Development of the educational support package of movement-based games for Persian language lesson and its effectiveness on learning motivation and academic emotion in the first grade primary school students

This study aimed to develop an educational package for movement-based games in the Persian language lesson and assess its effectiveness on learning motivation and academic emotion in first-grade students. The research method had a mixed-methods design, combining both qualitative and quantitative approaches. To develop the educational package, the qualitative method of thematic analysis was used, with input from 15 experts and 52 documents and materials. Ultimately, the educational package was created with three main components: learning, understanding and recall, and attention and focus, achieving high validity and reliability through a checklist. In the quantitative section, a quasi-experimental design was applied with a pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population of this study consisted of male primary school students in Isfahan during the 2022-2023 academic year. A total of 76 students were selected using the convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental group (38 students) and the control group (38 students). To assess learning motivation, a teacher-made checklist was used, and to evaluate academic emotion, the Pekran (2002) questionnaire was utilized. The experimental group received an educational package over 18 sessions of 45 minutes, during 7 months, while the control group did not receive such an intervention. According to the research findings, learning motivation and academic emotion, measured using the Shapiro-Wilk test, showed significant differences across three stages: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up (p < 0.001). Therefore, movement-based games led to an increase in learning motivation and academic emotion in Persian language lessons for first-grade primary school students.