An assessment of gross motor development of kindergarten pupils at Akyemansa District in the Eastern Region, Ghana

Abstract

Gross motor skills have been shown to influence motor development during childhood stage. The purpose of this study is to assess the gross motor development of kindergarten pupils at Akyemansa district in the Eastern Region, Ghana. Experimental design of pretest-posttest non-equivalent groups’ method was adopted. The sample consists of eighty participants between ages 4 to7years.The participants were selected using simple random, purposive and stratified sampling techniques. Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2; Ulrich, 2000) was used as instrument for data collection. This yielded a reliability of 0.69 and 0.72 respectively. Four research questions were answered. Descriptive statistics of means and standard deviation was used to analyze the data for demographic and research questions. The result showed that children within the kindergarten have established normal development of fundamental motor skills especially in catching (M = 2.80, SD = 1.55). The males showed greater proficiency in the locomotor skills (M = 5.65, SD = 3.03) whiles the females showed a greater proficiency in object control skills. (M = 10.73, SD = 3.31). The findings showed that there was significant differences in the gross motor skills of participants with locomotor skills (t = 17.93, df = 79, P <. 05) and object control skills (t = 24.76, df = 79, P <.05). It was revealed that the object control skills shows a better mean value (M = 9.96) than the locomotor skills (M = 5.40). Thus, was concluded that pupils gross motor skills have developed to some extent, hence need attention. It was recommended that intervention programme should be used by teachers to address the delayed skills. Also school administrators and kindergarten coordinators in the various district education directorates should monitor the pupils’ motor development on regular basis to identify any developmental delays that might exist.