IMPACT OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS ON THE PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MOSCOW SCHOOLCHILDREN: HYGIENE ASPECTS

Physical development and health of today's schoolchildren are influenced by various factors, including the way the learning process is organized. This article presents data on some aspects of physical development of 1585 teenagers (15 to 17 years old) from 35 Moscow schools, including general education schools, specialized schools, schools with optional advanced courses in biomedical sciences, and health promoting schools. We studied basic anthropometric characteristics of the participants (body height and weight), assessed their psychoemotional status using the Children's Form of Manifest Anxiety Scale and their lifestyle using questionnaire surveys. The control group included teenagers from general education schools. The study showed that the number of teenagers with no abnormalities in their physical development was significantly higher in health promoting school while the number of overweight students there was significantly lower, compared to the controls (p < 0.05). For other groups of participants, the results were statistically insignificant. We established statistically significant correlations between well-proportioned physical development and the impacts of night sleep deficit (r=-0.44, p < 0.05), time spent working on the computer (r=-0.44, p < 0.05), psychological climate in the family (r=-0.20, p < 0.05), and meal frequency (Pearson's contingency coefficient was 0.41, with p < 0.01, Cramer's contingency coefficient was 0.32, with p < 0.03).