Abstract

Physical activity plays an important role in childhood development and is associated with positive health, social, emotional, and academic benefits. Despite this, children are often sedentary for most of their school day and fail to meet daily activity recommendations. Incorporating physical activity breaks into the classroom can achieve many positive outcomes, however has not been widely adopted. This study used the diffusion of innovation theory as a framework to examine teacher perceptions of barriers and facilitators to incorporating physical activity breaks into their elementary classrooms. Teachers perceived compatibility with teaching philosophy and observability of benefits to most students as strong facilitators. They struggled to reconcile relative advantage and trailability, primarily due to classroom management issues associated with just a few students. Lack of complexity facilitated implementation, however upper grade teachers felt a strong need to connect activity to academics which threatened complexity. The authors conclude with recommendations to increase adoption.

摘要

体力活动在儿童发展中起着重要作用，并与健康，社会，情感和学业方面的益处相关。尽管如此，孩子们在上学的大部分时间通常都是久坐不动的，无法满足日常活动的建议。将体育活动融入课堂可以取得许多积极成果，但是尚未得到广泛采用。这项研究使用创新理论的扩散作为框架来检验教师对障碍的理解，以及促进者将体育活动融入他们的基本课堂。教师认为与教学理念的兼容性以及对大多数学生作为强大促进者的可观察性的好处。他们努力调和相对优势和可追溯性，主要是由于与少数学生相关的课堂管理问题。缺乏复杂性促进了实施，但是高年级老师感到强烈需要将活动与威胁复杂性的学者联系起来。作者最后提出了增加采用率的建议。