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Affiliation(s)

University of Memphis, Memphis, USA Shandong Sport University, Jinan, China

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to examine similarities and differences in the development of gross motor skills among four-year-old American and Chinese children. One hundred (53 boys and 47 girls) four-year-old children from Memphis, Tennessee, US (24 boys and 26 girls) and from Rizhao, Shandong Province, China (29 boys and 21 girls) were tested on six gross motor skills selected from the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2). The results of a 2 (groups) × 2 (gender) ANOVA showed a significant group difference on running, kicking, and catching skills (p < 0.05) with American children having better performance in running and kicking, but with Chinese children having better scores in catching. Girls performed better in hopping skills than boys, but boys performed better in kicking. Further investigations are needed using the full scale of the TGMD-2 on children at multiple locations to confirm the findings. The implications for early childhood educators are discussed.

KEYWORDS

 early childhood, gross motor skills, a comparative study, TGMD-2

Cite this paper

Yuhua Li, Satomi Izumi-Taylor, Kun Wang, Kaitlyn D. Britton, Gerhild Ullmann. (2023). Comparisons of Gross Motor Development of American and Chinese Preschoolers Children: A Pilot Study. US-China Education Review A, Nov.-Dec. 2023, Vol. 13, No. 6, 263-272.

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