Impact of a Sports Psychology–Based Physical Activity Intervention on Emotional Regulation in Early Childhood Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63561/jhssr.v2i4.1114Keywords:
Physical Activity, Emotional Regulation, Early Childhood Education, Integration, Sports PsychologyAbstract
The study employed The Post-test experimental control-group. Quasi- experimental research design was used in this study where the experimental groups were exposed to Instructor-Led Intervention Blending Play Based Sport Drills and Emotion-Coaching Therapy (ILIBPESD/ECT) were used as intervention while control group was exposed to usual conventional class of poem citation.Pupils in Early Childhood Care centres formed population of the study as simple random sampling technique was adopted in selection of 20 pupils (5-6years) each from 4 ECE centres in Ikeja LGA, of Lagos State to form 80 preschoolers. A researcher designed checklist that contains 20-items on 3 response format of available, partially available and not available was used in data collection. The Emotional Regulation Checklist was also used to observe the sampled population. Data was analyzed using t-test and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). All the hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance. Results revealed statistically significant improvements in emotional-regulation scores for the intervention group with marginal gain in favourable emotional expression and peer conflict resolution. It then concluded that embedding sports-psychology-informed physical activities within early childhood curriculum enhances a better emotional regulation and management mechanism as it recommends that scaling such integrative curricula with teacher training and ongoing fidelity monitoring would go a long way to have stable mental ready learners in classrooms.
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