Analysis of opinion of parents and teachers on outdoor physical activities

The aim of the thesis is to establish how often kindergartens organise conducted physical activities outdoors and analyse the opinion of parents and pre-school teachers on the significance of mastering physical activities for successful work with pre-school children. The thesis is based on both Slovenian and foreign literature dealing with the importance of outdoor physical activities, on contemporary research examining the influence of outdoor physical activities on the child's integral development and the role of the parents and teachers in the process. The analysis of the results provided by contemporary research indicates that teachers are relatively poorly trained to conduct outdoor physical activities. To this end, the thesis intends to: examine the general opinion of the teachers and parents on outdoor physical activities; establish whether the teachers are properly trained to conduct such activities; and determine their assessment of both the significance of training and mastering physical activities for successful work with pre-school children. In addition, the thesis aims to ascertain their opinion on the type of training that teachers should receive during their studies and the quantity, quality and type of outdoor physical activities conducted with children. The sample of respondents included eight teachers and 56 parents of children attending two kindergartens in Ljubljana. We randomly selected four teachers working in the Hans Christian Andersen kindergarten and four teachers from the second kindergarten. A total of 23 randomly selected parents (43.4%) had their child attending the Hans Christian Andersen kindergarten, while 30 (56.6%) parents had their child attending the second kindergarten. Three parents (5.4%) refused to divulge which kindergarten their child was attending and were thus left out of further analysis. The average age of children attending the Hans Christian Andersen kindergarten was 3.5 years, with standard deviation of 1.46. As for the second kindergarten, the average age of the children was 4.18 years, with standard deviation of 1.26. The average age of all the children was 3.7 years, with standard deviation of 1.45. Two questionnaires were designed, one for the parents and one for the teachers. The questionnaire intended for the parents comprised five broader close-ended questions, with the first two questions relating to the parents and the children, and the remaining three questions with the parents' opinion on the importance of outdoor physical activities and the significance of competence of teachers conducting outdoor activities. The questionnaire intended for the teachers consisted of six broader close-ended questions, with the first three questions dealing with the teachers' physical activity and the frequency of conducted physical activities outdoors. The remaining three questions were similar to the second section of the questionnaire for the parents. The questionnaires were distributed and completed in May 2011. The teachers, who took part voluntarily, were given closed envelopes containing the questionnaire. They submitted their enveloped questionnaire on the same day one week later, placing them into a special box. The parents received and submitted the questionnaire in the same way. Out of 140 questionnaires distributed to the parents, 56 were returned completed. The data was processed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The frequency of individual answers was calculated with subprogram FREQUENCIES, while descriptive statistics was calculated with subprogram DESCRIPTIVES. Subprogram CROSSTABS was used to evaluate relation between ordinal and nominal variables, while numeral variables were analysed with a T-TEST. Statistical significance was tested at 5% risk (p 0,05). The analysis of the results suggests that those parents whose children attended the Hans Christian Andersen kindergarten attached greater importance to mastering physical activities for successful work with pre-school children than the parents of the children attending the second kindergarten. The differences are noticeable, but statistically insignificant. We have established that teachers relatively rarely conduct outdoor physical activities, such as ball games, walks, hiking, roller skating, cycling, etc. We presume that the teachers' subjective theories and their personal activity have great influence in this respect