Young children's divergent movement ability: a study revisited

The effectiveness of Mosston and Ashworth's [2008. Teaching physical education (1st online ed.). Retrieved September 10, 2010, from http://www.spectrumofteachingstyles.org/ebook] divergent discovery style of teaching on eight-year-old children's critical thinking was explored in this study. The participants (N = 58) were randomly assigned to a treatment group (divergent discovery, n = 29) or a control group (no instruction, n = 29). The same skill themes and movement concepts were taught to the learners in both groups (20 45-minute lessons). Three fundamental movement tasks were employed to measure divergent movement ability (DMA), an aspect of critical thinking, prior to and after instructional intervention. A 2 × 2 (group × gender) analysis of variance on the post-test scores showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups favouring the treatment group (p < 0.041) and no significant gender effect or interactive effect. A separate 2 × 2 (group × test) repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant improvement of DMA for the treatment group (p < 0.001). The study supports certain tenets set forth by Mosston and Ashworth (2008) for the divergent discovery style.