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Background: Nurturing physical literacy in young children offers a unique opportunity to address global physical inactivity trend. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) environments, with their extensive reach into this age group, and early childhood educators, through their daily interactions with children, are strategically positioned to influence children's physical literacy development. However, enhancing educators' ability to foster physical literacy requires valid and reliable assessment tools to measure holistic physical literacy constructs (i.e., cognitive, affective, behavioral) to assess the impact of physical literacy educational interventions. Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop a holistic digital tool to measure physical literacy knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behaviors of early childhood educators (PLKASB-ECE) for both their professional teaching context as well as the educator's own personal physical literacy behaviours. Methods: This study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 involved item generation and content validation. Phase 2 employed a cross-sectional validation study design to assess the psychometric properties of the PLKASB-ECE tool. Results: Based on a literature review an initial 19-item instrument was developed that subsequently underwent three rounds of expert content validation. Six additional items were added, resulting in a final 25-item self-report measure with a readability score equivalent to an 8th grade reading level (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.7). This included 1 global rating item, 2 qualitative response items, 7 knowledge items, and 15 items addressing physical literacy attitudes, self-efficacy and behaviors using a 7-point Likert response scale. The PLKASB-ECE tool was administered to 470 educators in Alberta, Canada between 2019 to 2022. The 15 items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis and resulted in a five-factor scale with one item not loading. The five-factor scale held with the final 14 items with loadings ranging from 0.481 to 0.886, Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.70 to 0.82, with ordinal omega ranging from 0.72 to 0.82. Usability, as assessed by completion time, was 8.15 minutes. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate good indices of reliability and validity for the PLKASB-ECE tool. This tool will be valuable as a research outcome measure for assessing educational interventions aimed at enhancing educators' understanding, confidence, and strategies for fostering holistic concepts of physical literacy in young children within ECECs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a variety of definitions persist, a common definition of physical literacy is that it encompasses the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities over the lifespan. While this perspective to physical literacy is broad, a great deal of curricular outcomes still focus on the physical competence, knowledge and understanding aspects of the framework leaving a gap in the holistic nature of the construct. This scoping review explores the construct of physical literacy within post‐secondary education, focusing on how social and emotional dimensions are integrated in teaching, delivery and assessment. This scoping review followed PRISMA‐ScR guidelines. Five online databases were used to identify papers published that used physical literacy in combination with post‐secondary as the educational setting with a focus on curriculum. The findings underscore a substantial gap in the literature. It was identified that the physical aspects of physical literacy were predominant with limited attention to the social and emotional domains. The gap implies that the comprehensive construct of physical literacy, which encompasses non‐physical facets, is often omitted in post‐secondary curricula. The review highlights an unexplored opportunity for post‐secondary institutions to intentionally construct more comprehensive physical literacy programmes. By incorporating social and emotional dimensions into these programmes, students gain a more holistic understanding of physical literacy. Subsequent research can delve into effective integration strategies and the potential benefits of such an approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL) accurately and reliably assesses the physical literacy level of young children. However, in preliminary analyses ceiling effects were noted among 183 older children. The purposes of this study were to assess the validity of a modified CAPL designed for older children (CAPL 789) and to offer descriptive results. Methods: CAPL 789 assessed the physical literacy of Canadian children in grades 7–9. Data were collected from schools and recreation facilities in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario (Canada), yielding a new sample of 245 participants (129 girls, 13.7 ± 0.9 years). Descriptive statistics were calculated for all CAPL domains. Age and gender effects were examined to support the validity. Results: Physical competence score (/32) increased with age (F = 4.90, p < 0.05), the means in grades 7–9 being 18.9 ± 3.2, 20.9 ± 4.4 and 21.2 ± 3.4, respectively. Girls scored significantly higher (t = −2.29, p < 0.05) than boys (6.6 ± 1.2 vs 6.3 ± 1.3) in the knowledge assessment (/10). Conclusion: The CAPL 789 was feasible among children from grades 7–9. Additional research is required to establish the psychometric properties in children 12 to 16 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recreation sector is perfectly suited to specifically address issues surrounding the desire to be physically active. This is because of recreation's connection to the community, the broad spectrum of its consumers and its ability to address the positive health outcomes of an active lifestyle as it relates to the physical, social, emotional and cognitive domains of wellbeing. To do so appropriately, a guiding framework is necessary; however, one does not currently exist for the recreation sector. As such, we are creating a multi-layered functional physical literacy (FPL) framework to suit the needs of recreation programmers, instructors and parents, to ensure the delivery of high quality programs that are developmentally appropriate. The FPL framework is intended to be a catalyst for any recreation service provider wanting to build an evidence-based physical activity (PA) program with a developmentally appropriate scope and sequence. The FPL framework will complement existing provincial education and sport curricula so that recreation programming supports what children learn in these areas. This recreation-centered contribution will maximize the reach of PL education for the purpose of increasing PA. The FPL framework will be designed for parents and recreation leaders who play a role in helping children and youth lead active lifestyles outside of school and organized sport settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the assessment of the behaviours and attitudes of children and youth towards physical activity using two tools based on the self- determination theory framework. It cites the results from the Basic Psychological Needs in Physical Education Scale (BPN-PE) and the Revised Perceived Locus of Causality Scale (PLOC-R). It also notes that physical educators can use the data to modify programs and boost students' intrinsic motivation to participate and adopt an active lifestyle.