Associate Professor, PhD I.I. Plotnikova¹
Associate Professor, Dr.Hab. M.D. Kudryavtsev^{2, 3}
PhD, Professor R.F. Prokhodovskaya¹
Professor, Dr.Hab. G.Y. Galimov^4
1 Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk
² Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk
³ Siberian State Aerospace University, Krasnoyarsk
⁴ Buryat State University, Ulan-Ude, Russia

Keywords: dynamics of short term memory parameters, developmental teaching, primary school, anticipating approach.

Introduction. The modern stage of education development reflects the current state of things in culture and society that is characterized by multiple innovations in the education/up-bringing process. In terms of elaborating and implementing new educational standards an education update lies in a renewal of the standards content and a teaching methods upgrade.

There is a great number of studies of the anticipating approach to schoolchildren's motor abilities development carried out in the field of sports training. Some theses [1, 12] elaborate on a stimulating effect the anticipating approach has on the development of main physical qualities of primary and secondary pupils (from 9 to 14 years of age). However, these findings do not touch upon memory improvement.

«The Concept of Russian Education Modernization up to 2020» allows for applying modern technologies for the purpose of implementation of development education principles and increase in efficiency and quality of the schoolchildren education/up-bringing process [5]. It is noted in the National Education Initiative «Our New School» (2010) that the main outcome of the school education is its compatibility with the anticipating development goals.

A number of recurring problems makes it necessary to review existing methodological, organizational and content-related aspects of the primary school physical education process, to find factors limiting efficiency of its physical and mental effect on pupils and to specify ways to substitute them with innovative technologies based on the principles of the child personality priority, main type of activity consideration and the anticipating approach to education and upbringing.

The subject of our study is the process of physical education of primary pupils. The topic being examined is the anticipating approach to learning activity in primary pupils' physical education. A developed hypothesis is determined by the following supposition: primary pupils' physical education is effective if fundamental psychophysiological principles of growth and development of a child of the given age are studied (for example, memory improvement); the way and content of anticipation process in primary pupils' physical education are established; a necessity to carefully balance development and learning within the structural-functional part of the comprehensive educational process is proved.

The research paper goal is to develop the content and give an experimental backup to efficiency of an original experimental teaching method aimed at developing short term memory of primary pupils during physical education lessons based on the anticipating approach.

When school education is to be taken to a new qualitative state it is important to develop and implement educational technologies with regard to local experience and conditions. The 2004 Federal State Educational Standard and 2006 Exemplary Physical Education Curriculum [9] (for three lessons a week) say it is crucial to develop planning of a course content with regard to main curriculum parts, organizational forms, subject matter and design peculiarities of the educational process. Educational technologies should be developed and implemented with a careful consideration of a given educational model. Modular education technology that is characterized by advanced theoretical instruction, algorithmization of learning activity, completeness and consistency of learning cycles on the basis of modules [15, 2, 12, 6, 7], anticipating learning and learning-training forms of physical education lesson organization [13] is given preferences to by both Russian and foreign education practice.

Methods and procedure. We employed the following methods in the course of our study: theoretical analysis and synthesis of research and methodology data; educational experiment; psychological and pedagogical testing; statistical analysis of obtained data. 50 second-graders of Irkutsk secondary school No. 26 took part in our experiment, with the study group (SG) and reference group (RG) consisting of 25 pupils each. The participants were tested twice: before and after the experiment. An experimental method of teaching five-a-side game to primary schoolchildren was developed on the basis of the developmental education theory by D. Elkonin and V. Davydov [4, 13].

The method comes in three stages. The first stage of training was aimed at building up cognitive motives in schoolchildren. After pupils were explained the simplest rules of the game, they were to memorize and practice them. Schoolchildren watched senior pupils, who were invited at their lessons, play five-a-side and noted that to play it well one needs to run fast, have a good movement coordination and a quick mind, to be tough and precise in movements. Thus they draw conclusions that five-a-side requires a set of physical and intellectual abilities: one is to be quick, sturdy, dexterous, strong, flexible, have perfect playing skills and a quick mind, think tactically and know the game strategy, that one has to work hard to learn to play five-a-side well. So these conclusions formed pupils' world view and attitude to the given kind of sports. At the second stage pupils were taught motor activities by means of pedagogical activities and operations aimed at particular teaching objectives. Pupils were to answer the question "What should I start with while learning?". They empirically noted that when they kicked the ball it often flew out of the baseline and named dribbling and kicking the ball as the main motor activities. Thus the first thing to learn was to interact with the ball. For this purpose schoolchildren modeled different ways a human foot interacts with a ball on dummy the hands and legs of which can be moved. At the third stage a skill to switch (from memory) from aiming at the correct result in solving a given task to aiming at applying a learnt techniques correctly and implementing it tactically while playing was built.

According to the psychological and pedagogical concept of D. Elkonin and V. Davydov [4, 13] the primary pupils' main type of activity is learning based on book knowledge digesting which contributes to developing academic cognition and empirical thinking foundations in pupils as well as their creativity needed for carrying out practical types of activity. As V. Davydov writes [4] memory is a vital component of the learning activity. Thus in order to provide insight of the latter notion we studied different types of memory and conducted their assessment following A. Luriya and E. Rogov method [7] (see Table 1).

Results and discussion. When the school children's short term memory was tested before the experiment the following all word reproduction time scores were shown by the SG and RG respectively: 95.65±1.34 and  95.78±1.17 sec, yielding a statistically weak correlation for the SG (p>0.05). The one word reproduction time for the SG was set at 26.24±1.38 sec while the RG showed 26.39±1.41 sec result (p>0.05). The memory efficiency parameter was set at 27.87±1.51% and 27.94±1.62% for the SG and RG respectively. The short term memory capacity that includes memory efficiency and corrected reproduction time was set at 53.16±1.14 units for the SG versus 54.73±1.32 units for the RG (р>0.05). The image memory parameters were set at 6.94±0.47 and 6.73±0.33 units for the SG and RG respectively (р>0.05) while the verbal-logical memory scores of the two groups equaled 11.17±0.36 11.44±0.47 units (р>0.05).

The obtained data prove that the groups were chosen adequately. The evaluation of the SG short memory parameters shown after the experiment in comparison with the RG scores proves the data being statistically significant (p<0.05–0.001). The experiment produces proof that experimental lessons do not only increase pupils' technical skills but also improve their memory contributing to a higher increase in every short term memory parameter under study thus confirming that the above mentioned method is efficient in solving intellectual tasks.

The latter statement is backed by the posttest scores. It took SG children 70.14±1.44 sec to recall all the words in a set while their peers from the RG showed 85.69±1.21 sec result (p<0.001). The one word reproduction time was 16.78±1.13 sec for the SG while the RG result equaled 19.47±1.14 sec (р <0.05). The SG memory efficiency was set at 36.34±1.6 while the RG parameter scored 28.15±1.4. The short term memory capacity equaled 60.25±1.2 for the SG and 58.36±1.3 for the RG. The image memory scores were set at 8.3±0.31 4.98±0.21 units for the SG and RG respectively while the verbal-logical memory scores equaled 13.97±0.44 units (SG) and 09.39±0.19 units (RG). The obtained data analysis shows that the short memory parameter changes are more pronounced in the SG than the RG. For example, the SG all words reproduction time significantly decreased from 95.63±1.34 sec in the pretest to 70.14±1.44 sec in the posttest (р < 0.001), the SG one word reproduction time (corrected) fell from 26.24±1.36 to 16.78±1.13 sec (р < 0.001) while the SG memory efficiency grew from 27.87±1.51 to 36.34±1.6 (р < 0.001) by the end of the experiment. Short term memory capacity, image memory and verbal-logical memory also increased in the SG by the end of the experiment.

Table 1. Short term memory parameters of primary pupils before and after a one-year experiment (X̅±m)

Discussion. Taking into consideration the study significance, we would like to further examine the obtained data proving that intellectual abilities of the SG schoolchildren have been improving in the course of the experiment, which corresponds to ontogenic regularities of children's thinking [3], and corresponding to the «consciousness and activity unity» principle. However, changes in the RG parameters are less significant. So it is possible to conclude that when schoolchildren have physical education lessons on the basis of the reproductive approach to development of their physical qualities and motor abilities, the given memory types are used less and as a result are developed less in contrast with the anticipating approach lessons based on the developmental education theory. It seems important to highlight that novelty of the study results lies in the development and successful implementation of the experimental teaching method.

Conclusion. 1. Basic psychophysical principles of primary pupils' physical education are determined by children's sensitive period peculiarities and concurrently the main physical education lesson activity is playing as, at this age, primary pupils are physiologically sensitive to dynamic improvement of intellectual abilities, for example: comparison, concretization, short term memory, image thinking, etc.

2. Intellectual abilities are dominated by short term memory so when teaching physical exercises one should repeat it several times and focus on verbal memory improvement (a pupil should think about a unit at least three times).

3. Applying the anticipating approach to learning activity as the main component of the pedagogical technology and the consistently developed basis of primary pupils' education and training content contributes to a higher degree of short term memory and mental capacity improvement of the SG pupils in comparison with the RG. Thus, it proves the fact that physical fitness, technical skills level and intellectual abilities in primary pupils are interrelated. Throughout the experiment an increase of the short term memory parameters of the SG exceeded scores shown by the reference group pupils and correlated with the RG parameters as highly significant at p<0.001.

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Corresponding author: ira.plotnikova1978@mail.ru

Abstract

The research paper goal was to develop the content and give an experimental backup to efficiency of the experimental teaching method aimed at developing short term memory of primary pupils during physical education lessons based on the anticipating approach. Study methods and procedure included: theoretical analysis and synthesis of research and methodology data; educational experiment; psychological and pedagogical testing; statistical analysis, study of different memory types assessed according to A. Luriya and E. Rogov method (1995). Subjects were primary pupils. The experiment proves that experimental lessons do not only increase pupils' technical skills but also improve their memory thus confirming that the above mentioned method is efficient in solving intellectual tasks. Physical education lessons based on the developed method result in a higher increase of all short term memory parameters under analysis. The evaluation of the SG short memory parameters shown after the experiment in comparison with the RG scores proves the data being statistically significant (p<0.05–0.001). Thus, it took SG children 70.14±1.44 sec to recall all the words in a set while their peers from the RG showed 85.69±1.21 sec result (p<0.001). The corrected one word reproduction time equaled 16.78±1.13 sec (SG) and 19.47±1.14 sec (RG) (р <0.05). The memory efficiency was set at 36.34±1.6 (SG) and 28.15±1.4 (RG). The short term memory capacity was 60.25±1.2 (SG) and 58.36±1.3 (RG). The image memory scores were set at 8.3±0.31 and 4.98±0.21units for the SG and RG respectively while their verbal-logical memory scores equaled 13.97±0.44 units (SG) and 09.39±0.19 units (RG). The obtained data analysis shows that the short memory parameters changes are more pronounced in the SG than in the RG. For example, the all words reproduction time of the SG significantly decreased from 95.63±1.34 sec in the pretest to 70.14±1.44 sec in the posttest (р < 0.001), the corrected one word reproduction time fell (SG) from 26.24±1.36 to 16.78±1.13 sec (р < 0.001) while the SG memory efficiency grew from 27.87±1.51 to 36.34±1.6 (р < 0.001) by the end of the experiment. The short term memory capacity, image memory and verbal-logical memory also increased in the SG by the end of the experiment.