Investigating Elementary Teachers’ Perceptions about Physical Activity Breaks in the Classroom

The aim of the study was to investigate Cypriot classroom teachers’ perceptions in providing physical activity breaks during their regular lessons in their classroom. The study did not include physical education class or the person assigned to teach physical education. In order to help raise students' levels of physical activity, classroom teachers were asked to incorporate physical activity into their normal lessons, while teaching subjects like science, arithmetic, reading, and writing. Twenty-two school teachers (6 men and 16 women) who were randomly selected from public urban elementary schools, participated in this study. Data collection took place in the participating school settings, during regular school time and included 30-minute semi-structured interviews, teachers’ reflective journals and field notes that were taken for classroom facilities, number of students in each class, available space in each class, etc. Data were analyzed inductively by conducting systematic search for similar patterns that occurred across the collected data. The results revealed that teachers identified barriers to implementation of activity breaks, such as a) class management difficulties when movement activities were included, b) did not have a minimum repertoire of activities to implement in class, c) had limited pedagogical knowledge in implementing the activity breaks, d) had difficulties in re-starting the class, e) had a limitation of time, due to the additional workload, beyond their regular teaching load in class and other school responsibilities and f) had limited space to implement physical activity breaks in the classroom. As far as the content, results showed that teachers prefer physical activity breaks that are relevant to the lesson, enjoyable to students or waking up students to be able to attend effectively the rest of the lesson. These findings may have practical implications regarding physical education teacher education and professional development for classroom teachers. Probably higher education settings may need to address the above teachers’ concerns, enabling them to provide physical activity breaks in their classes, not only to “wake up” the students and help them follow the rest of the lesson, but also, as an alternative in their teaching practices, providing content-relevant activity breaks and making the lesson even more interesting to the students.