Aleksandar Gadžić, Vladan Marković

The motor abilities of elementary school students have often been the subject matter of research in physical culture. Furthermore, authors have dealt with the differences in motor abilities between male and female students of different age groups. The basic aim of this research was to determine the differences in motor abilities between male and female 6th grade elementary school students. The sample of respondents in this research was a group of 124 students from the 6th grade (66 boys of the average age of 12.91 and 58 girls, average age 12.86. Some 12 motor tests were applied for assessing the following motor abilities: precision, balance, speed, flexibility and strength. Based on the results of the canon discriminative analysis, the conclusion was reached that there are statistically significant differences between the tested groups in regards to motor abilities. The boys were more successful in tests for assessing strength, precision, and coordination of the entire body and the speed of alternative leg movements. Girls were more dominant in flexibility and the speed of alternative arm movements. Boys had better results on balance tests and the girls on others, so this can be seen as consistent results in regards to this ability. The obtained results mostly reflect the natural pace of developing motor abilities considering gender and point to a compatibility with the sensitive periods for displaying certain abilities in regards to the gender of the respondents.

Keywords: motor abilities, boys, girls, elementary school

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