2017 Volume 14 Pages 3-15
The purpose of this study is to find out how the physical education notebook works to encourage the acquisition of life skills, and to examine the relationship between the physical education notebook and life skills. We compared two groups, an upper-level group which made use of physical education notebooks with greater frequency and a lower-level group which used physical education notebooks less frequently, and studied how the two groups were different in their awareness of life skills and in the descriptive contents of their term-end reports. As a result of our observations we drew the following two conclusions.
① This study showed two influences of the acquisition of life skills. One is a direct influence acquired in physical education classes. The other is a secondary influence of life skills that were initially acquired in physical education classes. Our study shows that students' use of both the life skills self-evaluation scale and physical education notebooks and their work on their term-end reports gradually expands the role of life skills acquired in physical education classes in the students' lives outside of their classes.
② The upper-level group who used physical education notebooks with greater regularity showed significant differences in the "setting goals," "always making one's best effort" and "taking responsibility for one's own behavior" life skills compared with the lower-level group. The same group also exhibited a significant improvement in the post-term survey compared to the pre-term survey. These life skills are considered to have been acquired through the accumulation of steady effort, and their effects are difficult to observe directly. It is hypothesized that writing regularly in the physical education notebooks works as a form of training which develops the implicit awareness that occurs in daily experience into external representation, and helps improve these life skills. It is suggested that life skills can support students' growth over time.
