Abstract
Physical Education (PE) aims to convey the joy of exercise and by this educate students to lifelong physical activeness. Student motivation in PE decreases during the school career. This study therefore comprehensively analyzes student characteristics determining motivation in PE: General Personality Traits, Physical Self-Concept, Achievement Motive, Motives to be physically active, and Sports Interest. This contribution aims to describe students' prerequisites in the PE context by using an aggregated assessment of the abovementioned general plus sport specific characteristics and to detect gender, class, and school type differences. In total, 1,740 German secondary school students (58.1% female, M = 14.39 years) participate in a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. Descriptive analyses and between subjects MANOVAs followed by univariate ANOVAs with pairwise multiple comparison tests are applied. Gender explains the largest proportion of variance across all characteristics. Regarding individual dimensions, genders differed on 12, grades on two and school types on 11 out of 19 dimensions. PE teachers must adapt teaching to different gender dispositions. In general, group differences ascribe special meaning to student perception and teaching behavior. Findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to the research area and their implementation in teaching practice as well as in PE teacher education or professional training, e.g., aligned teaching methods, arranged learning atmospheres, or adjusted content design of PE lessons.
Highlights
Physical Education (PE) aims to educate students to lifelong engagement in physical activities and to live a healthy lifestyle
The presented findings contribute to research as well as PE practice
The aggregated examination leads to a comprehensive picture of students’ in the PE context offering various anchors for targeted teaching
Summary
Physical Education (PE) aims to educate students to lifelong engagement in physical activities and to live a healthy lifestyle. PE teachers strive to develop and maintain students’ enthusiasm for the subject PE and for physical activity in general, ideally resulting in a state of intrinsic motivation (Rheinberg and Vollmeyer, 2019). This is important as research has shown that physical activity in general (Dumith et al, 2011; Dishman et al, 2018) and motivation for sports (Knisel et al, 2009) decrease from childhood to adolescence—being especially low in teenage years.
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