Recess: Does it affect motivation?

This week, my online discussion group has led to the impact of recess on children's motivation. With the curricular demands in public schools, recess has been shortened to a 10-15 minute breath of air followed by a 10-15 minute food-cramming session known as "lunch." It follows logic and common sense that this is not healthy or desirable for children.

Montessori, Piaget and Erikson agree that children learn best from hands on exploration and that play and self-initiated learning promotes development from sensorimotor intelligence to preoperational thought to concrete operations. It has been reinforced through my experience that children need time to be outside, to play and simply be children. I assume there must be research that supports the idea that the children at my school (perhaps most low-income public schools) need more than just 15 minutes to play outside. Therefore, I've done a bit of research into how the lack of recess affects motivation.

Evenson, Ballard, Lee and Ammerman (2009) assessed the effectiveness, challenges, and benefits of a state-wide policy requiring at least 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during the school day for all children in kindergarten through eighth grade. The policy was the Healthy Active Children Policy, implemented in 2003 and amended in 2005 in North Carolina. The policy was implemented in response to North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services findings that rates of overweight children were increasing and rates of physical activity and physical education attendance were declining. They found that benefits of mandated recess included greater student focus on studies, student’s participation in physical activity, awareness of healthy habits, student alertness, student enjoyment and staff involvement (Evenson et al., 2009). So recess not only affects the motivation of students, but also teachers! This makes sense in consideration of Alderman's arguments to promote optimal motivation and engagement: children need time to build social connectedness and have opportunities for self-direction (Alderman, 2004).

Can recess outside really lead to engagement in the classroom? Jarrett et al. (1998) assessed the effect of a recess break on fourth grade student’s behavior, including working, fidgeting and listlessness. They observed the work habits of children with a recess break as opposed to those without recess. Many schools eliminate recess because of time limits, disruption of work patterns and student aggression; however recess does not disrupt work patterns or cause inattentiveness. Learning behaviors were positively affected by a recess break; children worked more and were less fidgety when they had recess (Jarrett et al., 1998). Perhaps this does not equate precisely with engagement, however ability to focus seems like a prerequisite to being engaged.

By reading articles on the topic, I've found out that a wide array of research demonstrates that although recess takes away from instructional time, recess periods throughout the day can promote academic achievement by increasing on-task behavior during academic engaged time. Perhaps teachers form misjudgments of a student's motivation (effort and ability) because inattentive/withdrawn and disruptive behavior makes it difficult for students to engage in learning, but really students physically need more recess. If we hope to help students develop self-regulatory strategies, shouldn't we set them up with the conditions necessary to accomplish them?

I think the potential to improve academic achievement by enhancing conditions for optimum student learning by including recess breaks is essential for school administrators to adopt. Motivational theorists may benefit from further research in this area.