Projects

The research project "G-FiPPs" is concentrated on the preventative and integrative aspects of psychomotor processes. The research seeks to explore  the effects of prevention-orientated support  on fine coordination and graphomotor performance.

 

Formulation of the issues

For a long time now, the focus of practical psychomotricity has been placed solely upon those children with a therapy indication. The typical form of intervention in Switzerland to date has been the case-related individual or small group therapy, which has taken place in a therapy room away from the classroom environment.

New guidelines in the education system have given increased attention to inclusion, integration and prevention theories, thus pushing supportive and therapeutic arrangements that take the new challenges into account into the foreground. Although individual and small group therapy has preventative, and under certain circumstances an integrative and inclusive character, there exists the explicit expectation for psychomotor therapists to face greater challenges in providing specialised interventions with regard to offering their services to larger groups or even whole classes.

 

Study design

A test control group experiment in kindergartens with approximately 150 test subjects and accompanying measure readings was carried out, in which

• Children in the test group receive treatment with a specially developed psychomotorically orientated graphomotor support concept
• Children in a control group receive a different form of graphomotor treatment
• Children in a third control group receive no treatment.

 
Thus this is a crossed 3x3 study design.
The following issues were discussed within the framework of the study:
 

• Do kindergarten-age children who participate in psychomotorically-orientated graphomotor support programmes improve their performance in the area of fine motor coordination
  • in comparison with the control groups receiving no supprt and/or
  • in comparison with control groups receiving a different form of graphomtor support?

Time schedule

It is clear from the results that the G-FIPPS support concept in the field of graphomotorics can achieve lasting effects. There was a significant improvement in the graphomotoric area of the group of children assisted by the G-FIPS support concept when compared with the two control groups.

The results correspond to the aspired objectives of psychomotor therapy in an almost ideal-typical way: the intention is not to impart skills to children in the sense of an isolated performance improvement, but to provide them with foundations that enable them to tackle challenges and tasks independently. It can thus be asserted that the G-FIPPS support concept does not only achieve effective results, but achieves individual improvements in performance in such a way as to correspond with the overall goals of psychomotor therapy, as well as its didactics and methodology.

 

Within the context of inclusive and integrative efforts made in the education system, the results suggest that the existing setting in the G-FIPPS experimental group, which conforms extensively to integrative and inclusive conditions, is able to provide the desired improvements in those dimensions investigated – and this primarily with those children exhibiting the greatest need for support. Using this study, it is possible to provide the first evidence that integrative and inclusive-orientated psychomotor therapy is effective and can thus take its rightful place in the modern, inclusive-orientated education system.

Further information and results can be found in the final report by clicking the link below.

 

Duration of Project

8/2006-7/2009

 

Team

Dr. Martin Vetter (Director)), Prof. Susanne Amft, lic. phil. Irene Kranz, Dipl. Päd. Karoline Sammann
Studienbereich Psychomotorik der Hochschule für Heilpädagogik Zürich

 

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