Views of Parents and School Administrators Regarding Early Childhood Movement Education: A Report from Turkey

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A developmentally appropriate curriculum for preschool children should include emphasis on the affective, cognitive and psychomotor areas. However, the psychomotor area is usually ignored (Ignico, 1994) and many early childhood programs lack attention to movement development in the preschool settings (Flinchum, 1988).

Similarly, in Turkish preschool education system decision making mechanisms such as the Ministry of National Education (MNE), school administrators and parents tend to push for more academic skills and placing less emphasis on movement skills. According to a study by Zembat (2001) in early childhood programs, preschool programs were more stressed on the cognitive domain (43.7%) than social-emotional domain (17.6%), self care (10.1%) and psychomotor domain (9.9%).

Therefore, there is a need to examine the reasons why movement education is disregarded by decision makers (MNE, school administrators, parents, etc). Since parents and school administrators have strong influence on school policies, identifying the views of parents and school administrators about movement education is critical to developing and improving movement education practices.

Stream: Curriculum and Pedagogy; Student Learning, Learner Experiences, Learner Diversity

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

I graduated from Early Childhood Education Department at Middle East Technical University (METU). Then in order to gain more knowledge and experience on movement education, I have had my master studies at the department of Physical Education and Sports (PES) of METU. Also, I started to work as a research assistant at the department. My study is about the early childhood movement education. I wonder about the awareness of the parents and school administrators regarding the importance of movement education in early childhood.

*Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Education and Sport, Middle East Technical University * , *Ankara, Turkey*