engleski

Diagnostic of balancing skills among elementary education students

The ability of keeping balance in static or dynamic conditions plays a significant role in people’s lives. The development of balancing skills can directly affect the improvement of other motor skills, making balancing skills important in everyday life and during sports activities (Kosinac, 2009 ; Lorger, Kunješić, 2014). The aim of the study was to determine balancing skills of young students and to examine the possible differences in the balancing skills depending on gender and participation in various kinesiological activities. The study of balancing skills was conducted in one elementary school in Zagreb on a sample of 178 students (91 boys and 87 girls) age from 7 to 11 years. The two-month research consisted of four tests for checking balancing skills: movement of the legs (left and right), standing on two legs transversely on the bench for balance (with open and closed eyes), walking the plank and Flamingo test in two variants: measuring the duration of standing on the beam and the number of falls from the beam. Data analysis was performed by methods of descriptive statistics (arithmetic mean, minimum score, maximum score, standard deviation) and Mann-Whitney test. The results showed a statistical difference between boys and girls in the test of walking the plank. The results were in favor of boys in second and fourth grade. The girls in the fourth grade had statistically better results in both variants of Flamingo test. This shows that the dynamics balance is better developed in boys and that static balance is better developed in girls in this group of young students. Such Flamingo test results can be related to the fact that the sensible phase for developing balancing skills in girls is 9 to 10 years of life. It is possible that the balancing skills needed in the Flamingo test have developed more in girls than boys because they are only entering a sensible phase for the development of balancing skills that occurs in boys from 10 to 11 years of life (Drabik, 1996, according to Roguljić, 2015). By comparing athletes and non-athletes students, the statistically significant difference was noticed in favor of students athletes in Flamingo test, in test of standing transversely on the bench for balance with open and closed eyes and in the test of walking the plank. Also, the average result of standing on the balance bench with eyes opened is better than its eyes closed version, which confirms the importance of participating the visual sense in performing balancing positions (Kosinac, 2009). Keeping balance is part of the everyday actions that man performs and sports activities that he participates in. Given that this is one of the few researches of this kind in Croatia, there is a need for further research in this field of motor skills to further diagnose and compare measurement results and new findings on the balance skills of primary school students.

balancing skills ; students ; gender differences

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