measures and statistical testsa Statistical Test ANCOVA on Post-test (PreTest as Covariate) Measure Relationship between means p valueb WRAT-R L?M [ M L?M [ C .014 \.001 TOPA L?M [ M .003 L?M [ C .001 L?M [ C L[M .013 L[M L[C .006 L?M [ L DST a Groups: L?M Lit?Movt, L Literacy, M Movement, C Control b alpha = .05 c alpha = .008 M-ABC -0.29 ** Non-parametric KruskallWallis test on gain score conducted between groups .056 ANOVA on Gain Scores Relationship between means p valueb (3.26) (2.94) ? .008 .018?? Mann-Whitney U on Gain Scores Relationship between means p valuec L?M [ C .006 .012 L?M [ C .003 .041 L[M .004 L[C .003 L[C .001 .001 L?M [ L .022 L?M [ L .005 L?M [ M \.001 L?M [ M \.001 L?M [ M \.001 L?M [ C \.001 L?M [ C \.001 L?M [ C \.001 L[M .049 L[C \.001 L[C \.001 L[C \.001 M[C .003 M[C .009 M[C .004 L?M [ C .004 L?M [ C .002 123 Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J revealed that, on average, the Control group scored significantly higher at pre-test than the Literacy group (p = .021). WRAT–R As Table 1 illustrates, at post-test the Lit?Movt group performed statistically better, on average, than each of the other groups on the WRAT-R. ANCOVA revealed a significant main effect of the intervention on the children’s performance after controlling for the effect of pre-test performance (F(3, 288) = 6.750, p \ .001). Pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni adjustment showed that the Lit?Movt group performed significantly better than both the Movement (p = .014) and Control (p \ .001) groups. Gain score analysis revealed somewhat mixed results, however. While the Lit?Movt group performed better than other groups, their average gain was only marginally higher than the Literacy group and the main effect of the intervention was not significant. Somewhat surprisingly, the non-parametric equivalent of ANOVA, the Kruskall-Wallis H test, did reveal a significant main effect of the intervention on gain scores (v2(3, N = 291) = 8.318, p = .039). Pairwise comparisons using the Mann-Whitney U test with Bonferonni adjusted alpha levels of .008 per test (.05/6) found that, on average, students in the Lit?Movt group made significantly higher gains (p = .006) than those in the Control group. No other significant differences were found. TOPA The Lit?Movt group’s average post-test performance on phonological awareness was better than each of the other groups. ANCOVA revealed a significant main effect of the intervention after controlling for pre-test differences (F(2, 293) = 5.911, p = .001), and pairwise comparisons (with Bonferroni adjustment) confirmed that students in the Lit?Movt group and the Literacy group, respectively, performed better than their peers in both the Movement (p = .003; p = .013) and Control (p = .001; p = .006) groups. This pattern of results was also largely borne out by the gain score analyses. ANOVA on gain scores showed a significant main effect (F(3, 292) = 8.156, p \ .001) of the intervention, while pairwise comparisons confirmed that the average gain made by the Lit?Movt group was significantly higher than the Control (p = .012) group, and that the average gain made by the Literacy group was significantly higher than both the Movement and Control (p = .041, p = .003) groups, resepctively. The small observed difference in gains for the Lit?Movt and Literacy groups was not statistically significant. 123 The non-parametric analysis of gain scores also found a significant main effect of the intervention (v2 (3, N = 297)=17.584, p = .001). Pairwise comparisons using the Mann-Whitney U test with Bonferroni adjustment of the alpha level (.05/6 = .008) substantiated the significant differences between the Lit?Movt and Control groups (p = .003), the Literacy and Movement groups (p = .004), and Literacy and Control groups (p = .001). DST On the test of invented spelling, the Lit?Movt group performed better, on average, at post-test, than each of the other groups, and also made the highest average gain. ANCOVA revealed a significant main effect for the intervention (F(3, 289) = 40.292, p \ .001) when controlling for pre-test differences. Table 1 shows there was a cascading effect with the Lit ? Movt group performing best, followed in order by the Literacy, Movement and Control groups. Pairwise comparisons found that the observed differences between each group were statistically significant beyond the .05 level. That is, the Lit?Movt group scored significantly higher at post-test than the Literacy (p = .001), Movement (p \ .001) and Control (p \ .001) groups; the Literacy group scored significantly higher than the Movement (p = .049) and Control (p \ .001) groups; and the Movement group scored significantly higher than the Control (p = .003) group. These results were also borne out by the gain score analyses. One-way ANOVA on gain scores showed a significant main effect of the intervention (F(3, 290) = 29.487, p\.001), and pairwise comparisons (with Bonferroni adjustment) showed much the same cascading pattern of results in that the Lit?Movt group made significantly higher average gains than the Literacy (p = .022), Movement (p \ .001) and Control (p \ .001) groups. The Literacy and Movement groups, respectively, also made significantly greater average gains than the Control (p \ .001 and p = .009) group, but the observed difference between the Literacy and Movement group was not significant. Non-parametric analysis of the gain scores also substantiated the observed differences between the intervention groups. The Kruskall-Wallis H test revealed a significant effect of the intervention grouping (v2(3, N = 293)=8.381, p = .039), while paired comparisons using the Mann-Whitney U test with Bonferroni adjustment of the alpha level (.05/6 = .008) confirmed significant differences between the Lit?Movt group and the Literacy (U = 2018.5, p = .005), Movement (U = 1414.5, p\.001) and Control (U = 1093, p \ .001) groups, respectively, and between the Literacy and Control (U = 1290, Author's personal copy Early Childhood Educ J p \ .001) groups, and the Movement and Control (U = 1854, p = .004) groups. M-ABC2 On the M-ABC test of movement skills, students in the Lit ? Movt group performed better at post-test and made the largest average gains than the other groups. Notably, although the Control group started out with significantly higher performance on the pre-test than the other groups, over the course of the year their average performance seemed to decline relative to the changes one would expect due to maturation. ANCOVA on the post-test controlling for pre-test differences approached but did not reach statistical significance (p = .056). However, one-way ANOVA (F(3,279) = 4.044, p = .008) on the gain scores did find significant main effects for the intervention grouping, and pairwise comparisons revealed a significant difference between the Lit?Movt group and the Control group (p = .004). The non-parametric Kruskall-Wallis H test on gain scores confirmed the significant main effect of intervention group (v2 (3, N = 283) = 10.11, p = .018) and pairwise comparisons using Mann-Whitney U confirmed a significant difference between the Lit?Movt and Control groups (U =2257, p = .002). Summary Students who received the Lit?Movt intervention were the only group to perform significantly better than the Control group on three measures - the WRAT-R, DST and TOPA. When accounting for pre-test differences, the Lit?Movt group’s post-test scores were significantly higher than the Movement and Control groups on the WRAT and TOPA, and significantly higher than all three groups (Movement, Literacy, Control) on the DST. As we might expect, the Literacy group also scored significantly higher at post-test than both the Movement and Control groups on the TOPA and DST. In terms of the average gains that students made from pre to post test, only the Lit?Movt group’s gains were significantly higher than the Control on all four measures. For the TOPA and DST, the Literacy and Movement groups also made significant gains as compared to the Control. Interestingly, however, it was only the Lit?Movt group (and not the Movement group) that made significantly bigger gains than the Control for the movement measure (MABC). This finding highlights the possibility of a synergistic relationship between the areas of the brain involved in literacy and movement. Discussion Links between cognition and movement have proven to be a fertile ground for controversy in the past, so we interpret these results conservatively. There does however appear to be significant benefits from combining a specific movement program that targets the precursor motor skills required for early literacy and a strong case for further research in this area to replicate these findings in a different setting. Other studies have highlighted the positive effect of physical activity on physical, social and effective domains (Dollman et al. 2006) and there has been limited persuasive evidence to date to link movement directly with cognitive performance (Bailey et al. 2009). Much of the research on the link between movement and cognition, especially in the area of literacy, has focussed on remediating a perceived ‘deficit’ in underlying perceptualmotor skills. In contrast, the combination of movement and literacy activities reported here were part of the daily classroom program provided to all children. In this case movement was used in conjunction with the explicit teaching of precursor literacy skills appearing to result in an ‘add-on benefit’. In the past there has been a significant emphasis on perceptual-motor development as a core part of the early childhood teaching experience. The ‘readiness’ programs teachers provided in kindergarten and pre-primary included opportunities for children to utilise core movement including skills such as the ability to hold a pencil and write, to use scissors, to display coordination and classroom concentration (McGarrigle and Nelson 2006). Fine and gross motor movement was a key component of ‘readiness’ programs, in particular, in the development of perceptual motor skills; the ability to co-ordinate small and/or large muscle groups to accomplish tasks children visualize themselves doing. The approach of combining explicit phonological awareness and explicit movement experiences together overcomes two of the perceived issues related to the delivery of movement in the early years- finding the time to deliver a movement program and the quality of the content of the program. The movement program reported here takes only 15 min each day, does not require equipment set up and is delivered during the literacy block. It is also scripted for the teacher and set to simple and well known tunes—only requiring the teacher to deliver the program and not to spend time planning it themselves. 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