Motor development in school-aged children

The present study aims to investigate the influence of structured physical activity (SPA) and unstructured physical activity (UPA) environments on the development of locomotor skills in primary school children. The sample consisted of 148 pupils (mean age = 8.7 ± 0.7 years; 77 girls and 71 boys) attending the third and fourth grades of a primary school located in a rural municipality in southern Italy. Motor skills were assessed by means of the locomotion subtest of the Test of Gross Motor Development – Third Edition (TGMD-3). The results show that 86.5 % of the participants (n = 128) engage in UPA during their leisure time. The mean scaled score for the entire sample was 8.23 points (± 2.68), with 64.2 % of the pupils falling within the “Average” level. Children who participate in SPA obtained significantly higher scores than their peers who do not practise structured activity: 8.64 (± 2.74) vs 7.73 (± 2.53) points; p = .038; Cohen’s d = 0.34. Multifactorial analysis confirmed a positive main effect of SPA but did not reveal significant interactions between SPA and UPA. Although the data confirm the influence of structured activity on locomotion test outcomes, the non-significance of UPA may be attributable to the characteristics of the subtest items, as these tasks are widespread in sporting practice. The findings highlight the role of rural contexts in promoting unstructured physical activity among school-age children and the contribution of structured physical activity to the development of motor skills. Future research should consider enlarging the sample, including the object-control subtest of the TGMD-3, and further exploring the qualitative relationships between SPA, UPA, and motor development.