Theory and Practice of Physical Culture № 12 2016

Associate professor, PhD L.A. Kazakova
Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after I.N. Ulyanov, Ulyanovsk, Russia

Keywords: health impaired children, sport, inclusive sport, physical development, social education

Introduction

It was increasingly evident for the first two decades of the new millennium that the Russian society has been changing its general attitudes to the people living with health impairments – towards helping them become active and equal contributors to the variety of important social process taking place in our country. It is a matter of common knowledge that the health impaired people need to develop and maintain high motor activity and physical endurance to be able to successfully perform their social functions.

A variety of medical, biological, psychological and educational studies [1, 3] have demonstrated that it is the sport process that may play a role of a unique social environment that helps simultaneously shape up and develop both motor activity and physical endurance plus the individual socializing skills and qualities – for the reason that sports, on the one hand, facilitate the musculoskeletal system being enforced, skeleton and right posture being formed and the muscular strength being developed; and this process results in different physical/ somatic disorders being naturally corrected; and, on the other hand, helps improve the existing – and acquire the missing – personal qualities and skills important for the health impaired people being duly adapted to the social environment to face a variety of challenges in different life situations.

As thing now stand, it is the inclusive (joint) sports that are rated highest on the list of innovative development methods applicable for health impaired people’s development as these sports give the opportunity to the health impaired people to be trained jointly with healthy people having no diagnosed physical/ mental disorders in the same groups; and this method has proved beneficial for the both groups as demonstrated by their practical sport accomplishments.

It may be stated with confidence that the inclusive/ joint sport culture as a new phenomenon of the Russian society is quite established and growing today. It has been quite an expressed trend for the last 10-15 years across many regions of the Russian Federation that people of different ages living with different diagnosed physical/ mental health impairments have been welcomed to irregular and regular physical education and health improvement initiatives to practise together with healthy people [1, 4]. Therefore it is only natural that it is a high time for scientific apprehension and due study of the phenomenon of the inclusive sport movement based on the relevant research, theoretical and application notions that now dominate in the physical education and sport theory and practices. We believe that the phenomenon of inclusive sport movement may be considered based on the idea of inclusion being extrapolated to the sport sector and environment.

Inclusion on the whole and social inclusion in particular is the form of a health impaired individual being fully involved in social life with his/her rights and opportunities being acknowledged as equal and guaranteed by his/her full and equal involvement in every form of social activity.

Inclusion is actually a two-way social process designed, on the one hand, to meet the need in the social experience being shared with the health impaired community based on a variety of special conditions established for the cooperation; and, on the other hand, to prepare the general society and health impaired people for such cooperation [2].    

We would define inclusive sports for the purposes of the study as the process, environment and result of healthy people’s and health impaired people’s cooperation in sport activity on the whole and specific sports in particular based on their equal rights and opportunities being recognized and jointly exercised for the physical and social development benefits and self-improvement purposes.

In the context of the inclusive sport being considered as a joint environment/ medium facilitating such cooperation, we would give the following list of the key services the sport will provide both to the health impaired people and to the physically/ mentally healthy sport group members:

• The sport encourages the relevant sport-specific and general social cooperation skills and socializing qualities, guiding values and moral/ ethical standards being shaped up and developed in the interpersonal relationships;
• The sport creates a space of appreciation and mutual understanding for the healthy people and the health impaired people;
•  It helps form and develop practical socializing, social self-identification and self-discovery qualities and skills through the individual and group work in the encouraging sport environment;
•  It creates new opportunities for realization and self-fulfilment in sports both for the physically and mentally healthy people and their health impaired teammates;
• The sport enters as an integrated part in the cooperation field accessible for the health impaired individuals and provides a service space for the professional, social, labour skills and functions, including the sport education/ training agenda; and
• It helps the healthy people being purposefully prepared to accept – unconditionally and totally – the health impaired people as equal by fostering tolerant attitudes and respect to natural human differences.

Conceptual subject to the study was the hypothesis that positive variations in the health impaired children’s physical and social development rates should be more intense and fast when their development process goes in active cooperation with healthy people in the joint/ inclusive sport groups – as compared to the contacts with the health impaired peers in special (paralympic) sport groups. 

Objective of the study was to explore the annual-cycle profiles of the physical and social development rates of the health impaired children engaged on a regular basis in different sports (namely: swimming, cross country skiing and Greco-Roman wrestling sports) in special versus inclusive (joint) sport groups.

Methodology and structure of the study

Subject to experiments under the study (conducted in the calendar year 2015 at the health impaired children’s boarding schools of Ulyanovsk city) were 10-14 years old children diagnosed with different physical impairments (dominated by hearing/ vision/ musculoskeletal system disorders). Sampled for the experimental tests were the health impaired adolescents for the reason that, as was found by the relevant study reports, the sexual maturation age is the period when physical and social progress is particularly fast and sensitive to a variety of biological and social factors. In total 162 people were subject to the experiment. The Study Group (SG) included the health impaired children (n₁=74) regularly practising in the inclusive swimming/ cross country skiing/ Greco-Roman wrestling sport groups; and subjects of the Reference Group (RG) were the health impaired children (n₂=88) regularly practising in the special swimming/ cross country skiing/ Greco-Roman wrestling sport groups.

The experiment was designed to include the following two parts: sport part i.e. the regular sport practices of health impaired children including the specific sport training cycles plus the swimming/ cross country skiing/ Greco-Roman wrestling competitions; and the educational part with the relevant purposeful curriculum to promote sports in a human life, help develop personal sport/ endurance qualities, foster positive success-focused competitive behaviour in the children; and practical training/ instruction process including master classes to create favourable conditions and encourage due mental stability, purposefulness, decisiveness, determination and other important qualities and skills being formed and improved in the health impaired children.

It was the anatomical/ morphological physical development rating analysis taking the relevant anthropometric rates as indicative of the physical development level (including body height, body mass Quetelet II indices, fat constants (FC), body fat mass (BFM) indices and the fat percentage rates) that was used as a basis for the study. Social development rates of the subject health impaired children were determined based on the M.I. Rozhkov Personal Socialization Test method that implies the individual general socialization being rated by the social adaptation, social autonomy, social activity rates and the rated individual adherence to human standards. The health impaired children’s physical and social development rating data were processed using a standard set of mathematical statistics methods.

Study results and discussion

Given hereunder in Table 1 are the health impaired children’s physical development rating data with the data variations giving the reasons to make the following few important conclusions.

First, the physical development rates of both the SG and RG health impaired children (in the active body shaping age/ stage) show meaningful growths. This fact is indicative of the health impaired children in the age-specific ontogenesis stage experiencing the relevant anatomical, morphological, biochemical and hormonal transformations – absolutely the same as the ones faced by their healthy peers.

Table 1. Health impaired children’s physical development rates: Study Group versus Reference Group

Note: p* means the statistical meaningfulness of SG vs. RG data in the formative (baseline fixing test) experiment; p** means the statistical meaningfulness of the RG data in the formative (baseline fixing) and ascertaining (resultant status fixing) experiments; and p*** means the statistical meaningfulness of the SG data in the baseline fixing (formative) and ascertaining (resultant status fixing) experiment.  

Second, we would note that the resultant status fixing tests showed that the health impaired children’s physical development rates in the RG were higher than that in the SG; and this finding may be explained by the fact that the regular sport practices in direct contact with healthy teammates in the inclusive sport groups require higher extra/ reserve capacities of the health impaired children’s bodies being mobilized; more energy being claimed by exercises; and more active respiratory processes taking place (that results in the body mass and other indices falling down); moreover, the 11-12 years of age is the peak time in the body growth process (manifested by the body/ limbs height/ length indices); and this is the reason why the relevant anatomical/ morphological rates of the inclusive-sport-group health impaired children were found to fall down. Therefore, it may be concluded that the health impaired children’s physical development rates are more affected by exogenous factors including regular sport trainings (e.g. hourly training sessions in the morning and evening time every day) on equal footing with their healthy peers – in contrast to the special health-adapted practices in the special groups. 

Having analyzed the health impaired children’s social development rating data (see Table 2 hereunder), we would mention that the formative experiment (baseline fixing test) showed virtually no meaningful differences of the RG vs. SG data on the low/ mean/ high individual general socialization rates including social adaptation, social autonomy, social activity and adherence to human standards percentage rates in the tested health impaired children. The resultant status fixing tests showed the relevant rates being higher in the SG vs. the RG, as follows: the counts of children having mean/ high individual social adaptation rates were higher by 3% and 16%, respectively; social activity rates were higher by 14% and 12%, respectively; and the social autonomy rates were higher by 8% and 16%, respectively. The ascertaining (resultant status fixing) experiment data of the tests were found indicative of the tested health impaired children having accepted and applied the behavioral rules and standards typical for their healthy peers; and this adaptation apparently helps them overcome their social inferiority complex on the one hand and help the healthy part of the social environment change its attitudes to the health impaired children on the other hand.

The tested SG health impaired children engaged in the inclusive sports were found to develop higher individual social activity and social autonomy rates; and this finding is supported, in our opinion and among other things, by the fact that they are found more frequently involved in different events/ practices on their own initiative; and they tend to expand the scope of activities accessible for the health impaired children without assistance or with minimum required assistance from the surrounding people – as a result of their sport contacts with their healthy peers. Furthermore, the ascertaining (resultant status fixing tests) experiment demonstrated that most of the health impaired children (both from the SG and RG) showed notable changes in their general socialization rates; but the variation trend of these rates was more expressed in case of the SG health impaired children. 

Therefore, it must be stated with confidence that the training cycles and purposeful training sessions for the health impaired children in the inclusive sport groups showed higher positive impacts on the social development variation rates as demonstrated by the higher social adaptation and social autonomy rates of these health impaired children – that means that this method helps them develop and realize more successful socializing models and mobilize their internal individual resources.

Table 2. Health impaired children’s social development rates: Study Group versus Reference Group

Note: RG means Reference Group; SG means Study Group

Conclusions

1. Inclusive sport may be viewed as an innovation avenue in the sport sector development that offers special benefits for the health impaired people since it facilitates their physical and social development on a simultaneous basis and helps them faster improve their sport performance and results.

2. The health impaired children engaged in regular sport exercises (at least in swimming, cross-country skiing and Greco-Roman wrestling sports studied herein) in inclusive sport groups, as demonstrated by the annual development profiling tests, show the following: a) meaningful drops in the relevant physical development indices (including body mass Quetelet II indices, fat constants (FC), body fat mass (BFM) indices and the fat percentage rates) that is explainable by the integrated action of the age-specific anatomic/ physiological transformations plus the regular sport loads comparable with that of their healthy peers; b) more expressed (versus the Reference Group) positive variations of the social development rates. The inclusive sports were found to help decrease the number of the health impaired children tested with low/ mean general socialization levels (including social adaptation, social activity, social autonomy rates and rated adherence to the human values/ morale); and increase the number of the health impaired children tested with the high general socialization levels broken by the above categories.

3. The health impaired children engaged in regular sport exercises (at least in swimming, cross-country skiing and Greco-Roman wrestling sports studied herein) in special groups, as demonstrated by the annual development rating tests, show the following: a) meaningful increases of the relevant physical development indices (including body mass Quetelet II indices, fat constants (FC), body fat mass (BFM) indices and the fat percentage rates) that is explainable by a more significant impact on their physical development of the age-specific anatomic/ physiological transformations than that of the regular sport loads adjusted to the special needs of the health impaired children; b) less expressed (versus the Study Group) positive variations of the social development rates. The number of the health impaired children tested with low/ mean general socialization levels (including social adaptation, social activity, social autonomy rates and rated adherence to the human values/ morale) were higher than that in the Study Group; and the number of the health impaired children tested with the high socialization rates were lower than that in the Study Group.

References

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Corresponding author: lida-mila_25@rambler.ru

Abstract

The article outlines inclusive (joint) sport as a phenomenon with its essential characteristics and functional impacts on people living with health limitations. It gives comparative annual profiles of physical and social development rating data for health impaired children (aged 10-14 years) engaged in regular sport practices in special (all-disabled) and inclusive (joint) sport groups. Work program of the regularly practicing experimental inclusive sport groups of health impaired children was designed to include two components: focused sport trainings to speed up and normalize the physical development process; and educational courses to improve the children’s social adaptation levels. The experiment demonstrated that the regularly practicing experimental inclusive sport groups of health impaired children showed more expressed simultaneous positive changes in: the relevant anatomical/ morphological physical development rating indices (growing body mass Quetelet II indices, fat constants, fat mass indices and fat percentage rates); the social development rates that serve as markers of the children’s social adaptation levels (including the due social norms and rules being accepted and adhered to); and the relevant social autonomy rates (i.e. manifestations of activity and self-reliance, increased psychological and emotional independence of the surrounding people etc.).