Browsing by Author "Juska, Savolainen"

Recent studies have shown that children are becoming more passive and less likely to exercise. Exercise and physical activity are an essential part of children overall development supporting it physically, mentally, socially and cognitively. In Finland recommendation for school age physical activity is 1-2 hours of diverse exercise daily basis in age-appropriate manner. Researches have shown that increased physical activity in school is linked positively with learning and school success. Leisure-time physical activity link to school is far less researched, and the results have been conflicting. The aim of this study is to find out how much seventh-graders in Helsinki are moving in their free time and how physical activity affects their self-perceived self-esteem and learning difficulties. The study also aimed to determine whether previous variables and links has differences between girls and boys. This study is part of the University of Helsinki carried out by Mind the Gap research project (2013-2017). The data was collected seventh graders (N = 1324) via a questionnaire spring 2014 in Helsinki 20 different schools. The link between leisure time physical activity to self-perceived self-esteem and learning difficulties were researched by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the differences between genders by Post-hoc (Scheffe) test. The results showed that physically the most active group, which were physically active at least half an hour more than once a day, experienced higher self-esteem than other groups. In boys this association was statistically significant. In girls, the amount of physical activity was not statistically significant to self-perceived self-esteem. Experienced learning difficulties and physical activity levels were only indicative dependence, even though the most physically active boys group experienced fewer learning difficulties in the monitoring of teaching as well as reading and writing demanding tasks than the other groups. In girls, there were found no dependence between any leisure time physical activity groups and experienced learning difficulties.