Record: Laura Spivey Kabiri, Katy Mitchell, Wayne Brewer, and Alexis Ortiz, “Motor Skill Proficiency Among Homeschooled Children,” in Journal of Motor Learning and Development 5, no. 2 (December 2017), pp. 336-345. [Abstract Here]
Summary: Kabiri, a professor in Houston Community College’s Physical Therapy Assistant program. Mitchell, Brewer, and Ortiz are all on the faculty at the School of Physical Therapy at Texas Woman’s University. They combine forces here to provide the first study ever of homeschooled children’s gross and fine motor skills.
The authors begin with a brief lit review establishing the benefits of gross and fine motor skills throughout the life course. They then note that homeschooled children have the potential to have both more and less opportunity for motor skill development than children who attend schools given the flexibility of their schedules. But which is it? Do homeschooled children receive on average more or less opportunity to develop motor skills as opposed to children who go to school?
To find out the authors performed a cross-sectional study of homeschooled children in early elementary school. Families were recruited via email from various support groups, cooperatives, and word-of-mouth. The researchers were able to obtain a sample of 73 children between the ages of 5 and 8. The sample was 86% white, above average SES, all from intact marriages with the primary caregiver usually college-educated or more who was not working outside of the home. 82% were a normal weight. The researchers used the BOT-2 SF, a standard instrument for measuring overall motor proficiency in children. Children were assessed in group settings like public parks or in the family’s home.
The results of the testing were that homeschooled children on average performed “slightly above” the overall mean score for all children on the BOT-2 SF. The only variables measured that predicted significant differences in overall motor skills were number of hours participating in organized sports and primary caregiver’s employment status. Homeschooled children who participated in 3 or more hours per week of organized sports performed significantly better on the test than did those who did not, and those whose homeschooling teacher (usually mother) was not employed outside the home also did better.
The conclusion reached is that “homeschooling has no detrimental effect on motor skill proficiency.” (p. 341) This was true regardless of the demographic profile of the homeschooler being measured. Though the sample had very few overweight children, the researchers were surprised that even the high-BMI homeschooled kids had normal motor function.
The finding that it took at least 3 hours a week of organized sporting activity to produce measurable improvement is consistent with other research. Just once a week for an hour is not enough. Athletic participation needs to be frequent to register real gains. Finally, for the unemployed caregiver finding the authors offer the speculation that a full-time homemaker has the time, and frequently the resources, to enroll and transport her children to a lot of organized athletic opportunities.
The researchers conclude by acknowledging the limits of their sample. It includes very few poor families or obese or overweight children, and it has no children raised by a single parent. Whether these factors affect motor skills cannot be determined by this study.
Appraisal: This is a nice study to have on hand. Like other studies occasionally performed by health professionals on homeschoolers, it has not uncovered anything particularly surprising. Yet again, homeschoolers end up looking pretty normal. As we say frequently in these reviews, the authors’ methodology of tapping into homeschooler networks to recruit participants by definition biases the sample toward the well-connected and well-resourced child with the kind of parent who would be likely to provide an environment that would foster healthy development. Would homeschoolers who are not part of networks exhibit less motor development? I doubt it, but we can’t really know so long as researchers continue to pick only the low-hanging fruit of homeschoolers who are easy to find because they’re part of networks.
Milton Gaither, Messiah College