Exploring Instructors’ Verbal Aggressiveness and Students’ Personal Orientations and Reasons of Discipline in Physical Education Class

Abstract

In this study we examined associations among physical education instructors’ verbal aggressiveness as perceived by students and students’ task and ego orientations and reasons for discipline. The sample consisted of 283 Greek adolescent students (124 males, 159 females) aged 10 - 14 years old (M = 12.6, SD = .94) from primary and secondary schools who completed three types of questionnaires during physical education classes. The results supported the internal consistency of the instruments. MANOVA’s findings supported that there is a significant dependence between school classes on the factors of each questionnaire. Specifically, the 2nd grade of secondary school proved to have the lower score on verbal aggressiveness, the 2nd grade of secondary school the higher score on ego-orientation, the 1st grade of secondary school the higher score on external reasons of discipline and the 5th grade of primary school the lower score on caring reasons. Correlational analysis indicated that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness was positively related to students’ ego orientation, external reasons, introjected reasons, no reasons, and self-responsibility reasons for discipline. Significant negative correlations were noted for instructors’ verbal aggression with students’ task orientation, intrinsic reasons and caring reasons for discipline. The results of regression analysis revealed that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness could significantly predict the variables of students’ personal orientations and external reasons, intrinsic reasons and self-responsibility reasons for discipline. Distinct types of disciplined students are also proposed: 1) the “obedient” and 2) “altruist”. The findings and implications of the contribution of instructors’ verbal aggressive behavior to the students’ personal orientations and reasons for discipline are further discussed as well as future research suggestions.