THE DEVELOPMENT OF NON-CONTACT BOXING GUIDELINES FOR CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LEARNING DISORDERS
Description
The research question posed in this study was: What are the non-contact boxing guidelines for learners with SLD aged 8 to 12 to enhance gross motor skill development and sport participation during PE lessons in LSEN schools? During this study, the researcher aimed to capture all participants’ knowledge and ideas about what should be included in the non-contact boxing guidelines through two asynchronous online focus groups (AOFGs). The participants were divided into two AOFGs, each containing 7 participants who represented at least one of the five professions included in this research study. AOFG were selected for the data collection in phase 1 as it allowed the participants to take part in this research study, which would otherwise not have been possible for them due to their irregular work schedules, time differences and family responsibilities. The AOFGs were hosted online through the University of Pretoria’s Blackboard LearnTM platform. The AOFGs were presented as dynamic bulletin boards on the Blackboard LearnTM platform. It allowed participants from both AOFGs to answer the questions that were posted on this bulletin board by the moderating author over the course of one week, which enhanced the participation. The two AOFGs ran simultaneously this week. During the AOFG 14 participants actively engaged making the number of participants in this study sufficient to achieve data saturation (Piah et al., 2024). The content analysis of the AOFGs identified six main guideline categories and 13 subcategories, which guided the content to be included in the non-contact boxing guidelines. The six main categories were developed and adapted from (Thomas, 2015). occupation-based activity analysis principles. They included ,1) Method of group presentation, 20 Activities, 3) Grading, 4) Method of instruction, 5) Frequency and 6) Structuring. The authors also categorized items underneath each of the 13 sub-categories, which represented recurring suggestions from the AOFG data. These included, 1) Learner paring, 2) Group size, 3) Activity selection, 4) Activity duration, 5) Equipment, 6) Grading of Activities, 7) Activity demonstration, 8) Motivation and rewards, 9) Behaviors and discipline, 10) Session duration, 11) Session frequency, 12) Space requirements, 13) Group positioning. Under each of these sub-categories, participants made recommendations that led the authors to develop items organized under each sub-category. 282 item guidelines were retrieved from the AOFG and organized underneath the relevant sub-and main categories.
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Asynchronous online focus groups (AOFGs) were used during this study as they enabled all participants (nationally and internationally) to take part in the data collection phase, which would otherwise not have been possible due to irregular work schedules, time differences and family responsibilities (Allegra et al., 2021; Beatrice Boateng, 2016). The AOFG were hosted on the University of Pretoria’s Blackboard LearnTM platform over the course of one week (Allegra et al., 2021). The AOFGs run simultaneously. The moderator posted new questions each morning at 8:00 am and gave participants 24 hours to respond. Participants logged in to the platform anonymously and could revisit their answers at any time during the week. The moderator and co-moderators also met daily during the data collection week to debrief, brainstorm and determine where more information or clarity was required from participants. This allowed for objective, in-depth data collection. After the data collection week concluded, the moderator downloaded and stored the two AOFGs transcripts on the password-protected Atlas-ti platform, where data analysis was conducted. The data analysis followed a systematic process of preparing, coding, and determining main and subcategories from the collected data, consistent with content analysis. The researcher downloaded two transcripts from the Asynchronous online focus groups (AOFG) held on the Blackboard LearnTM platform and uploaded them to the Atlas.ti version 22 platform. It followed the four qualitative content analysis stages. The first stage was the decontextualization stage, where the first author familiarized herself with the data, identified recurrent themes and started the open-coding process on the Atlas-ti platform (Bengtsson, 2016). Additionally, it led to the identification of main code categories, sub-categories and individual codes (Erlingsson, 2017). Once this was concluded, the second, recontextualization stage, took place, where the first author sent the data to the co-authors to analyze again. This was done to ensure all important information was identified and coded in the first stage (Bengtsson, 2016). The third stage, categorization, took place both on Atlas-ti and in person, where all the authors revised and streamlined the main categories, sub-categories and individual codes to be included in the guidelines. The authors developed the 6 main categories by adapting Thomas (2015) activity analysis principles. They included 1) Activities/Exercises, 2) Grading of activities, 3) Frequency of movements, 4) Method of group presentation (size, discipline), 5) Method of instruction, 6) Structuring. The authors printed all the individual codes and organized them under the main and sub-categories. The authors discussed each individual code’s suitability and categorized them accordingly. The fourth and final stage involved compiling the non-contact boxing guidelines.