Learn to Do by Doing and Observing: Exploring Early Childhood Educators′ Personal Behaviours as a Mechanism for Developing Physical Literacy Among Preschool Aged Children

The aim of this integrative review was to provide a synthesis of existing evidence on the impact of early childhood educators' (ECEs) personal health and wellness on their ability to model, engage, and interact with children in developing physical literacy (PL). Electronic databases searched included PubMed, APA PsycInfo, EMBASE, Public Health Database, and Scopus, and a search of grey literature, Google Scholar web browser, and a manual search of study references was also undertaken. The review was guided by the frameworks of Torraco (Resour Dev Rev 4(3):356-367, 2005; Hum Resour Dev Rev 15(4):404-428, 2016) and Whittemore and Knafl (J Adv Nurs 52(5):546-553, 2005) to systematically extract, analyze, and synthesize data from the literature and organize key patterns into new concepts. The three major themes identified as influential elements in engaging children to adopt PL relate to ECEs' personal physical activity with respect to their confidence, their role modeling capabilities, and their physical ability to engage the children they work with. Despite limited available research on ECEs' personal health and wellness and their ability to engage children in developing PL, it was determined that ECEs' interest in physical activity (PA) and level of commitment to their health and wellness contribute to their confidence levels, their role modeling capabilities, and their level of engagement with the children they work with.