Abstract
In 2017, a system was introduced in Japan aimed at reducing the burden on school teachers by delegating their roles as instructors in school club activities. However, the issue of securing suitable human resources to fill this role was identified as being problematic. It has been suggested that the active use of university students as club instructors might be one method of resolving this shortage. Accordingly, in the present study, we sent university students to participate as instructors in a high school rowing club. Our aim was to examine their effectiveness and any related issues, as well as to highlight any challenges, so that solutions might be proposed to resolve them. For this purpose, we measured the students’ rowing movements and rowing distance using rowing ergometers (hereinafter referred to as the “ergo rowing distance”), and conducted semi-structured interviews with the students and teachers. This revealed the following items:
(1) Instruction by university students was shown to improve the students’ rowing movements and significantly increased their ergo rowing distances. The burden on teachers was also reduced, and this had a positive impact on the teachers’ work.
(2) It was suggested that utilization of university students for club activities could be one way to resolve the issues highlighted by previous research.
(3) Improvement of instruction methods was shown to be one issue related to the use of university students for school club activities. One possible solution was considered to be provision of professional support with effective instruction methods for club activities by physical education and sports-related universities, as well as the creation of a system that would enable the smooth transfer of club activity instruction to university students.
