Descrição
This paper aims at the discussion of the idea of the development of motor abilities, specially the need for its quantitative analysis with new methodologies. An emphasis is made upon different developmental trajectories of children and youth. Limited conceptual and analytical approaches used by sport scientists are critically reviewed and a new analytical strategy is presented to study intra-individual change within interindividual differences in their development pathways. This new methodology - latent trajectory analysis - is briefly presented and applied to an empirical problem, showing its richness to study normative and differential developmental problems related to motor abilities and motor skills in children and youth. This methodology tries to analyse, simultaneously, the views of normative and differential developmentalists since it deals with the individual subject and the group, the mean changes over time and the differences among subjects. It allows, also, the inclusion of predictors of change that govern the individual developmental trajectories.||Este trabalho pretende relançar a discussão em torno da idéia do desenvolvimento das aptidões motoras, sobretudo da necessidade em trilhar espaços da análise quantitativa das diferentes trajetórias percorridas por crianças e jovens na flecha do seu tempo cronológico. E apresentada uma abordagem crítica às estratégias analíticas e aos delineamentos utilizadas por pesquisadores das Ciências do Desporto; proponho uma "nova" metodologia para interpretar o fenômeno da mudança intra-individual nas alterações inter-indivíduos nas suas trajetórias desenvolvi-mentistas. A metodologia de análise das trajetórias latentes é apresentada e justificada a partir de um exemplo empírico, mostrando o seu enorme valor para estudar, de modo normativo e diferencial, problemas nucleares do desenvolvimento de aptidões e habilidades motoras em crianças e jovens. Esta metodologia procura congregar as idéias nor-mativistas e diferencialistas, dado estudar em simultâneo o sujeito e o grupo, o comportamento das médias no tempo e as diferenças entre sujeitos permitindo a inclusão de preditores que governam as trajetórias desenvolvimentalistas individuais. This paper aims at the discussion of the idea of the development of motor abilities, specially the need for its quantitative analysis with new methodologies. An emphasis is made upon different developmental trajectories of children and youth. Limited conceptual and analytical approaches used by sport scientists are critically reviewed and a new analytical strategy is presented to study intra-individual change within interindividual differences in their development pathways. This new methodology - latent trajectory analysis - is briefly presented and applied to an empirical problem, showing its richness to study normative and differential developmental problems related to motor abilities and motor skills in children and youth. This methodology tries to analyse, simultaneously, the views of normative and differential developmentalists since it deals with the individual subject and the group, the mean changes over time and the differences among subjects. It allows, also, the inclusion of predictors of change that govern the individual developmental trajectories.
