ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the definition of physical activity, how physical activity changes as children develop, and how the context changes to influence children’s physical activity as children advance through the school years. Measuring physical activity also creates considerable challenges. In contrast to parents’ underreporting of children’s screen time and sedentary behavior, is their overreporting of physical activity. To complicate matters further, trends for sedentary behavior and physical activity differ based on age, gender, and context. Understanding the long-term influence of sedentary behavior on children’s learning is an even more complicated endeavor. In many of the major theories of developmental psychology, physical activity has been relegated to locomotion or the ability of children to get where they need to go to explore their environments. Theorists have emphasized the interaction between children and their environments. Multiple researchers have devised interventions to improve children’s physical activity during recess, but most efforts have been attempts to improve overall health rather than children’s learning.
