Abstract
In this study, thirty-three papers were reviewed to clarify the current status and remaining issues of research on life skills development through physical education and sport. Two databases are used to extract papers related to life skills development through sports activities. One is The SPORTDiscus database, which consists of international sport sciences literature, and the other is The CiNii database, which consists of Japanese literature in all fields. Keywords such as “life skills” and “social skills” were used to search both databases. Results of this study revealed that there are lots of studies which support life skills development through physical education and sport, but their results are not clear except for those of sports programs using The SUPER program developed by Danish et al. (2002). Additionally, it was recognized that remaining issues are 1) to verify the generalization to life skills, 2) to focus on the influences of the acquisition of life skills on personality variables such as self-esteem, self-efficacy and time perspective, and 3) to identify the concrete experiences in physical education and sport relating to life skills development. Finally, studies which need to be conducted in Japan were presented.
