Learning Environments In Physical Education And The Motivation In The Early Childhood

Learning environments are understood as a studied organization of spaces and materials, which favours the emergence of spontaneous patterns or motor skills. In this way, students build their own learning, solving problems that... [ view full abstract ]

Learning environments are understood as a studied organization of spaces and materials, which favours the emergence of spontaneous patterns or motor skills. In this way, students build their own learning, solving problems that may arise when interacting with their peers in an environment where the group sets the rules. In this case, the teacher has a secondary role, facilitating learning through the organisation of spaces and the reorientation of behaviours (Jurado, Aguilera, Calvo, Franco & García, 2006). This trend favours a free and active participation among the students (Blández, 2000), and we understand that it is a way to enhance creativity and autonomous work, avoiding reproductive work, so little useful in early childhood. In addition, with the creation of this environments, students are given the possibility of choosing tasks and activities, to control the time and space, and organizing on their own way, which increases their autonomy and therefore, their motivation (Deci & Ryan 1985, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Vallerand, 2007).The proposed objective sought to determine the level of enjoyment of students depending on whether the physical education activities were developed through a traditional approach, based on direct instruction, or whether those sessions were developed through the proposal of learning environments, previously designed by students of Castilla-La Mancha University. The sample was composed by 100 children 4 and 5 years of age from an educational centre, intentionally selected. The instruments used in the data collection were two. A record of observation to score the behaviour of the students based on the created environments, and another instrument called "smilyometer" in which the students’ enjoyment was recorded after each session. The data after the descriptive analysis showed that while the motor skills are developed with both approaches, the enjoyment of students was greater in the sessions organized by learning environments.