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.

Practical sports courses in the physical education teacher training curriculum are the only opportunities that students training to become physical education teachers have to learn sports and dance as culture and as raw materials of learning contents of physical education classes in junior and senior high school. The aim of this study was to reveal the problems that hinder the progress of research on practical sports courses in the physical education teacher training curriculum, and to identify the necessary aims for further research. In this study, the role of practical sports courses for developing practical teaching abilities was discussed first by identifying the outcomes and unresolved problems in trials for developing practical teaching abilities in the physical education teacher training curriculum. Then, theoretical and practical studies on the practical sports courses were critically reviewed, and the development of these studies was summarized. The results gained were as follows: 1) mastery of broad learning contents of physical education classes is a problem that remains unsolved in trials for developing practical teaching abilities in the physical education teacher training curriculum, and its solution is the role of the practical sports courses, 2) the way of teaching and assessing practical teaching abilities of movement skills has not been developed, though the systematic structure of the abilities has been theoretically described from the viewpoint of phenomenological theory of human movement in sport, 3) there were few reports that measured learning outcomes of practical sports courses, though there were a wide range of teaching practices, various range and levels of sports skills, and sometimes other abilities besides sports skills were taught. Thus, further research should clarify the learning content of the curriculum for developing practical teaching abilities for physical education classes, and should try to measure the learning outcomes when teaching such abilities, after also clarifying the range and level of sports skills necessary for physical education teachers.