Team-teaching in physical education for promoting coordinative motor skills in children: the more you invest the more you get

Background: Standard physical education (PE) programs and the team-teaching methodology have rarely been evaluated to investigate their real efficacy in changing children's motor skills.Aims: The aims of this study are two-fold: The first aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of a PE program for improving coordinative motor skills in the team games of primary school-age children. The second aim is to investigate whether the program is or is not more effective when we employed team-teaching with two, instead of one, instructors.Participants and setting: Participants were 205 normally developing children (48% male and 52% female) attending the third grade of a primary school in northwestern Italy. For the control group taught by their usual teacher, the mean age was 8.65 years (SD = 0.46); for the experimental group with one qualified PE instructor, the mean age was 8.63 years (SD = 0.48); and for the experimental group with two qualified instructors, the mean age was 8.95 years (SD = 0.52).Data collection a...