Challenges Faced by Preschool Teachers in Implementing Physical Activity During Home-Based Teaching and Learning

Pg. 910 919 Abstract Home-based teaching and learning were implemented following the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country as part of an initiative to ensure students are able to learn despite the school closure. Children’s physical activity becomes limited when the Movement Control Order was initiated restricts their attendance at school. This study aims to identify the challenges faced by preschool teachers in performing physical activities during home-based teaching and learning. This study uses a quantitative approach with a survey method. A total of 147 preschool teachers from a district in Kedah were randomly selected to answer the questionnaire provided. Data were analyzed descriptively by looking at means and percentages. The findings showed 95% of teachers stated that they use songs to teach physical activities to children. Barriers and challenges faced by teachers due to children not having good internet access for online learning (54.4%). Findings for parental support showed they helped children in implementing fine motor and gross motor projects is 81.6%. This study shows that teachers' skills and knowledge in technology are necessary for helping teachers deliver home-based teaching and learning more effectively. Parents also play an important role in ensuring their children to do physical activities at home for their health purpose.


Introduction
With the current situation, Malaysia has not been able to address this issue of covid-19 outbreak which has impacted the whole country. Covid-19 transmission resulted many sectors are affected such as the economy, education, and other sectors until Movement Control Order (MCO) was implemented. This measure is aimed at controlling the existing pandemic from spreading further. As a result of this problem, teaching and learning should The current COVID-19 crisis has obliged most education systems to adopt alternatives for face-to-face teaching and learning. Many education systems resorted to activities online, to allow instruction to continue despite school closures (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2020). Following the current situation in Malaysia, the Ministry of Education Malaysia has taken steps to ask all levels of education whether preschool, primary and secondary school to implement teaching and learning at home. Yet there is no denying that there are constraints where not every children have internet facilities and tools. Teachers also face problems in imparting knowledge more effectively through cyberspace. This issue to some extent limits the activities that should be done in helping the child's development in all aspects.
The relatively limited movement of children at home also hinders their physical activity. According to the World Health Organization [WHO], (2011) children and adolescents aged five to 17 years should do physical activity for 60 minutes a day including moderate and high-intensity physical activity. During home based teaching and learning activities for physical activities are quite difficult to carry out. When there is a lack of physical activity outside the classroom or home, children will be less exposed to sunlight. The absorption of vitamin D through sunlight into the child's body will be affected if less exposed (Al-Othman et al., 2012). This lack of vitamin D absorption can endanger children for several types of diseases such as stage 2 diabetes, liver problems, influenza, depression (Rathi & Sharma, 2017), rickets (Lee et al., 2013), and increased parathyroid levels (Holick et al., 2005). Physical inactivity can lead to increased obesity and decreased cardiorespiratory fitness in children, putting them at risk for cardio metabolic disorders and other health issues (Pavlovic et al., 2021). This statement is in line with Dunton et al (2020) that inadequate physical activity and excessive sedentary behavior (SB) in children is a serious problem because children's health behavior patterns tend to persist into adulthood, increasing risk of various serious health conditions (e.g., obesity, type II diabetes, and metabolic syndrome) in childhood and later adulthood.
A study conducted by Hasan et al (2020) showed that physical activity is not given priority in most schools because there is a lack of knowledge about the importance of this activity to students. In fact, some people argue that these activities do not help students' academic achievement. Therefore, this physical education is not given attention by not providing resources and equipment to implement this subject. In addition, parents also do not give support to the school in implementing this activity because they are worried that this activity will cause fatigue and injury to their children. Parents are also concerned that these activities will affect their children's academic achievement. Many parents choose screenbased activities for children that go beyond physical activity. A study by Eyler et al (2021) aimed at exploring parents' perceptions of changes in children's physical activity during home stay order COVID-19 showed data from 245 (63.7%) parents reported decreased children's physical activity during stay-at-home orders The implementation of physical activities requires space so that movement can be done effectively. In addition, the use of teaching aids can also help in teaching and learning in physical activities. However, when the Covid 19 pandemic hit the country, all these activities were somewhat stalled because schools were closed and children did not have the opportunity to go to school during movement control. Therefore, this study was conducted to answer the following research questions through an online survey: 1. Do teachers perform physical activity during the Covid-19 pandemic? 2. What are the challenges faced by preschool teachers in performing physical activities during the Covid-19 pandemic? 3. What do parents do in helping preschool teachers process physical activity during the Covid -19 pandemic?

Method Study Design
The design of this study uses a qualitative approach with survey method. Data is collected online using Google Forms. This study was conducted on 147 preschool teachers in a district in the state of Kedah. To obtain feedback from preschool teachers on the challenges faced by preschool teachers in implementing physical activities in preschools, several procedures were passed. Questionnaires were evaluated and validated by content experts and language experts. After obtaining confirmation from the experts, the researchers modified the revised questionnaire based on the expert's views. Pilot studies are conducted because pilot studies can overcome negative risks, questionnaire structure and also grammatical usage errors can be reduced and researchers can gain meaningful experience (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006;Leedy & Ormrod, 2001;Gay & Airasian, 2000).

Questionnaire
The questionnaire consists of three parts and includes 31 closed questions. The closed questions and rating scales generate an overview challenges faced by preschool teachers in implementing physical activity during home-based teaching and learning Part I: Demographic information. This part has four questions and collects the demographic information of the participants. The questions include the participants' age, qualifications and their nation.
Part II: Identify the implementation of physical activity to preschool children during covid19 by preschool teachers. This section aims to find out how teachers perform physical activities during teaching and learning at home with 8 questions. All of these questions were used to investigate the mode of implementation and the medium used to deliver teaching and learning.
Part III: Identify the challenges of preschool teachers in implementing physical activities during covid 19 This section adopted a five-point Likert scale (ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree") to ask for teacher's challenges in implementing physical activities during covid 19 with 13 questions Part IV: Identify parental support in assisting teachers perform Covid-19 physical activity 19. This section aims to identify the support provided by parents to teachers as they implement online teaching and learning. The questions of this section contain 10 questions that must be answered "Yes" or "No" by the teacher.

Procedure
The survey was conducted in mid -June 2021 after the school's preschools were closed and control orders were implemented. All teachers and children have gained a lot of experience with online learning. Teachers are given a google form link to answer this questionnaire. Participants were clearly informed throughout the study that participation in the research was entirely voluntary, and they were able to withdraw their participation at any time for no reason.

Implementation of Physical Activity to Preschool Children During Covid-19 by Preschool Teachers
There were 8 questions in the first research question that had to be answered by preschool teachers related to the implementation of physical activity to preschool children during covid-19. They only need to answer "Yes" or "No" in this section.
Findings showed the highest percentage (95%) of teachers stated 'yes', they use songs that have movement to teach physical activity. The findings of the study also showed that most teachers use WhatsApp application (74.8%) in teaching and learning physical activities with children compared to other applications such as Google Meet (6.8%) and Zoom (4.1%). Only 75 teachers implemented the teaching and learning of physical activities online.

Challenges Faced by Preschool Teachers In Implementing Physical Activity
The findings of this section aim to identify the challenges faced by teachers related to the implementation of physical activities in teaching and learning at home. Table 2.0 shows the research findings for this research question. The results showed that the main challenge faced by preschool teachers is the problem of internet access faced by preschool children to follow the teaching and learning at home. The results showed that 54.4% of teachers (agree and strongly agree) stated that children have problems accessing the internet.
Home based teaching and learning that is implemented online is actually less suitable to be implemented with children. Findings showed that 45.6% of teachers (agree and strongly agree) stated that children are passive and pay less attention during home based teaching and learning implementation.
The findings also showed that children are easily bored when online teaching and learning is implemented with 42% of teachers (agreeing and strongly agreeing) on this. However, almost 68.7% of these teachers do not agree with the statement that they do not have the skills and knowledge in ICT skills.
The findings also showed that teachers have skills and knowledge in ICT. The percentage of teachers who disagreed with their statement of lack of skills and knowledge in ICT was 68.7%. These findings indicate that most teachers have skills in the use of ICT skills. Teachers also do not agree with the statement that they do not know how to use applications in online learning with a percentage

Parental Support in Helping Teachers Perform Covid-19 Physical Activities
In this third research question, researchers want to obtain information related to parental support in helping teachers perform physical activities through teaching and learning at home. Findings showed that 81.6% of teachers stated that parents also help their children in activities that involve fine motor and gross motor. This shows that parents give cooperation and support to teachers in helping their children's education at home Findings for this research question also found that a moderate percentage (69.4%) is for the 6th item that is parents are always in touch with teachers to find out the level of development of children. The findings also found that 70% of teachers stated that parents do not provide support in recording activities performed by children during teaching and learning at home. 10 Parents help in a fine motor project and rough motor 81.6% 18.4%

Discussion
The COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on children's lives. The lives of those who were previously free to do any play activities were quite limited by the presence of movement control order and school closures. This condition to some extent has affected their development and also disrupted their daily activities that were supposed to take place. This pandemic resulted in increased of obesity, pain, depression, anxiety, feelings of loneliness, and sleep disturbances which linked to the declining levels of physical activity.
In this study, the results show that physical activity can still be performed through teaching and learning at home despite some obstacles in its implementation. Results show that teachers have skills in the use of apps that help them to do physical activities with children. The problem of internet access by children can be solved by providing materials offline or giving tasks that can be done by children with the help of parents. In addition, the role of parents is very important in helping their children to do physical activities at home. Parental involvement can help physical development well during this pandemic season. Teachers need to be more creative in their lesson delivery which requires children to be able to perform physical activities in this pandemic situation.
Physical activities can be varied to spike the interest of children so that they do not feel bored. Teachers can involve parents or other siblings in physical activities so that children feel fun throughout the process. The involvement of family members can help children emotionally and socially while at home. Children's interest in physical activity can be done by using interesting songs and videos. The use of songs and videos can reduce their boredom and make teaching and learning at home more meaningful and exciting.

Conclusion
Physical activity is one of the crucial activities in helping the physical development of children and these skills are contained in the national standard preschool curriculum. However, due to the Movement Control Order (MCO), online teaching and learning implementation resulted these activities are not performed in the exact amount of time. More focus is given to children's mastery in academics such as mastery in 3M. Home teaching and learning should be planned by taking physical activities into consideration so that the children can proactively move and promote their physical development. Apart from teachers, parents also need to do physical activities with their children at home. Various movements can be done despite the relatively limited space conditions to ensure the child's health is guaranteed.