The iPLAY Space and Environment Interventions for Children’s Physical Activity (iPLAYCE) research evaluates the effectiveness of early childhood education and care programs and environmental upgrades to increase young children’s physical activity. If found to be effective, physical activity professional development programs will provide a cost-effective and sustainable strategy for improving children’s physical activity and health while in childcare.
We will evaluate the impact of upgrades to early childhood education and care outdoor spaces, while providing information of the features of outdoor spaces which are used to promote children’s physical activity. We are working with our partners in the early childhood education and care sector to develop a set of practice guidelines for the design of early childhood education and care play spaces which promote physical activity.
We have two main goals within the iPLAYCE Study. The first is to pilot test professional development-based programs previously created by our team to improve early childhood education and care educator knowledge and practices around children’s physical activity. We will look specifically at fundamental movement skills and outdoor-nature based play based programs. Our second goal is, through a series of natural experiments, to evaluate the effect of early childhood education and care centre outdoor space upgrades on educator physical activity and outdoor play practices, and children’s physical activity and outdoor play.
The iPLAYCE study is supported by funding from:
- Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) Exploratory Grant (2016-2018)
- Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) Research Project Grant (2015-2018)
- National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship – Hayley Christian (2016-2020)
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