Cooperative Learning in Physical Education and Its Effects on Student Reading Comprehension Scores

Abstract

Some states require physical education (PE) to be in a school’s curriculum. Some people feel that it is a time to play and it is not an important subject in a school’s curriculum. This study aims to shed light on the potential effects of PE on students’ performance in language arts as subject matter. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the cooperative learning skills used during a adventure education unit in PE on students’ reading comprehension scores. This study exposed participants to adventure education classes with challenging developmentally appropriate tasks and other PE classes with nonstructured tasks. After the PE classes, the participants read a passage and answered 10 questions about the passage as related to language arts. Data for this study were placed into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and the averages were analyzed via a linear regression in Microsoft Excel. The results showed an increase in student reading comprehension scores for fifth grade and sixth grade on several of the days and the same or lower scores on other days. One limitation of the study was its length of time, which suggests that further research needs to come to a complete conclusion on the effects of cooperative learning in PE on students’ reading comprehension scores.Subscribe to TPE