Importance of Active Breaks in Early Childhood Education: A Proposal Intervention

Introduction

Avoiding unidimensional and exclusively biological conceptions, the concept of Health has a complex and multidimensional nature in the individual. We are not only a physical reality, but we also feel, think and interact with others. In the last century, the Worlds Health Organization (WHO, 2014) integrated this multidimensional reality by defining health as a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not just the absence of disease.

In this way, childhood cognition is an important predictor of physical and mental health across the lifespan (Diamond, 2013). Academic achievement is one way of measuring cognition in children, and interest in this outcome has grown rapidly in recent years due to its relevance to the school settings and educational policies (Donnelly et al., 2016). Schools have received mounting pressure to increase the time devoted to core subjects (language, maths and science), and consequently, a decreased time has been allotted to other subjects such as physical education, arts and music.

The research has proved that physical activity (PA) is one of the most influencing aspects on health, as it may provide not only physiological benefits (Janssen and LeBlanc, 2010), but also psychological benefits (Brown et al. 2013) related to mental health (Penedo and Dahn, 2005), including depression, anxiety, executive function (Diamond, 2015), psychological well-being (McMahon et al., 2017), body satisfaction (Campbell and Hausenblas, 2009) or the same self-concept (Liu, Wu and Ming, 2015). Likewise, studies during the last years have reported how PA is also related to cognitive (Álvarez-Bueno et al., 2017) and academic achievement (Fedewa and Ahn, 2011).

Academic achievement is defined as the extent to which a student has achieved their educational goals (Donnelly et al., 2016), and it is commonly measured by grade point average or standardized tests (Steinmayr et al., 2017). High academic achievement is considered a key aspect of later development, predicting occupational and social success across the life course, whereas low academic achievement is linked with leaving school and facing health problems (Freudenberg and Ruglis, 2007).

Physical fitness is positively associated with academic achievement (Chomitz, 2009; Van Dusen, 2011). Previous studies have shown that children with higher levels of fitness (particularly cardiorespiratory fitness, CRF) have better academic results than their unfit peers (Chomitz, 2009; Donnelly et al., 2016; Scott, 2017). Similarly, higher levels of CRF are related to a positive effect on cognitive functioning in children (Chaddock et al., 2011; Donnelly et al., 2016). However, the degree to which executive functions may modify, mediate, or confound the association between CRF and academic achievement in children is uncertain.

Fhoremore the WHO (2018), have reveled that 84% of girls and 78% of boys (11 – 17 years old) do not achieve the physical Activity recommendations (WHO, 2010), that is 60 minutes of PA moderate or vigorous each day (PAMV). Among the different proposals to increase PA levels and achieve these recommendations are active breaks (DAs), which consist of short periods of PA (Martínez-López, De la Torre-Cruz and Ruiz-Ariza, 2018) that are integrated into school schedule and offer to students higher levels of daily PA without excessively reducing their learning time (Wilson et al., 2015).

The literature has shown that PA is positively related to academic performance, as well as neurophysiological changes in the brain (Bastos et al., 2015). Thus, some studies have shown that habitual or increased practice of PA in schools is associated with cognitive performance (Donnelly et al., 2016), since it positively influences different processes of cognition and attention in children (Howie, Beets and Pate, 2014; Ma, Le Mare and Gurd, 2015).

Therefore, the influence of PA on cognitive performance is a fact confirmed (Álvarez-Bueno et al., 2017; Watson et al., 2017), that has shown a positive effect of active breaks to improving the academic performance, physical activity level, cognitive functions and classroom behaviour (Daly-Smith, Zwolinsky, McKenna, Tomporowski, Defeyter, & Manley, 2018; de Greeff, Bosker, Oosterlaan, Visscher, & Hartman, 2018). However, there are a lack of studies with focused in early childhood education, and how we can do it to increase the PA and improve the attentional and concentration levels in children from 3 to 6 years old. For that reason, the main objective of this chapter will be offering some information about active breaks and a serial of moderators to take into account in order to have an adequate experience with active breaks and that they fulfil their function of improving cognitive performance.