BRAINballs Program Improves the Gross Motor Skills of Primary School Pupils in Vietnam

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the BRAINballs program on second graders’ gross motor skills in a primary school in Vietnam. A total of 55 students (23 boys and 32 girls) aged seven years participated in the study. The research used the method of a pedagogical experiment and parallel group technique (experimental and control group) with pre- and post-testing. The study was conducted in the school year 2019/2020. The gross motor skills performance was assessed by the Test of Gross Motor Development—2nd Edition. The BRAINballs program was conducted twice a week and combined physical activity with subject-related contents by means of a set of 100 balls with painted letters, numbers, and signs. The results showed that the experimental and control groups improved their motor skills after one school year (p < 0.001). However, the analysis of covariance demonstrated that students from the experimental group, compared to students from the control group, showed significantly better scores in both subtests: locomotor (p = 0.0000) and object control skills (p = 0.0000). The findings of this study show that the BRAINballs program had a positive effect on children’s motor performances and may help to better understand the development of basic motor skills of seven-year-old students in Vietnam.

Everyone Can Implement Eduball in Physical Education to Develop Cognitive and Motor Skills in Primary School Students

“…In the experimental groups, two of them were enhanced with Eduball (as such, 68 units of Eduball were taught). As in our previous Eduball-experiments [15][16][17][18], in the control group, all PE classes (102 units) were held without Eduball and followed the standard PE program. Thus, the teacher of C conducted the PE program in accordance with the aims and objectives of the school's program for developing physical fitness and health education.…”

“…As in the previous Eduball-experiments [15][16][17][18], various games from the Eduballset [13,14] (see also supplementary materials from our recent Eduball-papers [15,16]) were incorporated into the PE classes' scenarios. All games were adapted by the teachers conducting the classes (with the help of our team).…”

“…Numerous studies [6][7][8][9][10][11] confirm that such an approach stimulates not only physical and health literacy or movement proficiency but also cognitive and social skills and, consequently, influences children's academic achievements (see also [12]). For example, in several experiments [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], it has been found that participation in PE with Eduball, i.e., a method that uses educational balls with printed letters, numbers, and other signs, improves children's gross motor and graphomotor skills, while simultaneously developing their mathematical competencies, as well as reading and writing abilities. Therefore, the Eduball method is used in hundreds of schools in Europe, the United States [15,16], and Asia [17].…”

“…For example, in several experiments [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], it has been found that participation in PE with Eduball, i.e., a method that uses educational balls with printed letters, numbers, and other signs, improves children's gross motor and graphomotor skills, while simultaneously developing their mathematical competencies, as well as reading and writing abilities. Therefore, the Eduball method is used in hundreds of schools in Europe, the United States [15,16], and Asia [17]. However, a key question is who should conduct such classes (Eduball-based or based on other methods integrating PE with cognitive tasks) to make them most effective.…”

“…Nonetheless, there are numerous obstacles (for example, institutional or financial) to implementing such a collaborative approach in primary schools [22,[25][26][27]. Finally, in our previous Eduballexperiments, whether PE classes were led by CT [15,18] or by PET [16,17], children from the experimental group significantly improved their academic and/or motor skills more than students from the control group. Nevertheless, the effects of these approaches have never been compared in one experiment.…”