Collaboration in the Human Sciences

Assessment of motor performance of children with special educational needs for the design of interventional physical education programs

This poster presents briefly a survey about the motor performance of children with special educational needs (SEN) in order to design developmentally appropriate programs for intervention in physical education. The population of preschool students with SEN of the Prefecture of Achaia, Greece participated in the research. The assessment of motor skills was carried out with the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-Second Edition (PDMS-2). Children’s scores were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative results of the study showed that the level of motor performance of SEN students was lower than conventional development children of the same age. Qualitative results refer to the detection of specific motor difficulties of that population which were related to balance skills, jumping skills, using fingers to make small movements and to handle small objects. Finally, it is emphasized that the results are not representative of the entire population of Greek SEN students and therefore they cannot be generalized. However, they constitute a trend of the motor development of SEN pupils that can be taken into account in order to create interventions for motor improvement.

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