小学生の遠投能力の発達に関する縦断的研究

抄録

Against a backdrop of reports that the distance throwing of children in elementary school was still on the decline, several research on effectiveness of subject matter aimed at improving the distance throwing ability of children has been undertaken. However, there were still unresolved issues in terms of the development of developmentally appropriate subject matter content for improving throwing distance. In order to resolve this problem, the developmental process of elementary school children’s distance throwing ability needs to be clarified based on their throwing distance and sex.

As such, the aim of this research was set as clarifying the developmental process of for elementary school children’s distance throwing ability. This research was conducted on a sample of 277 elementary school children (122 boys, 155 girls) for whom personal softball throwing distance records from the 1st to 6th grade were available. The children in the research were divided into the three groups of upper, middle, and lower for each sex on the basis of throwing distance records from 6th grade, and the distance throwing records of each were compared. The results were as summarized below.

1) The data suggested that throwing distance was influenced by factors other than height and body weight.

2) There was only a weak correlation between throwing distance between in the 1st grade and in the 6th grade. This suggested that it might be possible to improve children’s distance throwing ability through the implementation of an appropriate curriculum in line with their developmental stage. For the lower group, however, the data suggested that more careful instruction for distance throwing was required from the time of 1st grade.

3) The data suggested that children’s distance throwing ability improved at a constant rate for both boys and girls as they move up through the grades. This in turn suggested that it was not possible to identify an optimum school grade for learning to increase distance throwing at the elementary school level, but rather, that it was necessary to teach how to increase throwing distance throughout elementary school.

The subjects for analysis in this research were divided into three groups on the basis of the national average value in softball throwing distance records. As such, the results obtained through this research may potentially be observed at the national level. However, while the representativeness of the data was guaranteed, this research was conducted on a small sample. As such, in order to increase the reliability of this research, there remained the task of performing analysis with additional data henceforth.