Motor Development & Adapted Physical Education in Children

This project spans the assessment of children’s motor competence and the planning and evaluation of inclusive physical education practice.

Motor competence assessment and inclusive physical education research in school-aged children.

This research line examines how children develop the fundamental movement skills that underpin lifelong physical activity, and how physical education can be adapted and made inclusive for the full range of learners in a classroom — not designed around an assumed “typical” child.

Motor competence profiles

Motor competence is a key indicator of children’s developmental readiness and a core component of health and well-being education, but it is domain-specific rather than a single global skill: a child can be strong in one movement domain and behind in another. In a cross-sectional study of 312 Greek primary school children (aged 6-12) assessed with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (MABC-2), we used multilevel modeling to examine how sex, age, and classroom context shape manual dexterity, aiming-catching, and balance. Balance emerged as the strongest domain and manual dexterity the weakest, boys outperformed girls in aiming-catching, and a child’s age relative to classmates was negatively associated specifically with manual dexterity — while classroom-level factors explained substantial additional variance across all domains. The results point to manual dexterity as a priority for curriculum development, and show that age-related effects on motor competence operate selectively by skill domain rather than uniformly.

This work was presented at EUCAPA 2026 (Prague) and published in Children (2026), in collaboration with Christina Evaggelinou, Dimitra Dimitropoulou, Theodoros Ellinoudis, and Ermioni Katartzi.

Inclusion in physical education

A parallel strand of this research line looks beyond motor skill itself to the social and attitudinal conditions that determine whether inclusive physical education actually works in practice. Using the CAIPE-R instrument (“Inclusion Stories in Physical Education”), I am leading a three-level linear mixed-model reanalysis examining how a school-based inclusive PE environment shapes students’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward classmates with disabilities, including a mediation analysis grounded in the theory of planned behavior. This manuscript is currently in preparation.

Together, these two strands — characterizing what motor competence looks like across a diverse student population, and understanding how attitudes and program design shape inclusion in practice — form the applied, child-focused half of my two-pillar research program, complementing my neurorehabilitation work in adults.

Alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals

This research line speaks directly to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, most closely SDG 4 (Quality Education) — in particular Target 4.5, which calls for eliminating disparities and ensuring equal access to education for children with disabilities — and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), which frames disability-inclusive participation as a matter of social inclusion rather than accommodation. Characterizing domain-specific motor competence profiles supplies the evidence base curricula need to close gaps in manual dexterity, aiming-catching, and balance, while the CAIPE-R work on peer attitudes addresses the social barriers that determine whether an inclusive PE classroom functions in practice and not only on paper. The broader goal of physically literate, socially included children also supports SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), given the well-established link between childhood motor competence and lifelong physical activity participation.