Weekly physical activity of children in an education outside the classroom intervention segmented into day types and domains

Background: Implementation of education outside the classroom (EOtC) practice in a single or a few school classes has resulted in increased physical activity (PA) during school huors. As such, EOtC is a potential movement integration (MI) strategy within the traditional classroom school setting that can increase children’s PA. This study aims to investigate the associations between EOtC practice and 9-13 year old school children’s PA during a school week segmented into specific day types and domains.
Methods: In a class-clustered parallel class observational design, 33 classes (17 EOtC classes and 16 parallel class comparison classes) were recruited comprising a total 663 children. The children were asked to wear a lower back-placed tape-mounted accelerometer 24h/day for a full week. After subtraction of children absent from school on day of setup, failing to provide informed consent, or having incomplete accelerometer data, 361 (54.4% compliance, 10.9±1.0 years, 61.2% girls) children were included in a day type segmented analysis. Sixteen of the 33 classes provided additional information on their school activities and 194 children in these classes were included in a domain-specific analysis. Mixed-effects regressions were used to test for associations between proportion of PA during different activities or day types.
Results: The proportion of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) did not differ between school days with EOtC activities and school days without EOtC and PE. Proportion of time spent in light physical activity (LPA) was higher school days with EOtC activities compares to on school days with no EOtC and PE activites (girls 2.4%, boys 2.1%). Boys spent 8.0% more of their time in MVPA during EOtC activities compared to classroom activities (no difference observed for LPA), whereas girls spent 9.8% more of their time in LPA (no difference observed for MVPA).
Conclusions: EOtC was positively associated with PA compared to more traditional teaching activities and was implemented without allocation of extra resources, such as staff hours and equipment. EOtC offers a supplementary strategy for MI into the classroom, without compromising time for teaching activities.